Cornerstone or Mask

Life is just like a long staircase, right after you learn how to walk, you step is already on the staircase. You will meet many people on the staircase as well. At first they seem close to you and treat you as a good friend. However, you do not know who is really the true friend, so confusing. A lot of them wearing a smiling mask standing beside you, makes you feel like all of them are good people.

Actually, they are looking for a chance to make you fall down, trap you, kill you. They plan a lot of strategies, slowly killing you and you will not find out. Then your body becomes their cornerstone to climb a higher stairs. You will become their cornerstone to help them achieve their goal.

My staircase still remains the same, there are many stairs, can I smoothly climb up? I do not know. Last time I believed that 'If you want to get peoples respect, you first have to respect other peoples. If you want peoples to treat you nice, you first have to treat people nice'. However, the world is changing, our environment is changing.

Do I need to change to survive? Should I wear the mask? Conerstone or Mask, is there have other choices?