The masquerade

Reality is perception.
What you see is most often not what you get.
What you see is: what you want to see; what the other person wants you to see; what you think you want to see; what you conclude from the limited information you get.
Getting to know someone is called "getting to know" or "knowing" because it is always a work in progress. It's always occurring, developing, being constructed and de-constructed as you go.
It is a process made of necessary protocol and certain paramount moments that may come about in different stages and times for each specific situation, but that are necessary: the moments of excitement, the moments of disillusionment, the moments of expectation and anxiety, the moments of faith and certainty.
In the beginning, there is always the mask. A person's face, attire and attitude take on an aspect designed to attract others and safeguard one's true self. It is the mask of politeness and grace, of humility, of honesty, of coherence.
Then, as time goes by and situations present themselves, that mask is put under strain, and cracks, revealing glimpses of the soft, vulnerable interior.
That interior either makes the person more attractive, as what you see inside reveals a level of depth you hadn't dreamed of, or it repulses, as it reveals that the mask and the core are not complementary.
You can't blame others for having a mask, for putting on a show. The mask is the highest point of a person's social development, in our cultural context. Our society is based on the duality of the public and the private.
But what you can blame others for is for refusing to accept that they wear a mask. For trying to convince themselves - and everyone else - that they alone are honest, and that everyone else is false.
The solution is not removing your mask, and wanting to remove the mask of others. It's embracing the masks with honesty and accepting the cores with kindness.
Because in the end, only kindness matters.