YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE WHEN NOBODY’S WATCHING.

We all pretend. Pretend to be someone who we are not, sometimes to get acceptance, sometimes to hide. We pretend to be all okay when we are really not, we pretend to be the right one, when deep inside we know we aren’t. This pretending game now has gone too far. From pretending to being ignorant to being full of ourselves to being selfish beings, we have gone down the wrong path. It has become so hard to know who the other person is, and our generation has normalized this.

I being an introvert have very few people close to me. I always thought they know me the best like they actually know me. But in the last few days, I realize no one actually knows “Me”, not my family, not my closest friends, no one. They all know what I show them, what I tell them. And not that I blame anyone for that, cause we cannot know anyone beyond a certain limit until and unless they want us to.

I went through tough times, especially in my head. I stopped sharing anything related to me, my life, and no one seemed to notice. As I was always the one who listens more, so no one felt anything wrong when I stopped sharing whatever little details I used to share. I was feeling lonely, but I couldn’t ask anyone to stay, how could I? It’s not easy to open up to people about the problems, thoughts, and feelings you go through. But this time was different. I wanted to but every time I think of it, I saw people not even noticing anything, so I shush my mind and ask myself to be strong. I asked myself to be happy and even if I can’t be right now, the least I could do is paste a smile on my face. I somehow passed halfway through that hard path, few knew and others don’t.

And this made me realize how ignorant we are living our lives. We don’t know and it will be accurate to say that most of the time we don’t even bother to know how someone is doing. Do we? We are all so busy rushing through our life that we actually forgot others, those around us. We forget to be human beings. We keep on hearing things, issues of someone but we never actually make some time to listen. And when someone takes inappropriate action we quickly form a judgment about them. We judge others quickly for the things they do, the things they don’t, without even knowing the actual reason behind, without knowing what they must have been thinking or what they must have been going through.

We live in a society where everyone is pretending. No one is showing the true self, because we all think it’s not acceptable. We all pretend to be perfect in front of those whom we feel are inferior to us. We act like we are somehow supreme to them but in reality, this is the only thing that makes us inferior to them. We all pretend to be “know it all”, to be the “goody two-shoes” but are we? It reminded me of the quote of Stephen Fry, “You are who you are when nobody’s watching.” And if this ain’t the truth. We all know who we actually are, and yet we cover that personality with a façade to make us feel somewhat better about ourselves.

I myself sometimes try to be someone I am not, and then regret it later. But I am trying to accept who I am in private, in public. I am trying not to judge anyone without knowing the story behind it.