The term ‘protagonist’ comes from the Greek words ‘prot’ meaning first, and ‘agonist’ meaning actor. The term ‘personality’ comes from Latin ‘persona’ meaning ‘actors mask’.
Who is behind the protagonist or the actor’s mask?
We are all merely players playing many different parts. Do you see yourself this way? When we don’t recognise this we believe we are the part and then if something that we don’t like happens to that ‘part’ we suffer, for example, if you’re made redundant you would find it difficult because you would feel that it was not just the job that you had lost and you would wonder where you might find such a role again. We need to recognise that it the just that part that has finished not ‘us’.
The same goes for relationships, when we invest a sense of ‘who we are’ in them when one breaks up we feel that the other person has run off with a bit of us. We carry that hurt and pain in our mind and it’s as if we have become scarred for life. The past now rules our lives. We can overcome these mental and emotional scars though by re-interpreting and re-understanding them. Firstly recognise that now they only exist in one’s memory. You can free yourself from the past controlling your present reality. Another key aspect to this is to be aware that others see the world differently to us, understand their points of view and look at things from their perspective too.
It’s a gradual process, the more we become aware of the deeper ‘me’ (the actor), the easier it becomes to play the roles and deal with the situations that occur. It’s a process of experimenting with what feels right, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and of considering what this tells me about myself. It’s about growing rather than a new start.
