Today I’m thinking of duplicity. Two ways of thinking about things depending on the context of the subject. Getting up in the morning we can think, “what a wonderful day ahead of me” and be ready to face anything that confronts us. Or we can arise and think “O crap, why can’t I stay in bed all day and not have to confront life in general – where’s the coffee?” And every situation that we face as the day unfolds will have the same two ways of dealing with it. Positive or negative reactions are part of our attitude, and just having an open mind will eliminate the need for an instant decision about positive or negative. We don’t have to judge every person or every situation as it happens. We can call on “common sense” to help us slow down a bit and size things up or even table the reaction for a later time when we are more relaxed and capable of fairness or neutrality.

All of us have two sides to our personalities, a public persona and a private “the real me” personality. In most of our day to day living we could solve a lot of relationship problems by just keeping this in mind. Are we dealing with someone or something in a public way or a private way? By determining this we can actually smooth out the path ahead by not confusing public with private, professional with colloquial, play-acting with real life. Sort of like in a duel choosing guns or knives or fists or fly swatters. Our dealings are straight ahead rather than hopelessly convoluted. The above applies to our daily lives with people, shopping, tracking the UPS, phone, internet, etc, etc.

After our lives during the workday, however there is (usually) down time. We have some part of an evening to relax and be entertained. And entertainment for most of us means escape from the mundane work we just escaped from (usually). Let’s keep in mind that entertainment involves people who are visible and people who are behind the scenes in TV, movies, concerts, stage performances, recordings and many more possibilities. And also let’s keep in mind that these people are humans (with some exceptions), and being human they all have public personas and private personas. What we see most of the time is their public, entertainment persona that helps us to escape from the stress we are still carrying around. We do not care about their private thoughts and personalities when we are expecting to be entertained. This can be intrusive, irritating and stressful, the opposite of our expectations. The only time that the private lives and thoughts of public personalities are entertaining is when their lives turn into gossip columns in newspapers or magazines or talk shows and we get a peek into their daily lives and troubles, foibles and human or subhuman-ness. This is voyeurism although peering in at someone else’s troubles can also relieve our own stress at times.

So entertainment is helpful in our escape as long as it does not involve the real personality of the entertainer. Like listening to music of any kind. When we listen, we hear the pleasing vibrations of any mix of vocal, instrumental or electronic sounds and enter another dimension. Reading the seamy side of a composer’s life while listening would interrupt the pleasant vibes. Watching an awards show when the winner, instead of just saying “thank you,” starts a political tirade, rips you right out of the entertainment value of the show. Does listening to many years of the songs of someone and being entertained, then finding out the person is a serial killer or guilty of domestic violence change the music itself? Or not? Does the music itself still entertain, or does the private life-style of the performer invalidate the music itself? All of us are duplicitous. We all have a public and private persona. Does one or the other invalidate our own personalities? Or do we just need to be careful not to mix the two entities? Maybe watching others could make a big change in our own lives. Do we really need to constantly judge someone’s work either public or private?