“All the world’s a stage,” wrote William Shakespeare. (“Gawd, he’s starting like this? It’s gonna be a long one….”)

Or, to oversimplify, we all play our roles in life as the play progresses. I’d like to take that a bit further. These roles, or, as I extend the metaphor to an existential level, masks, are how we perceive and are perceived by others. Others never truly know us as we know ourselves. So the stage of life is set in the style of the ancient Greeks.

The molds for casting these masks – our foundational frameworks of interpreting others – are created in our youth. Did your father have explosive anger? Did your mother literally or figuratively abandon you? These masks that you create you shall carry with you the rest of your life and shall be worn – unwittingly, unwillingly – by the others closest to you.

Intention means nothing. It is how only we interpret the actions of others that determines our primal emotional response to them. These interpretations are automatic, not a result of conscious effort. So we lash out in self protection against perceived threat even though there is none, merely the preception thereof.

The question then becomes, can we alter our automatic reactions to our masks? What amount of conscious effort would it take? Conversely, how do we go beyond the masks others have placed upon us?

The metaphor of one’s life as acting on a stage is apt; as we change our relationship to the audience, thus does the audience change its perception of us. In ancient Greek theater, the players literally change masks as their roles change. In life, your mask changes depending upon the other.

Here I only begin my dramaturgical journey. Luigi Pirandello in One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand attests that we can never really see ourselves as others see us; everyone sees us differently than the other. And the contrary of that is others will never see us as we see ourselves. All we wear are masks. Interminable. Unalterable.