Look beyond the layers-People are not always what they seem

Bharathi Dharmaraj
Jul 14, 2020
3 min read

"We all want to be remembered. But Hazel is different. Hazel knows the truth. She didn't want a million admirers, she just wanted one. And she got it. May be she wasn't loved widely but she was loved deeply. And isn't that more than most of us get?"

-Augustus Waters

These are the words describing the character Hazel Grace, a 17-year old cancer survivor from the movie "The fault in our stars". Hazel prefers to leave lesser scar when there arrives a time(which she knows that it will come sooner ) to bid goodbye to her life. She wanted only a few people to remember her. Yet, what she doesn't know is the truth that the depth of the scar she leaves would be very much intense. Somehow I established a deep connection with this character. The fault in our stars peals off her every layer of character and presents the gem of altruism in her.

Every people would have found such intriguing characters of their interest who never exist in real life. In movies and books, a character is made to put in varied situations and manifests its attitude and approach towards circumstances revealing the intricate details of the personality which makes us fall for a character.

Photo by Adnan Khan on Unsplash

While when it comes to reality, we are exposed merely to the outer layer i.e the public persona of how people wish to present themselves to others. Actually, the character is build-up with three main layers arranged one over the other over the period of our growth. Let's have a brief discussion on this character building process that makes us what we are.

Firstly, the earliest and deepest layer comes from genetics. Our genes decide the degree of our introversion and extroversion tendencies. Also, Researches say that our genetics even plays a role in depression and 50% of life satisfaction depends on information encoded in our genome. This is the main factor behind ever-happy personalities and extreme-depressed personalities we come across in our lives. This layer is unshakable.

Upon this layer, a second layer develops in our early age depending on the attachment we share with our parents and caregivers. For instance, children with parents who give them freedom to discover themselves and friendly in approach grows up with high self-esteem. On the other hand, strict parenting creates more conflicting situations in the later life of the children. They tend to develop low self-esteem and fails to take responsibilities in life. These two layers provide a particular tone to character like feelings of hostility and aggressiveness, security and confidence, anxiety and avoidance etc..

Photo by John Noonan on Unsplash

A third layer builds over these two layers. Depending on the aforementioned two layers, we tend to build habits that makes us feel comfortable in the environment and situations we expose to. These range of habits build a third layer of our character which is influenced by the people around us and build from the experience we gain later in our life. And we have another layer as well which covers up all the flaws in us and disguise a front which the person finds it as socially acceptable. This top thin layer is the thing that misleads us while it comes to judging a person.

The true nature of one's character gets revealed in their unconscious actions like in the period of their stressful situations and their behaviour in comfort zones.

Like the saying,

"Never judge a book by its cover"

People often are labelled as good or bad people on the first impression by our human brains. It is a common fallacy most of us fall by assuming things on people that they are really not.

Think| Introspect| Act