To live happily, let’s live hidden, some say. This sentence is still true today. For fear of social, economic or geographical ostracisation, we are used to adopting surface behaviours and identities. These protect us from popular vindictiveness, opprobrium and ultimately marginalization. Then, when the shutters of the house are closed, when the curtains are drawn, the doors closed, we shed this ostentatious garb. We try to live freely in this small domestic square. But how do we do this when life at home is in opposition to the masquerade of the outside world? And even worse, what do we do when we have to continue wearing this mask at home to please or for fear of reprisals?
Life becomes a tyranny where our room is the last bastion of our individuality in the face of the assaults of daily life. How can we be ourselves when what we are intimately represents a threat to our own integrity?
Camouflage is almost always necessary to live in society. The problem is that this clothing tends to atrophy then replace what we really are if we are not careful. Camouflage acts like sea water as we sink into the abyss. At first, we don’t feel anything, but without realizing it, our whole body has been compressed and if we stay too long at great depths, it is even deadly to want to come back to the surface at once. So we try to go up gradually, making decompression stops. The risk is that if we get too lost in the depths, our remaining oxygen will not allow us to return to the surface and we will be condemned to perish under the sea.
The camouflage of our idea works in the same way, if we have worn it too much, it becomes like a second skin that has managed to kill what we were. From then on, all that remains is a diving suit containing an inert body tossed about by the currents.
Living in permanent fear is exhausting and prevents us from being happy. So we choose to be someone else – and therefore to kill what we are – in order to continue to follow the path of happiness (by taking the path of survival).
However, happiness is demanding and its road is blocked very early by our falseness which is none other than our lack of boldness. Happiness is not found at the end of the path of conformity, it is necessary to take a steeper road where it is true, we are not sure to come out alive.
So of course our camouflage outfit brings us a certain satisfaction, an ersatz of happiness, which we are all satisfied with at one time or another in our life.
But, deep down, there will always remain this doubt, this questioning, how would our life have been if we had had the guts to drop this costume and act accordingly? Our conscience can deceive others but rarely ourselves. So, taking back the reins of our life often comes down to going to the surface from time to time and breathing the free air that is there
