THE UNMASKING

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In the words of George Bernard Shaw, "Two percent of the people think, three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think."
Now, I can't positively say which category I belong to, but isn't it such a wonderful activity- to think?
Wonderful, albeit under-appreciated, underrated and underutilized.
In the meager nineteen years of my life, I've come across my fair share of people, a number of whom I noticed to have a 'Sheep Herd' mentality.( Not being judgmental here though,we've all been there and done that.)
Some people see the world through the superficial glasses of  "Is it what is 'in' at the moment? Am I displaying my non-mainstream-ness to its full glory?" Maybe subconsciously, maybe not. ( Like people and their fixation with branded things. A 2 lakhs worth of Rolex is still just a watch, and at the end of the day its sole purpose is to show you the correct time.)
Sometimes its more layered- "Won't I stand out as weird if I don't do this?" (Like a guy who likes writing and reading poetry more than playing football, but he couldn't possibly confess that to his friends lest they think lesser of him because of it. Because he is a 'man', and men do not participate in delicate activities such as these- just as men never feel pain and men never cry. But of-course, that goes without saying.) 
More often than not, it's forced; the famous "Log kya kahenge?"- a phrase that has haunted us all at some point in our lives. ( Like a girl who says she wants to cut off her long hair for a short pixie cut and the reaction she gets is, " Are you crazy? Do you want to look like a boy? What will people think? Lambe Baal to ek ladki ka gehna hota he pagal". As if the shortening the length of her hair has anything to do with her femininity. Like cutting it would make her any less a woman than she is now.)
And it's more common that you'd think. Nobody teaches anybody how it's done directly. Kids probably watch their friends and elders do it and adapt to it. I mean, that's probably how we learnt it too.
Our society, friends, relatives, our own insecurities, vanities, or our need to please others, to be a part of this society (similar enough to fit in but different enough to be edgy )- these and many more factors result in us hiding our true selves behind a mask of sorts. We've developed a different mask for each person, each situation. We are basically several different people and personalities, all in one.
And that leaves us frighteningly little time to actually be ourselves.
One might wonder, in all the different persons we choose/ are forced to play, which one is really us?
If we can be different people in different situations, does that make us just a jumbled messy nobody?
Kind of like negative cancels negative and the answer gets rounded off to a zero ( That doesn't really makes much sense; I'm horrible at maths.)
And isn't that a frightening prospect- that we are so busy being a perfect version of ourselves for other people that we have no time to be the real version of us.
This is where George Bernard Shaw's quote comes in. So now, if I may, I'd like you to ask yourselves this one question. Does any one of you ever find yourself in this situation? If yes, then ask yourselves this: Are you happy, in-spite of it all? Are you content and happy ? If its a yes again, then.. well and good . But if not, then its time you did something to change that.
'Cause at the end, it all boils down to this one thing- being HAPPY. 
At the end of it all, the happy moments of your life will amount to a lot more than the magnitude of your wealth and success combined.
And the people who accept you for who you are will matter indefinitely more than any number of people you tried to please or impress into liking you by being someone else.
Do not let your personality be distorted to fit someone else's image of you, 'cause in that case you'd be being untrue to both, that person and yourself.
As the lovely quote goes "Don't change so people will like you. Be YOURSELF, and the right people will love the real you."
So go on, be crazy, be a nerd, be loud, be an introvert, be weird, be whatever you wish to be. You live this life only once, don't let anyone define it for you. 
Be the artist of your own life's masterpiece. And it doesn't even have to be a masterpiece, really- that's the beauty of it all. It can be whatever the hell you want it to be :)