NPR - What lies beneath

I didn't know where to put this post, life, my story, Taoism, whatever, because it's about what lies beneath the surface of each of us. We all have a public persona, the external and public expression of our personality, character and temperament, and we all have the complexity and diversity of ourself underneath the exterior and expression. Like that's new or news?

Not really. I was just thinking how we see other people and how that reflects within ourself and with others, and how we compare ourself to others. Within ourselves we all hide our deep, personal fears and dislikes about ourself, either mental or physical. It's part of our society to be or achieve better looking, smarter, and on and on. And why we have so many mental health therapist, cosmetic surgeons, and on and on.

And studies have shown we routinely seem to wonder what it's like to be someone else. Not always, but often, out of hate for yourself or our body, but out of curiosity. To the extreme it's body dysmorphic disorder, but sometimes it's not always about something small about us, but the whole of us, as is often expressed by people with gender identity issues (it's not a disorder or disease, just a normal human expression proven to be genetic, biochemical, mental and real).

And sadly, much of this happens when we're young, from our parents when we're children, from others when we're teenagers, and from all the messages we get from our family, friends, other people, doctors, etal, and in our world, media, ads, etc. throughout our life. We're told we're not good enough and so we struggle living inside a body we don't like if not hate.

And it's what lies underneath everything else we think, say or do the rest of our life. It's always there and always present. Try as we might, it never goes away and the best we can do is hide, hide it, or disguise it, and something will happen to find it long or deeply buried, to open the mental and emotion wound again. To bleed in our mind, heart, soul and spirit, leaving us empty, again.

The reality is that what lies underneath just is, and who we are, like it or not. Whether we accept it or not, we still have to live with it.