Fr Jim Cogley
In the words of the poet TS Eliot ‘putting on a face to meet the faces that we meet’ is what we humans are very good at. We invest vast amounts of energy in maintaining our show face. This is what we present to the world, and want others to believe in. Carl Jung called this our persona and we can become so identified with it, that we even believe our own lies, and forget who we really are. Here our role becomes our identity and we use it as the measure of our self-worth. The reasons we hide our true selves are many and complex. Perhaps as children we were not allowed to be who we really were and so we became someone else? We may not like ourselves and so we try to cover up that which we don’t like? If we are not comfortable with being weak and vulnerable we will always want to appear strong. The bottom line is that if we were to put even half the energy we invest into covering something up, and used it to understand and heal where we are wounded we would be in a far better position to move on with our lives.