I've been thinking about being stripped naked.
There were a dozen students in the graduate seminar in Cultural Studies, exploring together how we make assumptions about a person from the music they like, the foods they eat, and the ways they talk and dress. One of the students in this twice-weekly circle was clearly engaged and quick-witted, like most of her classmates, but she stood out because she wore a hijab to class at a time, twenty years ago, when this was not so common.
At the end of the semester, each student gave a fifteen-minute presentation about their own cultural heritage to demonstrate how it might affect the way the rest of the class saw them.
On the day of her presentation, the young woman came dressed in a burka which covered her from head to toe. She sat silently through two students’ presentations until it was her turn; then she rose, stepped to the front of the room where everyone could see her, and began.
What do you think of me? she asked.
She didn’t want a verbal answer; she just wanted her classmates to register their thoughts and share them with her in the discussion following her presentation. Silent now, she slowly turned in a circle so she could be seen front and back, then faced the circle and stared at them.
After an awkward minute, she slowly lifted the burka over her head, leaving in place the familiar hijab she wore beneath it; she stood now in her plain black skirt and white blouse. Turning slowly again she asked, Now what do you think of me?
This brave woman wanted her classmates to see something about themselves as they stared at her, to acknowledge biases and unrecognized cultural prejudices each of us carries.
We face a similar challenge when we realize it’s time to take an honest look at who we are, getting behind the vision of ourselves we’ve been portraying throughout our lives. Who am I, really? Dare I tell myself the truth about what I see? Developing this kind of self-awareness can be painful and surprising, a kind of self-focused vulnerability...not unlike standing in your underwear in front of the class.
Fifteen years ago I was with thirty therapists in yet another of those week-long continuing education workshops on personal growth. On the second night, our task was to explore our willingness to be transparent. The facilitator asked us to pair up, and I wound up sitting on the floor, face to face with a woman half my age. We split the hour in half and, as a gentleman should, I agreed to be the first one at risk.
She began by asking me, Rick, who are you?
Easy: I’m a sixty-five-year-old husband, father and new grandfather.
She asked again, Rick, who are you?
Still easy: I’m a Marriage and Family Therapist is Pasadena, California. I see individual adults and couples, and have particular experience with families who face tragic deaths and with apparently straight couples when one of them comes out as gay. That’s quite impressive, Rick. You’re on a roll.
In ten minutes I’d exhausted the salient facts about my current life and realized I’d have to go deeper. So I decided, What the hell? and talked about my painful past: losing my career decades ago, jeopardizing our marriage, walking with our kids through those difficult years of recovery.
To my surprise, this stuff wasn’t at all difficult to acknowledge. For decades, I’d reported all this to friends and our family, in classes I’ve taught and in multiple seminars like this one, each recital like fingering in public my own rosary of failures. I’d been telling these stories for so long that the pain was drained out of them. It also felt, as I spoke to her, that I’d left behind most of the shame.
Rick, who are you?
I checked my watch: still ten minutes left. So what to report, now that I’ve told the worst of my story? What have I done since that midlife chaos? Well, I got another degree, began working as a therapist, and am now in a thriving practice with half-a-dozen colleagues. Okay, you’re rolling again.
Rick, who are you?
Wait! Why does it seem harder now to talk about how I’ve recovered?
This is unfamiliar territory, and seems like bragging.
She repeated herself: Rick, who are you?
Go slowly now. Well, at forty, Becky went to law school and for twenty-five years has been a partner in a law firm. When I was sixty, we got back together after a seven-year separation and, in time, our kids trusted we were through with all the drama so they huddled close again, bringing their partners and children into this refreshed and thriving family.
Rick, who are you?
I can hardly believe what I’m about to say, which I’ve said before only to myself: I’ve become one of the wise elders in the tribes I live in.
She didn’t roll her eyes or turn up the corners of her mouth in a smirk. Go on.
In our family, among our friends, with my professional colleagues, in the adult classes I teach at church, people whom I thought of as mentors and peers now call me up for guidance, or look to me to set the parameters of discussions, or seek out my opinion about decisions they have to make. Like I’m their wise friend.
Take a deep breath. Okay, full stop. It’s her turn. Joanne, who are you?
Years ago, my friend Gordy suggested that there are five levels of conversation, each one going deeper:
Chit-chat about ordinary things;
Sharing facts about our lives;
Sharing our deep beliefs;
Sharing our feelings and, finally,
Sharing our secrets
I’ve always been glib and winsome about chit chat and too eager to talk about the facts and my beliefs and feelings, all of which I do beyond my fair share of time in conversations. But if I want to know myself with any clarity, then like the young woman I need to take off more than my burka of chit-chat and plain facts, beliefs and feelings. I need to tell someone my secrets.
My failures are no longer secrets. I’ve shared them and moved past them, and they've lost their power to silence or shame me. What is difficult now is to talk about the progress I’ve made. I worry that people will see me as a narcissistic blowhard because these days, my secrets are actually good things. I want to be transparent, so I have to tell you this.
Despite my past, I’m proud of the person I've become. I'm proud of the way we repaired our broken marriage. I'm proud of the influence of my character on our children and grandchildren. I’m proud of the way I live out my devotion to Jesus of Nazareth. I'm proud of my community of friends, who are equally proud of me. I'm proud that I created a successful second profession for myself.
These are secrets because I fear that saying them aloud will resurrect the ghost of my Baptist preacher grandfather, cautioning me with the Biblical proverb that pride goeth before a fall. It feels like tempting fate (or something worse) to say that, in fact, my life has turned out well. I haven't erased the facts of my past; I simply see them now as a prelude to the life I've created since then.
Sharing my current life is much more interesting - but also feels more risky, now - than the boring recitations of my past failures to which I was devoted for a decade or more. I don’t blink when I repeat to myself this story of my successes, but I do worry about how you might respond.
I find myself going back to the question the young woman asked her classmates: Now what do you think of me?
Blessings,
Rick
Hi, I’m Rick Thyne and I’m grateful that you found your way to these pages. Perhaps in these conversations we’ll find our way to more of the common good that is - for me - our best hope for a future in which all of us thrive. If you've found this column and would like to get my latest column delivered, free, to your inbox every two weeks, you can subscribe now.