What has your mask become?

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult is about a high school shooting. In the beginning, it starts with the day of the shooting--the before, the during, and the after events. As the story progresses, it goes back in time to these same students in kindergarten and elementary school. One very profound quote during this section of the book was, "If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask...with nothing beneath it?"

Peter, the future murderer, was extremely excited about his first day of kindergarten. He was fully prepared long before the bus arrived at his house. However, as soon as he stepped on the bus, his excited mindset changed to terror. He was constantly bullied for the rest of his school years. During this time, Peter's main focus became defending and avoiding his true self in order to avoid the rough contact he came into with other schoolmates. In reality, just as the quote says, his mask did not hide anything beneath it-- Peter's mask became his true identity.

In our society, I think people have become extremely obsessed with what others think of them. There are numerous types of surgeries done to change the outward appearance of people, however, the mindset, or inward appearance, must first be changed. For example, a person trying to decide whether to change a certain feature on their face first mentally decides the reason they want this feature changed. Is it to better their health or to draw more attention to themselves? If they decide it is to draw more attention, they have then already decided one of the most important things to them-- being attractive to others. What started out as an outward changed has now turned into an inside or outside change to the person.