FACE-OFF

One Monday morning a colleague came back to work, having attended the burial of a relative over that weekend. She looked so distraught and for a moment I thought it's because she was still in a state of mourning from her loss. To break off the otherwise awkward silence, I asked: “how was the burial?” “It went well, “she said. “And how are you?” I asked. Without beating around the bush, with a gloomy but straight face she said, “I’m not fine, I discovered over the weekend that I have a sister from another mother, who is just a year younger than me!” Trouble right there! “And this happened when we were publicly being introduced to the mourners”, she continued. “The most disappointing thing is that Dad seemed indifferent”. “So, how is your sister?” I interjected. “I don’t know, I am still trying to reconcile all these and figure out if and how I will begin to bond with her.

This week I met this guy famed as a media personality, a celeb. He came to my workplace to share on mental health. He shared his story about a hidden, broken, dejected, miserable side of him that he had hidden for so long but had since gone public about it in recent years. He has been bold enough to share the same on the Engage talks by toastmasters forum. While he spoke, I thought, “How many men are going through worse?” “How many would be bold enough to share their story?”  

In the 1997 movie “face-off”, FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) Obsessed with bringing terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) to justice, tracks down Troy, who has boarded a plane in Los Angeles. After the plane crashes and Troy is severely injured, possibly dead, Archer undergoes surgery to remove his face and replace it with Troy's. As Archer tries to use his disguise to elicit information about a bomb from Troy's brother, Troy awakes from a coma and forces the doctor who performed the surgery to give him Archer's face.

With time, the man has mastered the art of masking, to protect his ego, to preserve a certain image, to maintain a certain status, to hide weaknesses and even to conceal evidence. Show me a man who doesn’t have skeletons hidden in a closet and I will show you an angel living among men!  What differs from a man to a man, is a case of how many skeletons. Unmasking can be a painful, dirty, tricky business and depending on the intensity, can leave scars.  Beyond every mask is a man trying hard to be what he is not to achieve certain goals but behind the mask is a man who is broken, a man who is crushed, a man who is downtrodden, a man who is fearful of what will be if the face comes off! He feels that he will be ridiculed, he will lose the social status he will lose what he has built for so long. This man wants a safe space where he can unmask and so that life can give him a clean slate, a tabula rasa, but the society has been so hard on him coz he is supposed to be the leader. Right? He is not supposed to be broken. Right? If he breaks, he is weak. If he cries he ain't man enough. After all, a man must do what a man must do and make it happen. The bottom line is, the face will be off at some point and the longer the mask stays on, the harder it is to remove it. I have always opined that the self-worth of a man is in his identity. Men need to create a safe space (a place of vulnerability) where they can speak out without being judged, unmask the falsehoods that have defined them for long and become true men to the society, men of integrity.  When a man unmasks, he heals, becomes true to his identity and in a ripple effect the society heals. What face do you need to rip off?

Jamo