Pretence of an Angel

Today we leave our houses with two masks, one on our face and the other on our heart. But unlike the former, the internal aegis is not a new development, and it's a lot more iron-clad than a paper-thin covering- to be used and disposed in a mere few hours. A lot of us learn to conceal feelings from young, feelings of hurt, of jealousy, of anger, and of pain. Some days our smiles could feel more strained than other days, and other days we pretend our limbs don't feel like they're falling apart as we stretch and run and jump.

Humans don thousands of masks everyday, some discarded, some hung on the walls like precious antiques. Confidence, strength, certainty, the world is a masquerade and we dance on polished floors and lean on creamy curtains; the dim lights splaying over carved dimples and jewelled masks. A flute of champagne in hand, a choir singing collectively like a nightingale, the night of a ball is no less than a glorious beauty.

Except this beauty is exactly what causes the need for deception, and the ball does not end at midnight, but spans for eternities. Priced by humans as another avenue to control, the most dangerous quality of beauty is its universality. It could manifest in stunning proportions or refined handwriting, or even the stray hairs that not so effortlessly frames one’s flawless face. Everyone understands beauty in their own way, and thus we all covet versions of it. With a glimpse, we pursue it at every opportunity. It is not enough to just have pretty features, our behaviour too has to be refined, our movements elegant and our words alluring. Imperfections become all the more glaring as our society seemingly becomes more and more perfect, and each day we valiantly work at concealing them whilst opening a golden box of ten more.

Why do we pretend endlessly? Sometimes it feels good simply because it's an extra layer of protection, an additional barrier someone else has to break through before they can hurt us. When others critique us, the ugly feeling of being torn down is reduced; we know what they're targeting is not directly us but a created diversion, lessening the impact as their words may not be that applicable to our real personality. The problem comes in when one postures so much that we lose sight of our true selves, the mask blending seamlessly into our skin. How many of us hear the hollowness when we say 'I'm okay' yet again?

Sometimes we also like to imagine the world is more beautiful than it is. We don’t just want this beauty for ourselves, we want to see it everywhere, and drown in the sight of crowds, of dresses of silk on burnished wood. We want to see it in the way the ocean extinguishes the setting sun, in the way we link fingers and hands and elbows; in nature, in humanity. Nevertheless, for any instance of beauty there’s an equal amount of ugly. Existing as halves, the two are inseparable partners of a hauntingly poignant waltz. It is impossible to eliminate all the ugly from the world because as discussed before, the value judgement of beauty is perceived by the intensity of impact on the interest of one's faculties, hence as much as one sees beauty in some things, they will observe the ugly in others. Up close the chandeliers are cracked, skewed lines skimming across spun glass, and the champagne fizzes ecstatically in buckets of contaminated ice.

Despite knowing so, subterfuge is a spectacle we have already entangled ourselves in, a dance that we can never escape. Instinct tells us to move our feet to the music and become a face among thousands of masks, but human instinct is a perplexing thing. It spits to show off yet it screams to shy away, and in the end of the day no matter what we do we are torn like a thin cotton cloth, fraying at the stitches. All of us are cracking underneath, and ironically the more we break, the more we have a need for our disguise.

It is at midnight all composure falls, whether surrounded in the middle of a ballroom with fine food and finer people, or alone in a corner of a bedroom dark as the depths of night. Pretence at the end of the day is a false display, and with the world so determined to reveal the truth all will come to light. We will cry as we crack openly because we remain fettered within the grasp of charades and puppeteering after this night, and after the next. Not pretending is dangerous because it means exposing vulnerabilities, but pretending also takes a toll on us, and sometimes we grow tired of deceiving even ourselves.

What a dilemma~

It furthermore does not help matters that humans have associated pretence with our need for survival, which is our fundamental goal even on an individual level. It is all the more assimilated in our daily lives, even when we are interacting with those we are supposedly more comfortable with like friends and family. To not appear a threat, one can either mimic strength or weakness, but there may always be someone stronger to call you out on your false show of strength. Hence most people mill around with deceivingly demure eyes and friendly smiles, offering champagne flutes and making aimless chatter to come off as harmless. We learn to feel stares like something palpable when it’s on us, and return gazes boring into shrouded souls when one finally pushes us beyond our limit. Everyone pretends to some extent, some more than others, but who is to judge?

All who are present swallow disdain, boredom, and insecurity down with fizzing sweetness to the first toast of the night.

Why do we all promote untruth then? The world in its unfiltered beauty is almost painful to look at, like a light so bright that it blinds. In that sense, pretence can also act as a shield, and protect guileless pretty eyes. Putting on a front is nothing more than another aspect of life that one has to balance - when to do so, to what extent they wish to practise it, etc; and therefore it does not make a person inherently good or bad. The idea that all that is false is bad simply because of distortion may be slightly naive, with everyone having different versions of their truth there is already bound to be pervasive discrepancies. Everyone has a personal agenda that they believe in, and they will execute their life in accordance, using pretence as merely another tool. Some will feel bad, others not so much, but everyone believes they’re the good guy.

Even Satan masquerades as an angel of light.