When I was a young mother, newly separated from my husband and wanting so much to figure out my real self, my dreams kept on being full of masks. By this time I knew that I was playing a role (i.e., wearing a mask) as “mother,” and had been in another role as “wife,” and yet a third role as “doctoral student in philosophy.” But who, really, am I, underneath all these masks I wear, these roles I play? What happens when I take off all the masks and come forth into the world as my real self?  This was (and is) my driving passion.

Over the past several months, as the “jobs” people used to define who they are disappeared, or were put on hold,  perhaps never to return, many people are finding themselves asking the same question, “Who am I, really?” underneath the roles I. am playing? —  including for example: Do I want to continue this marriage, which has been pro forma for way too many years already? And even more common: do I want to return to that old job, where I was either paid a slave wage for labor I don’t even like to do, or else paid well, often as a bribe to continue unethical behavior of some kind? Furthermore, what is my real work, an expression of my real self? What direction should I go in life that would make me feel both useful to others and filled with joy?

Ironically, just as many people are using this Great Pause to look hard and long at the inauthentic metaphorical/social masks they have been wearing, especially in public, they are now supposed to be putting on an actual material, physical mask, either out of genuine F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real) of the bogey-man virus, or to pretend, by playing the role of the “good citizen,” during the much balley-hooed CV-19 plandemic.

(Hey! At least we are now being addressed as “citizens” rather than as “consumers”! Remeember President Bush after 911: “Go shopping!”? That single change in itself is extremely significant, and brings us much closer to who we really are as a people sharing both a Constitution and a land mass in common.)

Okay. Now don’t you find it a bit strange that the mask theme is not only prominent, going on and on and on (around here are even some folks who wear masks out hiking in the woods with no one around!), but that this theme is now doing double duty? To wit:

First, there are the masks that we are all, if we are good boys and girls, supposed to continue to wear into the hazy future. Notice, BTW: that Trump never does? Even Dr. Fauci, who was just the other day “self-quarantined,” is back onstage with Trump again today, but this time, for the first time, masked.

Hmm. Read the last line of this Q drop, from today:

Then, there’s the recent “unmasking” (i.e., “revealing”) scandal involving General Flynn, which also threatens to go on and on, now that the judge who was supposed to sign off on the DOJ decision instead brought in another judge (Obama-appointed) to “help” him figure out whether Flynn was “guilty”???!  Let’s face it, these Deep State players really know how to play fast and loose with the rules of the complex government game that includes both politics and justice.

So we’re supposed to wear masks to protect self and others from the invisible enemy “virus.” To not wear a mask, or to tear the mask off one’s face, is to disobey “strong guidance” — and in some cases, including, now, Los Angeles, “requirement” to always wear one’s mask in public.

Then there are those brave enough to wear a mask and to announce right on it, what they think of the whole idea. For example this, from a reddit thread:

Which brings me to the Letter to the Editor that I decided today to submit to my local Bloomington Indiana paper. As an academic town, this one of course leans left and is riddled with the TDS virus. So of course, anything Trump says or does is automatically Orange Man Bad. That he doesn’t wear a mask? Case in point.

Let’s see if this unmasking of me in my local town gets printed, and if so, what happens next. Be of strong heart, Ann!