We get so much in the habit of wearing a disguise before others that we eventually appear disguised before ourselves.

Bishop’s line uses “disguise” as a metaphor for the social masks people adopt—roles, manners, and self-presentations tailored to win approval or avoid conflict. The warning is psychological: repeated performance can harden into habit until the performer loses access to an unguarded self. What begins as strategic self-protection becomes self-alienation, where one’s inner life is filtered through the same persona shown to others. The quote thus speaks to authenticity and the costs of conformity, suggesting that self-knowledge requires periodically dropping the mask and confronting motives, fears, and desires that public life encourages us to conceal.