Brand New Mask
It’s 8am at Charles de Gaulle Airport. An unusually cold morning for mid-July in Paris.
Photo by Safwan Mahmud on Unsplash
I am waiting for my flight to get me home, after a weekend celebrating friends getting married.
A deep sense of calmness comes to me, like a warm wave melting through my body, as I observe passengers coming and going, their flights on time, unlike my own.
Only now I notice my stomach aches. A long weekend of sugar, greasy food and alcohol catching up with me. Is it that, or the sudden realization that tomorrow I’ll be leaving for a 10-day Vipassana course?
I have felt this aching before. The most logical reason would be the party aftermath, yet deep down I know it’s rather a “looking-forward concern” than a “what went wrong” in the past.
I’m about to spend the next 10 days waking up at 4am, in total silence, no eye contact, no reading, no movement, just sitting still with my eyes closed, meditating.
Nothing scary, yet my stomach shrinks again.
The croaking voice on the megaphone announcing departures, the one for Amsterdam even more delayed. This gives me some time to sit with the feeling.
What is it about the upcoming 10 days that makes me so nervous? That makes my stomach ache?
It doesn’t take long for the answer to show up.
Ego.
Why is that?
Easy: there is no space for it in a Vipassana course. No decisions to be made, no roles to take, no identity to prove. I’ve got to let it go. Which is ironic, when I think that it was ego that made me sign up for the course. I was looking for another chance to prove myself. Another story to tell, another experience. Silly.
Yet I’m confused: what ego? Haven’t I just spent the past year working hard to kill it, finally noticing the mask I was wearing and ripping that off? How can there be some left?
I laugh hard at myself, my voice rising above the chatter of other passengers waiting by the gate, when I realize I've spent the past 12 months removing one mask only to replace it with another. Now that I look at the mirror, I can see it there, a brand new mask, staring back.
And it all becomes clear. The moment I dropped the old mask, the one that no longer served me, I replaced it with a new one. I unconsciously built a new ego. And oh, how much I love it! It’s so zen, calm, carefree. It goes around dispensing life advice. It dresses casually, wide white shirts and loose pants. It has loose plans too, because schedules don’t go with the new vibe. All except the schedule it holds for myself, because how else would I maintain control?
This new mask fits so much better, moulded against my face as if it were a new layer of skin. I struggle to let it go. It’s pretty, tanned. It’s glowing.
I ask myself “Can you drop it?” and meet resistance. Someone inside of me sighs heavily. “Uffffffffffff.” Who’s there? Is that you, ego?
I feel sad at the thought of having to let it go. It became so dear to me in just a few months. “Why are you leaving me?” my newborn ego says to me, whining like a 4-years-old.
Through my first mask shedding, I thought I was finished. "That's it!" I told myself. "What's left to do?". Funny, isn’t it? How easy it is to fall again. The same old tricks.
Nothing left to do, but pick myself up. Accept I have built a new ego. I didn’t realize it was happening, yet it did. Ah, so..
In the end, all I can hope is that I've learned something, so the next inevitable fall will let me sink less deep.
Still, I look back and feel proud (yes, that’s the ego talking) that this time it didn’t take me a lifetime to look at myself in the mirror. To recognize I put on a mask.
I hope the shedding will take less time too.
Practice makes perfect, doesn’t it?
