Just a positive gesture, maybe a smile to someone you see on the street or someone you walk by. It’s a simple, yet such a powerful thing to brighten up the days of lockdown. Wearing masks lets us somehow loose part of our way to communicate.
Facial expressions can not be seen and so only the eyes are now speaking to the other people being around us. Besides the things we say, nonverbal communication through body language and facial expressions makes up a huge part of daily communication. From our facial expressions to our body movements, the things we don’t say after all show emotions and reflect the internal state. We can communicate with basically everyone since facial expressions are not dependent on verbal language, that differ in every culture. That’s why it’s possible to tell what any given person is feeling, simply based on their facial expression. Smiling can perhaps be seen as one of the greatest body language signals. And those get lost by wearing a mask. On the other hand, the eyes are a powerful tool are frequently referred to as the "windows to the soul“.
This is what I wanted to capture in my project “Loss of identitiy” – the windows of the soul, the smile behind the masks, the social distance of protection. Your Identity is the the “structure” of the “inner” you. Simply put, it’s the facets of your life that define your roles, or describe what’s important to you. The way you think of yourself, how you define yourself, the story you tell about who you are, all of that comes together to create your identity. And yet you don’t always have a conscious awareness of your identity or even a loss of identity. It often exists in the background, like the soundtrack of a film. You aren’t consciously aware of it until something changes. During these challenging days physical loss of identity is a situation we all face due to regulations. The loss of identity may follow all sorts of changes and you'll go out of those time and your identity will never be what it was before the loss. Like so many things in grief, trying to go back to how things were before just isn’t possible.
Part of regaining a sense of self after the loss is accepting that identity is going to be different than it was before and it will constantly keep on changing. Take some time to reflect on your identity and get back to yourself. Reconnect with other people important to you, pick back up the things that spark you joy, set boundaries and pursue your dreams.
