February is the month of Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, the last hurrah before Ash Wednesday and then Lent. It is a time to dress up in the wild and bizarre. It is a time of parades with bizarre floats. A time to eat without restraint and drink with abandon. All of this is packaging of sorts. Wrapping the mundane with the fantastic. Dress up or dress down, but the result must be unusual.
We all do the same thing in our daily lives. We cover our real selves, and we experience this constantly in everything our brain acknowledges. All of the commercials that we see on television are gift wrapping a product, making it desirable to have because of the packaging and the presentation. Cars, trucks, vans and RV’s are sold because of their looks and “bells and whistles,” not because of the inside, the motor. Our persons are masked in many ways. Make-up can change your whole look and sometimes a part of your personality. Clothes determine where you will fit in, who you will fit with and how you will feel in relationships. Hair styles help us to be accepted by a specific group and even our speech patterns can hide our real thoughts by being superficial.
Sales of anything depends on packaging and the salesperson is necessarily a master of deception. Their personalities morph to fit the customer, they relate to anything that will connect with you and help to make you pliable and amenable to the pitch. Real estate sales depend on the outward and inward look of the house. But what about about the plumbing and the electricity?
Actors depend on their packaging to become a character. They assimilate all of the above to promote belief in their character and the situation in which they find themselves. They are very charismatic. And charisma is another form of packaging which is all too prevalent. It is the ultimate personality packaging. It hides the person’s real intentions. Serial killers depend on this to mask their real intentions as do people who just want something from you now or later. Beware the party personality. All of the billboards and electronic ads we see are there to implant feelings and needs. We are inundated with this all of our waking hours.
So how do we sort out what is real beneath the packaging? How do we guard against the unreal or even dangerous? How do we even stay sane?
Our instincts our usually reliable if we are aware and listen to them. They can help us to guard against what is beneath the packaging. These have been fed all of our lives with basic rules to live by and basic ways to survive and exist in a world of seductions. Our instincts are triggered by those imbedded guidelines to living and surviving. They usually “kick in” when something seems to be not quite right, but we don’t know exactly why. Ignoring our instincts during this split second of “heads up” can be embarrassing or inconvenient or even dangerous. Listening to this little voice can give you that instant in time that saves you from whatever consequence that might be waiting. We must be constantly aware. Not paranoid, but aware.
And there are very few things more seductive than music. It permeates our consciousness, sometimes to the point of annoyance by its insistent presence. It is the stuff of sales, and it can be overt or subliminal. It can be soothing or abrasive or cerebral or superficial. Even its very vibrations can be seductive especially when combined with anything that dulls our consciousness. It is a packaging for many and varied motives. Another reason to be aware and beware. Listen to all kinds of music, but keep in touch with your instincts. They are sometimes the only thing that can save you and keep you sane. “Make your own kind of music!”