Deep in a wooded patch in my little corner of the world lives a mythical creature.

A soft, luscious green, this web-toed tree climber with gold eyes sends a warning to potential enemies.  Eat me and you will regret it.  My toxins will give you the worst heartburn of your life.  Try me!

You know the creature, right?  It’s a moth, of course.

That’s right – I said moth.

Hang in there with me.

~~~

This frog-masked moth first appeared on my back porch two years ago.  A persistent guest, it was a feature at the house, for a while.

When it disappeared, the research began.  What kind of moth carries the mask of a frog?  Is it common, or rare?

Google took me all over the map in search of the illusive frog moth.  After a couple of days, I gave up.  I chalked it up to a sign or a symbol of something to be understood down the road.

~~~

Last week more inspiration appeared in the form of a new moth – this one tan and black with the appearance of a mask on its wings.  Think “Gilligan’s Island” and totems and you’re getting close.

Seeing the second moth brought it together for me.  Both insects are dressed to fool the world – to make the creature underneath appear ominous or more dangerous than it really is.  They have delicate wings disguised as weapons or frightening faces.  Their markings scream back off!

This is the ancient animal strategy of survival.

To make it in a frightening world, the species carry forward the traits that serve them best – those that make them the fittest in the game of survival.  The markings and behaviors that protect are carried forward to the next generation of critters.

~~~

It seems there are many ways animals use camouflage for protection.

Here are a few:

Mimesis

This means of camouflage employs mimicry or masquerade.

–          Animals that wish to avoid attention  [grasshoppers that look like leaves]

–          Predators that wish to avoid attention [the mantis that mimics an orchid]

–          Animals that resemble more dangerous or threatening animals [frog moth – ‘nuf said]

Crypsis

This form of camouflage allows animals to blend into the background.

–          General disappearance into natural environments [ snakes]

–          Disruptive patterns to confuse predators [leopard]

–          Changing skin pattern or color [chameleon, squid]

There are other examples.  I won’t bore you.

~~~

I named a dog Mischief, and she lived down to the expectation.  That makes the next anecdote strictly my fault.

Last week I put the dogs out in the yard for the last day of spring-like weather before Sure-Fire Hell set in.  They were missing in action some time, which should have been a sign.

The last cockapoo in was Mischief.  My “Miss Chief” returned with a large caramel-colored smudge down her right side from ear to tail.  She was quite proud and paraded around for all to admire.

It didn’t take long to realize she was covered in poo – and not just any poo.  Young Chiefy rolled in the runny poop of her 13-year-old canine mentor, Button, who is currently in the throes of renal failure.  This poo is a vile concoction full of toxins Button’s kidneys can no longer process.

It is, in a word, nasty.  The prank won Chiefy an off-schedule bath.  Bad Chiefy.

However, my strawberry-blonde clown was only doing her job.  You see, dogs roll in poop, dead worms and a host of other things to disguise their dog scents.  Back in the day of wolfdom it meant the difference between eating and being eaten.

Today, however, it is elective instinctive behavior.  If I smell like poo, the neighbor’s cat won’t expect there’s a dog sneaking up on her.  [Hehehe.]

It is clever and as useful as my spleen; I could live without it.

~~~

The bottom line for all animals that camouflage is survival.

Whether life and death are on the line – or the simple tom foolery of my Mischief – animals are alarmingly predictable in their drive to survive.

We humans are no different.

[Please note: if you ever come into my home covered in rancid poo, I will turn you away.]

~~~

Human masks are less about black-and-white survival.  Instead they are a complex mix of self-protection, coping behaviors and our individual value sets, informed by past experiences and current environment.

Before sharing examples, I offer another anecdote.  Consider it entertainment value for now.  We’ll come back to evaluate.

In college I was known for sitting in the back of the room.  I was nice, quiet and astute.  Never the smartest, loudest or most social, I simply want to receive the day’s lesson and move on to apply it to my life or course work.

There was one class in particular I did not like.

The professor, Dr. Ph.D. (piled higher and deeper than most) was awkward.  Actually, I found him sarcastic and smug.  My feeling was he believed us to be: a) backwoods; b) dumb; and c) easy marks.

I flew below the radar in my back-row seat, counting the days until it was over.  There were some people he liked, the popular set.  I was not one of them.

One day he drilled us on our assigned reading.  The subject: the sociologist Erving Goffman and his theory of front-stage and back-stage interactions.  In life there are both types.  My cynical professor believed no part of life is completely back-stage.  Even our opinions are informed by what we believe others want or expect.  There are no true independent thinkers.

Valid or not, his method of questioning our class was like nails on my inner chalkboard.

Dr. Ph.D.       Who can give me an example of a back-stage interaction?  (slight lisp)

Class       [silence]

Dr. Ph.D.       Come on, surely you did the reading, right?  (sarcasm) You’re smart and studious.  (smirk)  Someone give me an example.

Class       [uncomfortable shifting of bodies]

Dr. Ph.D.       Anyone?  Surely you’re paying all this money to learn, right?  (more sarcasm) How about you?  Ms. Viola, give me an example of a back-stage interaction.

Me       You mean like if I told you I think you’re arrogant?  That’s back-stage, right?

Dr. Ph.D.       Arrogant?  Arrogant.  Why do people always say I’m arrogant?  But, yes, that is a back-stage interaction.  Thank you.

I glared dead on through his Coke-bottle glasses at his dark, beady eyes.

It didn’t win me membership in the popular set, but it did win class respect and a hero’s welcome from the teacher of my next class who appreciated the sass.  It also held him at a respectable distance for the remainder of the semester.

