Keeping Up Appearances

Does anybody remember that old show called Keeping Up Appearances?

It was on a little before my time, to be honest, but I remember my dad used to watch it every once in a while when I was younger and I must say it was a pretty funny show. From what I remember, it's a British comedy about an elderly couple who live in a somewhat rich area of town. The wife is especially concerned about making sure that everyone perceives them as rich and respectable folks, despite being clumsy and perhaps a bit delusional. This premise creates a bunch of wacky scenarios where the couple end up embarrassing themselves in an attempt to impress someone important. While this show is meant to be an exaggerated comedy, thinking back on it I can't help but draw comparisons to the way many people act in our modern lives, myself included.

In an age where everyone has an online presence, generally a public one, it is very easy to get caught up in how we look to the world. After all, our outward appearance is how we are judged by the vast majority of our peers. Most people will never get close enough to see who we really are beneath the surface. Everything about our society seems to reinforce this principle, social media is only the tip of the iceberg. How about clothing? Many of us choose what we wear based on the image of ourselves that we want to project, and that image often changes depending on who we are around. We often choose our friends based on their outward image, and whether it matches the image we are trying to project. Sometimes we will ignore our passion for certain activities because involvement in that activity has a negative stigma in the eyes of our peers. Instead of following our dreams we follow the dreams that we want people to think we have. Ultimately, everything I just said can be wrapped up in one neat little statement: we care a LOT about what people think of us.

"Ya know what? Just forget about who you are. Forget about what you want to do in life, what you really want to do. Forget about what you're going through, what you struggle with underneath the surface. Forget about all of that stuff on the inside, it doesn't even matter; it's what is on the outside that matters. Just make it look like you've got things under control, make it look like you know what you're doing, and you'll be fine. Nobody cares about the real you anyway. Hide everything that's wrong with you, you have an image to protect. If people knew the real you, they wouldn't like you..."

Maybe nobody has said those exact words to you, I hope no one has. But if we're real with ourselves, that's how modern society makes us feel. Those are the things we say to ourselves. We don't want anyone to know what we're really thinking, how we're really feeling, because that might hurt the image that we're trying to project. We can't let anybody get close enough to see our internal struggles, because that would destroy the appearance that we've been carefully keeping up. I AM HERE TO DELIVER THIS MESSAGE: having messes is not a problem. EVERYBODY has messes. It only becomes a problem when we don't deal with our messes because we don't want people to see. When we sweep our messes under the rug to hide them from others, we allow those messes to build up until they are too overwhelming to consider dealing with. Our joy will be suppressed for as long as that is the case. Embrace your mess!