Behind Those Screens
Screen: a fixed or movable upright partition used to divide a room, give shelter from draughts, heat, or light, or to provide concealment or privacy.
A question that often comes to mind is, if we are the highest form of evolved species then: Why have we evolved with so many shields around us? Why all these pretenses and lies? Why so much drama and façade?
It begins from child hood. Hide and seek, the seeker tries to find the hidden and the hider refuses to come out of hiding. It continues to teen age, the secrecies hidden behind the phone passcode to hide everything form the parents. Even adults, playing the game of diplomacy with their friends, hiding the failures and problems with fake smiles. Till Old Age, locking oneself from the realities within the four walls of one’s home. Stays till death, buried within a casket/ cloth, screening oneself from the threats underground.
As psychology studies, it is found that as humans, our highly developed mind and the ego defense tends to perceive, due to the play of evolution, the initial registration of unknown stimuli as threatening, weird, uncomfortable. This leads to imbibition of the ‘vulnerable’ feeling within us. This explains why we often tend to feel uncomfortable in new surroundings, we tend to misjudge people and refrain from confiding in them. The reasons we come up with are many!
To confide and find a friend in others is a social need we all are motivated to fulfill, and we tend to. However, since the variety of stages in developmental phases we are forced and reinforced to create an imaginary barrier, drowning us in our own seas of ideas, thoughts, preconceptions, prejudices and feelings forbidding us from understanding the outside scenario and reality.
This barrier is now more evident due to the onset and rise of social media. ‘Friends’ from behind their screen can upload a pic saying it’s all good, with the reality just opposite to what is seen on the virtual world. The beauties of social web are many. However, the fact remains, this too has become a tool for many to mask their true feelings and situations.
Screening true feelings and thoughts has become something we are all are now accustomed to. Peers lying to each other to maintain ‘cool’ image. FB statuses have now become just a mere mode of people conveying their fantasies, with the truth of the matter being a full 180 contrast, parents lying to their kids every night by ending every story with ‘and they lived happily ever after…’ Partners fencing their issues so as to ‘protect each other’.
These screens have become a major issue eroding the words ‘truth’ and ‘trust’ from the dictionary of many… This becomes a vicious cycle leading to another reason to bounder oneself, the feeling of mistrust. These screens not only shield the individual but also isolates the individual, with no exchange of feelings and emotions.
Its time now, for all of us, to lower these ‘shields’, to perceive the world not as a battle field, where one has to fend for oneself, rather lend forward your hand, accept and trust others… for all you know, you might just make this world a ‘happily ever after….’
