That mask everyone talks about

'I can cover cover my problems easily/I'm good at hiding my feelings' is a sub-conscious thought as what other people think. Think of it this way, you're hiding a book from someone, but you;re holding the book. What are you gonna do? If you put it under your shirt or holding it behind you, the person will ask. the easiest way is actually to just hold it as if it's a normal object. No one will be curious. It goes with feelings, you try to hide it, everyone notices. You make it YOU, no one will ask anything about it. Which means sadness is your comfort zone.

Have you ever wondered, when someone broke down in front of you and you didn't expect it, how did they hold it in in the first place? Have you thought why you never noticed them? Let's be blunt, this is for the people who cares, and wants to be cared for. Not for you judgmental people.

Being honest with you and myself, I never thought of this. I just thought that everyone who can hide their feelings are able to take on their problems alone, and everyday. They suffer the constant breakdowns and emotional swings that comes and go in short periods. I thought that, they're able to fake that smile into originality, or that breakdown into an active, hyper-self. I thought wrong, or well at least I think I did.

Do you want to know what I think? I think that they never hide it. Simple as that. Okay they may cover it up sometimes, but they don't hide it.

As to why, I'm coming onto that. I'll kick it off with an easy metaphoric sense. Imagine a gift you just got from a close friend. Now imagine that gift is something special, vulnerable and precious that you don't want anyone else to know about it (Or leave it alone), but as you're walking you meet a lot of friends. If you were to hide it, say under your shirt, the bulge will show right? If you hold it behind your back, you have to keep your arms behind you too. These actions will, of course, rise questions to you by your friends. 'What are you holding?' 'Why are you hiding something?'. For people who wants to be heard, then this is what they do, they want to act as if they're hiding it. Beside the point.

Imagine that this special gift is your vulnerable and fragile feelings (or personal issues). Excuse the difference of a special gift to a negative feeling. It's pretty harsh that I compare a feeling with an object, because emotions are very very fragile, but then again objects can arise past emotions. Imagine you just had a pretty rough weekend, and when you come back to school, you don't want any of your friends to know you're down because you feel bad you'll definitely try to hide it. The next moment, some of your friends start asking questions because you're acting differently, this is what happens when you try to hide something. You over-react or over-do something that should be normal, which makes that action out-of-place to your friends. You're still wondering how people hide their feelings I hope.

Out of all this, I think that what people do, is that they actually don't try to hide it at all. Their face is like an open book. Their actions is like a snail sliding slowly and a cheetah running fast, normal. They live as purely who they are behind the so-called cover or mask. It's something you won't believe. Let's bring the special gift back. Imagine that this gift was a ring your friend gave. In the first time you were given it, you didn't try to hide it, and despite people asking what it was, you can make up an answer like 'It was a late birthday present' and no one will ask again. The next day you wear the ring and they ask again who it was from, you can answer 'oh it was the gift I got yesterday'. Case closed. You wear the ring every day, it's a part of you. No one bothers you with it. It is this feeling, when someone ask and you answer 'oh.. I'm just tired.' They acknowledge you with it, and you do this every other day, they assume you're just tired. Make that emotion you. It's a funny thought, but it's really that because we are used to the norm that we don't ask, even if it really is a negative, out-of-place thing.

People who are able to practice this with ease, actually showing their emotions find that sadness (I have no idea how I can describe it) a comfort zone. 'When you're sad, you're in your comfort zone' I was told this once, and I understood it just now. People like this are so used to having their emotions swing, their urge-to-punch-a-wall come and go, and would deal with it with ease. You can say that this is what people call reverse psychology, actually doing something opposite what people are saying you do. People who hide their feelings doesn't wear mask. They, in fact, are naked.

So next time you find a person breaking down for a small thing, note that it's normal to you for a small thing to happen, but for them, it kills them.

It's not about what dress or suit you're wearing that makes you attract people. It's about how you can  attract people with a plain shirt and jeans.

The world isn't a perfect sphere

Haven't we just heard enough from movies or books where a supposedly inspiring and recurring character comes in with mysteries and say 'look out to the open' or 'look deeper within the soul and you will see the world'. Definitely not the exact words, but you know what I mean. Yes one very particular way of seeing the world is to know oneself and look within oneself, but it doesn't have to be that deep or meaningful or difficult.

I'm sure every person would like to see everything as an overall, despite themselves not realising it because of the usual human's virtue of being selfish and very, very oblivious to what is not theirs. I don't blame anyone for that, I know for once I'm selfish... On some cases. Anyway, moving on, it is very normal then to find yourself finding out about something which makes you think 'this has been happening all my life and I didn't notice it'. Because sometimes it is such a normality that you think it happens to everyone.

