Take a look at your surroundings or the world in general. And pay special attention to those that appear to master their lives or have good self-esteem. Unless they've done really deep inner work or matured fully, what you observe will be a facade. That facade is possibly so complete that even the protagonist will believe it to be true. But it is not. In our childhood, in order to compensate for the adults' attempts at imposing their wills or guide the development of the child, we develop strategies or coping mechanisms. We learn to pretent; to appear as if; and we learn to lie - to others and soon to ourselves also. Children develop through imitation. And either we imitate something we cannot do naturally and therefore learn to pretend, or we fail at imitating it and learn to hide that failure. When we succeed, our biology gives us positive feedback in the form of good emotions or positive self-talk. This is why we can grow up believing we are decent human beings or fairly functional persons, but still fall deeply into depression or frustration later on in life. Because mastering pretense has nothing to do with mastering life.