In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and her travelling companions finally make it to the emerald city, they see smoke, they see a large face hovering eerily in the mist, they hear a booming voice, and they tremble. They are in awe of the power of the wizard. They have come to him, hoping he can help them fulfill their desires – for a heart, a brain, courage…and to go home.
What is soon discovered, though, is a curtain off to the side. The curtain is pulled back to reveal a small, old man, speaking into a microphone, and pushing buttons and pulling levers – controlling the smoke and the face and the voice.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…”
The wizard had created an image of himself, a larger than life persona (though not a very kind one), that allowed him to control how people perceived him. Before Toto pulled the curtain back, he was the Wizard of Oz. After the curtain was moved, he was just a man. Confronted by Dorothy and her companions – “You’re a very bad man!”, Oscar (no longer the Great and Powerful Oz) replied “No! I’m actually a very good person! I’m just a very bad wizard”.
I once read that “all assorted and varied humans are motivated by the same exact things: the desire to be cool, the desire to be popular, the desire to be loved, the desire to be understood”.
I know that rings pretty true for me, as uncomfortable as that is for me to admit.
And I don’t always trust that people will perceive me as cool, accept me as popular, or love and understand me as I am. So when I leave the safe cocoon of my home, I disappear behind the curtain and become…someone else.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Facebook, and how it allows us all to become our own version of the Wizard. We are able to, in a way, control how people perceive us. I know that on my Facebook, I don’t post when I’m fighting with my husband, or having issues with my daughter, or am upset with something that’s happened. I don’t say how small my bank account is these days, or anything else that’s going wrong in my life. So my Facebook often seems all sunshine and roses – pictures of our adventures, “shared” posts meant to encourage, Instagram photos filtered to make every shot look “different” or “cooler”. But it’s all just smoke and mirrors, albeit not completely intentional.
What I mean by that is – those posts are genuine. They aren’t contrived, or with any ulterior motives. They aren’t meant to be deceptive, but because I choose not to air my dirty laundry online, the absence of it only lets one side of the story – one side of the curtain – be shown. By choosing not to air my dirty laundry, other people only see what I show them – they don’t see what my life is like behind the curtain, they don’t see all the imperfect parts of my life.
And I can only assume there are many more like me out there…in real life and in Facebook land; people who – whether intentionally or not – live behind a curtain. It’s time we get out – it’s time we start realizing that it’s ok to be “the man behind the curtain”. We don’t need to be a wizard. We just need to be ok being ourselves.
A Barnabas Life 