They’ve got a name for the winners in the world, I want a name when I lose. Steely Dan
I simply love writing that word: façade. I love that little hook you put on the c. It reminds me of studying French in high school and college and how very much I loved it. For some reason French came fairly easily to me.
The façade.
We all have one. It’s a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism. It dates back to our childhood and all the things that went wrong there and the ways we built resistance in order to keep getting the things we needed to stay alive.
Imagine the world from the perspective of a kid: you’re down there really low and the rest of the world is up high. You’re just being yourself, acting on impulses, tired, hungry, scared. You screw up and are punished. Usually the punishment feels like a withholding of love. Sometimes the punishment involves physical pain, sometimes you are required to go somewhere and be alone.
You were taught that you had to be good, perfect, that that was the only way you would be loved. To be anything else meant that your parents withdrew their affection.
You learn, pretty early on, to adopt a happy disposition so that you can keep getting your needs met. Or, perhaps, to pretend that none of it hurts. Still, you’re just a kid, you’re bound to keep screwing up. The interior rift begins here.
Then you’re subject to school. There you’re supposed to achieve, always. Academically and maybe in sports, too. You’re expected to play an instrument and do it well. Again, you are being conditioned to believe you have to be good, all the time. When you’re not, you’re punished. Maybe even publicly humiliated, something fairly typical in the school setting where the adults like to make an example of the screw-ups.
Oh how the world loves an achiever. We endlessly reward people who shine, reminding everyone else that we’re not doing enough, trying hard enough, reaching high enough. Is it any wonder we’re a nation of anxious, depressed people? No one ever tells us that we’re good enough the way we are. The standards of the world have been superimposed upon us since birth. We arrive in our adulthood having no idea what it means to be genuinely ourself.
The façade you have had to create in order to project the image of what you think the world is expecting of you is a heavy, heavy load. Dropping it is The Work. Trusting that the whole enterprise will not come tumbling down, that we will still be loved, that we are enough, that we have everything we need to be successful on our own terms … this is The Work.
It’s hard, it’s scary but it is the only path to freedom. To identify and dismiss the façade is one of the most liberating things you can do as a human.
Mine was crumbling mightily ten years ago when I was drinking a lot. Making the decision to stop drinking was only the first step. It cleared the path for true growth but it was really nothing more than not reaching for the bottle each night. There are plenty of sober assholes out there, still repeating their old habits, just not dousing it with alcohol anymore.
Dismantling the façade first takes the willingness to take ownership of all your garbage. Your mistakes, the people you have harmed, the nonsense you have spewed.
Take a close look at the people you can’t stand and what you’ll find is that the reflection you see of yourself within them is the thing you can’t handle. When you are calling out bullshit in other people, you probably need to head to the mirror and start holding yourself accountable.
Transferring our nonsense onto other people is the most classic way we avoid dealing with our scary selves.
Pretending that the world is responsible for your “failure” is also a particularly special means to avoid having to face the truth.
The minute you are willing to say, I know I am imperfect … I am done pretending that I’m perfect … this is the first step to the greatest freedom you can imagine.
You do not need to be skinnier, faster, smarter, richer, stronger. You don’t need to prove anything to your parents, you don’t need your dad’s approval.
You are not a bad person because you’ve made mistakes. Your bad choices do not define you. Unless you keep making them.
Today is a really good day to dismiss the tyrant, the façade you have been attached to your entire life. This is going to feel uncomfortable at first and, like all worthwhile endeavors, will take time. Integration is a process. Figuring out who the heck you are without any outside pressures or opinions bearing down on you will feel weird, maybe even disorienting. Stick with it. It’s going to be painful to sort out all of the misconceptions your façade is based upon, but this is the pathway to what you want to be in this life: your true, relaxed, creative self. xomo
Creepy characters. Stay away. Glad you decided to heave them behind and their dehaviors also. Many of us had to come to our senses. Today I am baking, going out with friends from FL to promonade on Broadway. Beautiful fall day to be living in our senses. Here's music link from a friend in MA. Jennifer Jones is playing spooky Halloween music at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJBZNNj79NI&list=PL_ND4yhW1WGasvUJR9yr5ilT-o4jA1st3&index=3