Where am I getting with this you may ask. There are no exact ways as to how can you see everything widely, more or less in a third person perspective. Putting yourself in someone's shoes is another common phrase we hear to emphasise a feeling where we would not usually feel, to create the audience think again. It is very much like that, but this time it's more like 'put yourself in everyone's shoes'.

I will not go down the 'go look in your heart' road. This is just a stimulus to start seeing the world differently. I know from other people that (who's already done so) they see this bubble we're in very differently to me. Some through their own eyes but with a sympathetic approach. There are many ways to it, but there's always a few key points (that are the same) to every variable.

1. Being honest to yourself
2. Evaluate every move and action. Even possible or future actions.
3. Put yourself in their shoes simultaneously.

By being honest, I mean being honest. Accept who you are. Be who you are. On some occasions, we know that we try to fit in right? Where we'd lie to convince friends that you're good enough for them, or you're the same as them. This is a no-no. "I like cars and mechanics, they like sports. Don't try to fit in, be proud" This is the kind of thought you should put into yourself. Don't ever, ever try to convince yourself otherwise.

Evaluating is by seeing it to every detail. What would happen if I didn't choose this path? What other paths are there anyway? Now what? These various questions, which of course you have to have an answer to, even illogical ones, will lead to a level of understanding where there are many possibilities that you may have reached within the thought of impossibilities. Say, you think that being able to do something like sports is impossible to you. As you progress on, choosing your path away from it, you will find that crack that proves you wrong. So on your next move, be very very (sorry) f****** careful. Regret is not the first thought you think of after the first 3 moves. I think I've covered about evaluation, which I called analysing consequences.

Say you heard the news about conflicts in a country continents away, a bombing in your country, a congressman being elected in another. Put yourself in every person you can see's shoes. For the conflicts, think if you were the leader and the rebels. The bombing, see yourself in the terrorists' shoes, the victims, and your leaders' shoes to see how you would solve such a problem. In the elections, see yourself as the person's citizen's, workers, the congressman himself, or the whole country's reaction to it. It is a tough task when said and done. 

This way you are able to see that your well-being is very insignificant, yet very very significant. As a whole you may not make a change at all, but in your own community you can make the biggest change. You see when you have learnt such ways, you will build a nature against hatred, regrets and negative temptations, and become more patient, composed and decisive. Yes there are still wrong turns that you will take, but you will learn to fix it very smoothly and swiftly like nothing ever happened. Nobody is perfect, neither is the world a perfect sphere. That doesn't mean you cannot understand the Earth's orbit and axis, or a person's reaction and behaviour.

The normal is also an abnormality.

Alright, who here have friends all over the world? I'm largely assuming if you're reading this, the answer is yes. They don't have to be of different nationalities. It can be someone like you, but living abroad, you know the like.

I'll go over being abroad first, because to be honest, it will be hard to talk about being in the country you're born. Right, here we go. So I left Indonesia at a fairly young age of 7. Leaving my friends behind, my school, my normal activities I  have done since I was born.. Towards new friends, culture, school and a whole set of different activities. Why am I stretching this topic, because I'm not sure where to start. Okay let's try this...

Being abroad for years have really taught you to stick to your natural culture, aka your parents' culture because of the way they bring you up. Yet you have to be able to live in the outer realms of your house with people from another culture, and being in Qatar, it's a  lot of other sets of cultures. I'm now mentioning cultures because the various people react to various things, easiest would be eating. Some tend to use spoons, others chopsticks, and others just knives and forks. That's one thing to learn, the others would be the interaction with people there are different ways, where I cannot explain clearly, because of the very, very minor adaptations that takes on through time. I realise this when I re-connect with friends from my country, there's that tension where we're not used to each other.

I've sometimes bruised these differences, and say hurt someone because I didn't know that it wasn't something normal for them. On other instances I wouldn't laugh at something because I didn't know it was a joke. Communication isn't the major point here, but rather how we feel about what we think is normal.

See, if I were to be switched with someone who's lived their life back in their home country, and knowing someone like me who's been abroad for half their life, I would see myself as someone who's oblivious to that outer world. I would put them into the norm and think that they're used to local cultures, or in Indonesia, there are 'funky' or 'slang' words that the youngsters would use.

I'm not implying that you should be globalised or updated to the world in the context of socialising, neither should you not. It's that people have very big differences and we should be very careful with our approach on socialising. I admit that I tend to just talk with people, not thinking whether this is a real person or not, considering it is the big interwebs-of-websites, But you see it's sometimes the differences that begin to separate us, the mis-understanding between two beliefs that will collide roughly and contradict with each other.