I’m near the end of the cup, and the coffee has gotten cold. I’ve been sitting at the computer half-paralyzed by a big bugaboo of mine: purpose (story and audience). The other half of my morning paralysis has been a reconsideration/expansion of that notion that dating lots of people is really about falling in love with yourself over and over again. I’ve been recognizing that this concept could easily be applied to writing, moving, job interviews, talking to strangers – basically anything in which you get to tell, or revise, your story – who you are, where you came from, how you got here. Yet another part of the paralysis (the third half) is my many small arguments over what gets held back, what parts of our story don’t we share and why: shame? wrong audience? too private?
I get caught in the spin cycle of private self vs. public self vs. multiple selves quite a bit. I’m intrigued by the compartments we build to house our various multitudes. A poem I read this morning, “Delta,” by Adrienne Rich gets it right: “If you think you can grasp me, think again / my story flows in more than one direction.” This is both wonderful and terrifying for anyone hoping to understand (and trust) other people. I’m also intrigued by the many different ways the outside world (our audience) holds us accountable and/or dictates which parts of the story get told and when. No sooner do I begin to like the idea of near-full transparency and deep authenticity – a life without secrets – I contradict myself and think of all the ways secrets are necessary and sometimes sacred. By definition, intimacy loses its sheen when shared broadly. Safety is sometimes compromised when we come out of hiding.
I’ve been thinking about these things because beyond my daily fifty-two words I haven’t been posting very much. I’ve had things I’ve written about yet have paused over my willingness to share. The hesitation feels like a deception and I’ve been trying to think about the weight of the different lives we lead – the things we’d tell a partner but maybe not our family, the things we’d tell our friends but maybe not our co-workers, the things we’d tell a stranger but maybe no one else. How do we honor authenticity and multiplicity at the same time?
As difficult as it may be to accept, we live in a world that encourages and necessitates degrees of dishonesty – intentional lies and lies by omission. We live in a world in which arguments and decisions often begin well in advance of the actual event and deep in the silence of our minds. The partner who leaves has been leaving for a while. The employee who takes another job has been looking for a while. The boss who terminates an employee has been quietly building a case. The family that falls behind on bills suffers quietly with the futile hope that things will turn around until the hole is too deep. What might the world look like if we lived more transparently? And what does all of this “dishonesty” and multiplicity do to our ability to trust others? In this context, trust seems like a small miracle.
Despite “knowing” these thing about the human condition, we fall for the minor and major deceptions (of the heart and of the mind) time and time again. We are caught off guard, standing open-mouthed, shock-jawed, and dumbfounded like the neighbor being interviewed about the serial killer next door. “He seemed like such a nice guy, maybe a little quite, you know… kept to himself a lot.” I’ve been the partner who left and the partner who has been left. I’ve been the employee and the boss. I’ve been the deceiver. I’ve been the deceived… and these are all parts of the stories we tell – the many different ways we fall in and out of love with our self, our sorrows, our triumphs and failures. Each story crafted for its audience. Each story with its own intention and purpose. Each story an attempt at giving and an attempt at understanding. We can never know all of it or get it 100% right.
By now, the coffee mug has been emptied. I’ve wandered from room to room, checked social media, written and deleted and revised. I’ve brushed my teeth, played with the dog, and continued to somersault through an unseasonably warm morning knowing I can only tell you part of the story.