All of us have layers. You. Me. Yes.

The complicated layers, countless. The simple layers, countless. What about those layers in between? Still countless.

Neat types of layers? Nah. How we rip those layers off depends on how we perceive the sense of self. Journeys taken can build layers or take them off.

One could rip the layer off like one would rip a bandaid off – the quick the pain is the quicker it goes away. Peel the bandaid and suffer the pain – indefinitely or at least until the bandaid is off.

How we perceive our layers within self can be painful so you can either ignore or delve into yourself. We almost never do things halfway – most likely going to either extreme.

We can reframe our layers until the truth is hidden away or it becomes a glaring light, putting one to shame in this world we live in today – either way. We can move our layers around, whether it is intellectual, cultural, linguistically, racially or the like; throughout all that, do we take the time to really reflect on how we present ourselves or choose the layers to cover ourselves to people?

I wonder if most people use layers to place their own fears into shadows.  I know I do. I struggle with the sense of my self’s layers, what do they mean? How do they reflect the multi-chapter aspect of my own personal book? Does it reflect how much one does not understand about something and their reaction to the concept?

I had a family friend’s daughter announce that the family would be focusing 110% on their child getting an cochlear implant. This was like early 2000’s.  Now the idea of cochlear implants was not new nor the controversy with the idea of such; however, this was someone I knew most of my life and this straightforward news brought a shock to me and some friends of ours and our reaction was not too great.  Afterwards, this person just disappeared. At the same time, I had to turn inward to reflect on the reason why I reacted this way, after all we shared a common bond, the deaf community.

After reading the story above, if you wonder if my response was towards technology, my initial response was regarding technology.  This is where I had to peel a layer away, to ask myself if it was truly technology that I was reacting to, after all I wore hearing aids. It was a long retrospective reflection. Technology is a tool and rightfully so. Technology is manipulated by our own selves.

So then what? As a human, it was language, communication, social and community that me responding in a negative way. In a way, this person was telling me that the upbringing they went through their entire life was a farce or a negative aspect, a type of upbringing I had, despite having hearing parents myself. Technology was one layer, the rest came up when I reframed how I used technology as a deaf person.

Do we build our own layers or do we have others build those layers upon us?  When I think of this, I think of a black person wanting to rip their blackness off themselves so they can pose as a white person because society deems it acceptable. The problem with society is that the concept of layers are multiple and will follow the whims of society, suppressing so many layers that truly make us human.

Ummm…

Daily Prompt: Layers