Let’s play pretend

Two Sides of Ana is the story of the little girl who was very nice in school – the quintessential little girl who brought flowers to her teacher but turned into a mean brat at home. Oh, how she fooled everyone at school!

Two Sides of Ana represents the duality and duplicity of man and most of us can relate to it. The naked truth is we all live a double life.  Man is two fold – the person the world knows and the one we hide away. The one we leave behind at the front porch everyday when we go to work  and pick up when we get back home.

The one we leave in the car when we reach for the dashboard to retrieve the wedding ring and slip it back into our fingers.

The one that frowns from the inside every time we smile to everyone at the office and along the corridors.

The one we hide behind a deep facial foundation to conceal a black eye because we do not want the world to see our bruises.

The one we see staring right back at us in the mirror and we wonder who the hell is that guy.

The one who wishes to become someone else.

The one who wishes for something more to fill the emptiness within.

The one who pretends to be someone else.

Dexter, the titular  character in the TV series Dexter portrays the duality of man in the most exotic way. Controlled by his ‘dark passenger’, Dexter, a blood spatter patten analyst  is a vigilante serial killer who hunts serial killers. This side he hides too well, even those closest to him are not aware of his primal urge to kill. He pretends so they can accept him.

Duality of man breeds duplicity. This duality is driven by our urges, our desires and our needs to blend in and adapt to our daily environment. It is like an alter ego just waiting to reveal itself when need arises.

There is constant power struggle between our two sides on which one takes dominance at what time. Will they like me for me or do I need to disguise? And the people around us are fooled. They think they know us but they don’t. We hide our flaws, we hide them too well.  We hide our insecurities, tightly wrapped in a perfect little box inside us. Only we know who we truly are.

We all must be thinking, celebrities have no secrets, we have them all figured out. They are always at the mercy of paparazzi and tabloids looking to make more money from the dirt they dig. And hey, didn’t we all watch Kimye’s proposal on Youtube? We keep up with the Kardashians, we get hooked to the Real Housewives of Atlanta thinking we know them. After all, they reveal it all in the flashy reality shows. But no one conceals their duality better than the one in  the full glare of the public. You see only that which they want you to see.

How long we survive the duplicity depends totally on how long we can keep the mask on and how perfectly the mask fits.

Sometimes, the duality is so blurred, we get confused in the transition and lose ourselves. When we lie down at night, the question lingers in our thoughts: Who are we really? The person we want to become or the person we are running from?

Shall we ever get rid of this inadequacy we feel? Or these insecurities that provoke one side and stifles the other? For how long will we maintain this game of pretending?