The first masks we learn are the carnival ones — expressions that do not reveal emotions but traits. For a moment, people borrow a gesture, a posture, a playful way of being, and call it celebration.

Then come the others, the everyday masks. The ones we used to live, to show what we want to appear, never what we truly are. The most familiar are the masks of suffering, tears, and pain. Then the emotional ones, the sentimental ones, and the behavioral ones we wear when the person in front of us does not match our taste and we cannot walk away. And finally, the diplomatic masks — when we are forced to smile at what we would rather refuse, for one universal rule: interest always outweighs need.

But we do not have to go far. From birth, in our first cries, the mask of silence or noise takes shape. Without words, without cognition, all we have are masks to capture someone’s attention.

Then adulthood arrives. Experience — ninety‑nine mistakes and one success — places us in front of reality. And in that respectful pause, we look at ourselves and realize the mask has become identity.

So, we think we have understood everything, or at least we hope so. Late, but not too late. We learn that who we are matters more than what we have always shown. Action is the only evidence that never betrays. “I’ll do it later” has no dimension. Being believed becomes secondary to being credible.

Anxieties, doubts, hesitations, smiles, laughter — all of them must flow into the container of our identity. And it will always be a woman, one day, who tells us: “You look much better today.” Not because her eyesight has improved, but because of her perception of who we truly have.

And during that solitary walk — the one with a known beginning and an unknown end — we think: one man, a hundred masks, many identities, yet always a remarkable being.