TV Times

Mirror Magazine

Stop pretending!

By Ishani Ranasinghe

Once in Desperate Housewives Terri Hatcher’s character Susan Mayer said, “The problem is that sometimes people pretend to be one way on the outside, when they are totally different on the inside.”

We live in a world where people at all times pretend to be other than what they are, especially teenagers. Something that is universally agreed on is that there is perhaps no period of life so unpleasant, so unappealing, and so downright unpalatable, as that of adolescence. Pretty much everyone who comes into contact with it is disagreeably affected, but no one is in for a ruder shock than the actual teenager himself.

Having had twelve straight years of cuteness no one is really ready to deal with the harsh consequences of inadequate personal appearances. Not ready to face a world where how you look depends on how well accepted you are. Enter the world of adolescence, and suddenly you are not that chubby little girl, instead you are a big fat girl. No longer are you the boy previously seen as ‘small for his age,’ instead you are that short guy.

Look around you, the general message that comes out is that you need to be different from the person you actually are. Advertisements and everything else always dictate that we need to be prettier, sexier or skinnier in order to get people to love us, and sadly we believe them.

Take the case of Manisha who is now 20 years old. A few years ago she had a major crush on a ruggerite from a leading school. At that time she was not much of a fan of the game and barely understood it. But then she started to learn the basic rules of the game, started going for a few matches, and having fun (at least she pretended to understand it and like it).

A familiar scenario? At some point in our life we have pretended to be someone we are truly not. Someone that we feel other people would like better. We have misrepresented ourselves to the people around us, for the attention of a girl or a guy we liked. To get a job we wanted or just make other people like us more. It’s pretty obvious. We do pretend a lot. Many would argue that they are not like that. But think about it. How many times have we pretended to know certain things, and not really know about it? How many times have we understood something, but have pretended we don’t have a clue about it?

Be it in your teen years or even when you are older, you definitely come across people who go overboard making you feel like they know everything. But don’t be fooled, because the chances are in reality they really don’t know a thing. If you look closely it will certainly show. Well, not to the other pretentious ones, but surely to all the smart ones.

Now here is a point which will put you in a bit of a dilemma. What exactly do you do when you come across a situation like this? Do you put the person with all his ‘acting’ skills in his deserved place, or do you ‘pretend’ to not realise that he is as clever as he is dumb.

This really gets to some people. True, why pretend when you can actually learn something for someone. Pretending not only hampers your growth of knowledge, it puts you under the belief that it’s okay not to know it in the first place. So then at the end of the day, what have we really gained? Fair enough it would help us find a way out of a really messy situation, but then isn’t that taking the easy way out? We are all made of better stuff than that, are we not?

If we ask ‘that’ question to clear our doubts, people will feel that they are dumb not being able to figure things out on our own. That’s something many teens fear. We are all faced with situations where we have had to figure things out on our own, but don’t think you would have wanted to pretend that you know it all.

If you didn’t understand it the first time around, don’t be afraid to ask about it. There must be something you may have missed or did not understand correctly. Asking someone about it would not actually hurt your lips so much as it would hurt your ego, would it?

Somewhere along the line, we have set these rules and boundaries that we ourselves do not understand. Life does not ask you to pretend. It does not give you anything that is not fact. So why pretend we don’t see it? Why pretend we don’t get it, when we do? Why make it look like we get it, when we don’t? In the end, all we are doing is fooling ourselves. So is it worth trying to fool others? For all you know, they might be making an even bigger fool of themselves. And you know what, who you are is NOT dependent on the opinions of others.

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