There are some masks at work on both sides here.  We’ll come back to them.

~~~

Many of life’s masks are universal.  Do you recognize these in yourself or someone you know?

Accommodation

The mask of the chameleon, accommodation wants whatever others want.  My opinion?  My preference for dinner?  Whatever you want!  Any time you pick!  Accommodation is not self-defined.  Instead it changes with the tides, taking on the values and principles of the strongest person present.  It is a way of avoiding discomfort and the all-important act of growing up.  It seeks to please everyone and by doing so pleases no one.

Adequacy

Have enough?  Most Americans do not, and we’re on a constant search for more, bigger, better – my house, my job, my pastimes.  We are voracious consumers because we have inner space to fill.  It takes years and sometimes decades to learn the “stuff” doesn’t help; it only compounds our emptiness.

Competence

This classic is worn by those who feel small.  Either sure of their incompetence or convinced of their grandiosity, its wearers are everywhere.  They take the advice to fake it ‘til you make it to new levels.  I am more than enough.  Or am I?  I am!  Yes, Dr. Ph.D., you are.

Humor

This might be the class clown.  While some are true to their personalities, others are introverted and even shy.  Their humor is a front, a way to ease tension or anxiety.  Sometimes it is a gracious way to break the ice, an equalizing force that offers comfort to others.  Often there lies underneath a deep well of thoughtfulness, and sometimes deep pain.

Independence (‘just fine’)

This is classic Southern belle-ism I know well.  I’m fine – just fine.  I don’t need a thing.  I will figure it out.  And I will.  I always do.  Life is much easier when you realize people really do want to help and might just come through.  The relief found in releasing your grip on control, letting people in or acknowledging your real feelings is tremendous.  Take the risk.

Perfectionism

This mask is a tiring, impossible ride.  Nothing human is perfect, so by definition it is a set-up for failure.  Yet somehow it doesn’t seem to stop us from pursuing the impossible.  The irony of the mask is sometimes a flawless life seems so daunting instead of moving forward, we choose no action at all.

Status

You know we’re charter members, right?  Have you seen my letters and affiliations?  Call me by my title, please.  Thank you.  This is the stuff of zip codes and social class.  It is self-affirmation through external markers.  It is also most offensive to me of all the masks because it rubs against my deepest values.

~~~

Did you see how I offered my take on status?  It offends my values.  Ultimately the ‘problem’ is not the behavior of anyone else but my own value system in conflict with a wacked-out world.

The purpose of this inquiry is not to identify all the faulty masks our friends and enemies wear.

The point is to understand our own – what we do and why.  It is this understanding that allows us to have compassion for the likes of Dr. Ph.D.  Perhaps the point is to even see a bit of ourselves in him.

Back in the day, if I had been older and wiser, I might have held the good professor in love, understanding his smug assurance was a mask to cover tough feelings – perhaps inadequacy.  I don’t know him well enough to speculate.  Speculation is limiting and unfair.

I can only speak for myself.  I was a kid – maybe 19 – fresh from a competitive high-school environment.  High school taught me to blend in – to settle on the ocean floor and change my coloring to resemble sand.  It was safer not to draw attention.  Further, my high school peers were wicked smart and accomplished, and the kids who joined them from my junior-high school were assumed lesser by some.  A year or two later I found myself in a class that carried an old familiar air of superiority, hence my camouflaged retreat to the back row.

When the sarcastic professor, a babe himself, challenged me by name, I did what bears do when encountering other bears in the wild.  I looked him in the eye and tried to make myself appear bigger.  He countered.  And there we were, a couple of L-R Bears, playing the age-old game of academic intimidation.

What I lacked in sociology class that I have since gained is tolerance.  It came to me by way of a graduate program that forced me to know myself.  Absent then was awareness of my own values – where they come from and why – and how they affect my encounters with others.

Instead of meeting Dr. Ph.D. through tolerance or wisdom, I met a weak soul through judgment.  It made for cheap comic relief but did not help in the end.

Judgment is uglier and more offensive than any mask of self-protection.

~~~

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow offers an antidote to judgment of others: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

An antidote to judgment of self is accepting the places you have been as useful tools at a certain time in life – and then moving on.

So often we know our masks and the habits that hold us back.  Instead of observing them and understanding how they came to be, we carry shame.  It is shame that causes us to hide our imperfections, blocking the road forward.

If your masks kept you safe at a point in time, thank God for them.  Embrace them as gifts that carried you until you could do better.

Let them see the light of day.  Explore them.  Share with someone if you’re so inclined.  Light is clarifying and sanitizing.  It can set you free.

Most of all, choose to be grateful for the road you have taken, and even the potholes.  They have made you uniquely beautiful and remarkably deep.

~~~

It seems the bottom line in unmasking ourselves and others is love.

William Sloane Coffin wrote a benediction that is known in the world of social ministry.  There is an excerpt that applies.  “Give us grace to remember that the world today is too large for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”

Ultimately this love must be applied to ourselves and others with equal generosity.  Otherwise, we are off balance; someone remains masked.

The most generative act is to help ourselves and others release our egos, illusions and stumbling blocks.  By doing so, we and they become more whole.  Likewise, humanity is made more whole.

Deepak Chopra was asked the meaning of life.  His answer: “…the progressive expansion of happiness and the ability to love and have compassion…and ultimately the secret [to a happy life] it to make other people happy.”

When dealing with trusted friends, you can be direct.  This is sometimes the greatest gift.  For the sarcastic professors of the world, tolerance may be the best route.  Each recipe is different, but all require a common ingredient.

Chopra offers an explanation of this necessary element.  “[Love is] not a sentiment or an emotion.  It’s the fact that we’re all the same being in different disguises.”

That’s right, Dr. Ph.D. – even you and me.

Same being, different masks.

© Mitzi Viola, 7/2/12