Pretending

People are really struggling! They are in anguish. Yet society does not allow honesty and openness about it.

Have you ever visited some friends and found them strangely happy and bubbly but felt a strong sadness? As they talk and joke, your sense of grief and inner discord deepens, which you may feel is yours at first but begin to suspect may be part of the company.

Then you see striking discrepancies in what they are saying, contradictory messages, swings this way and that. They seem to be covering up, very well on the surface but unmistakably beneath it.

Then, when they get drunk or the party shifts or settles, they start to be more real, sharing how they are really feeling, which is not good at all.

Their torment cannot be concealed and their pretending just intensifies it, giving it another layer of dissonance. You feel the grief and the rage and the effects of their feigning, which is draining and disturbing, and they feel worse than they would if they were just forthright with themselves and the world.

But then, hung-over, regretful and insistently forgetful the next day, they pop a pill, try to pull it all together, put on their happy face and do it all over again.

If you are uprooted, you may be doing exactly this yourself.

If you are shaky, you may have moments of peace contrasted with times of turmoil in which you get swept by the prevailing fears and energies of friends and others. Your periphery will be tugged on and troubled and you may find yourself identified with it again, desperately in need of some solitude and centring.

The way to that is through the anguish, not running from it. The way back to the now is in seeing that you have left it and sitting with yourself.

If you are rooted, you will feel all the turbulence and stormy pressure to join the unhappy party, but you will sit with it and stay with yourself. A great compassion will arise from understanding.

It may be difficult to prevent yourself from pretending as the current tries to sweep you, and people may actually lash out at your reluctance to participate in patching up the pain.

Your centeredness will be a mirror to them and they may take it out on you. And then they will swing and say how much they need what you have.

Stay true and keep looking out for the propensity for pretending.