Hearing silence
Some of the easiest things to feel are the hardest to say. What are the appropriate words to express how one feels after a death, after falling in or out of love, after receiving a thoughtful gift or overhearing a bigoted comment. There are words, but the simplicity of sad and happy cannot capture these feeling. Unfortunately, more “sophisticated” words, like inconsolable or jovial, also fall short and worse sound a tad sarcastic.
I think part of the reason these feeling are so hard to express, is that they seem so obvious to the feeler. News flash, they are not obvious. One cannot expect an empathetic ear to hear what is not being said.
I’m as guilty as anyone. I pretend to be humble when I’d like to boast. I strive to stay mellow when shocked. I use intellect to disguise insecurity.
So, what can we do? We can’t stop having incommunicable feelings; and we can’t help not hearing those things that aren’t communicated. Miscommunications are inevitable. I think all anyone can do is try the impossible, to say and hear, and be sensitive when we fall short of perfection.
THE MASK I WEAR (by anon)
Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks-
masks that I'm afraid to take off
and none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me
But don't be fooled, for God's sake, don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure
That all is sunny and unruffled with me
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name
and coolness my game,
that the water's calm
and I'm in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me. Please!
My surface may be smooth but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weaknesses
and fear exposing them.
That's why I frantically create my masks to hide behind.
But I don't tell you this.
I don't dare.
I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh
and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing, that I'm just no good
and you will see this
and reject me.
I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's nothing
and nothing of what's everything, of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying
Please listen carefully and try to hear
what I'm not saying
Hear what I'd like to say
but what I can not say.
It will not be easy for you,
long felt inadequacies make my defenses strong.
The nearer you approach me
the blinder I may strike back.
Despite what books say of men, I am irrational;
I fight against the very thing that I cry out for.
you wonder who I am
you shouldn't
for I am everyman
and everywoman
who wears a mask.
Don't be fooled by me.
At least not by the face I wear.
-----Author unknown -
I think part of the reason these feeling are so hard to express, is that they seem so obvious to the feeler. News flash, they are not obvious. One cannot expect an empathetic ear to hear what is not being said.
I’m as guilty as anyone. I pretend to be humble when I’d like to boast. I strive to stay mellow when shocked. I use intellect to disguise insecurity.
So, what can we do? We can’t stop having incommunicable feelings; and we can’t help not hearing those things that aren’t communicated. Miscommunications are inevitable. I think all anyone can do is try the impossible, to say and hear, and be sensitive when we fall short of perfection.
THE MASK I WEAR (by anon)
Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks-
masks that I'm afraid to take off
and none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me
But don't be fooled, for God's sake, don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure
That all is sunny and unruffled with me
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name
and coolness my game,
that the water's calm
and I'm in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me. Please!
My surface may be smooth but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weaknesses
and fear exposing them.
That's why I frantically create my masks to hide behind.
But I don't tell you this.
I don't dare.
I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh
and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing, that I'm just no good
and you will see this
and reject me.
I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's nothing
and nothing of what's everything, of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying
Please listen carefully and try to hear
what I'm not saying
Hear what I'd like to say
but what I can not say.
It will not be easy for you,
long felt inadequacies make my defenses strong.
The nearer you approach me
the blinder I may strike back.
Despite what books say of men, I am irrational;
I fight against the very thing that I cry out for.
you wonder who I am
you shouldn't
for I am everyman
and everywoman
who wears a mask.
Don't be fooled by me.
At least not by the face I wear.
-----Author unknown -