ethoughts weekly- Issue 153

March 17, 2007

Burning Down Your Exits

It seems I’m feeling more comfortable in my own skin, just as I’m noticing it doesn’t really fit the same way anymore. Literally too. I was looking at older photos of myself, and noticing how round and fuller my face seemed then. Tighter. Less saggy. Less tired looking. Less wrinkled. Youthful. People say your skin gets thinner as you get older. It doesn’t, the fat, under your skin, just moves to places you wish it didn’t. But my skin is getting thicker about that, so to speak– And thicker about some other things too, little by little. I’m learning I have so much to learn. Every day I feel humbled, although saying that does set me back some, (ah, well, back to square one. Again.) I have worn holes up to my knees at square one.

I have a friend to whom I correspond, a mentor of sorts. I asked his permission to mention this brief story. He said I could, but told me I must depict him as exceptionally wise, handsome, and give him a poetic sounding name like, Winthrop. I told him, I wasn’t a practiced fiction writer. He said he wasn’t asking me to write science fiction, and I should just try being more creative. I said that I wasn’t proficient to that level of creativity, and maybe he was expecting too much of me. He said, “Wing it.”

Hotheaded Professor Winthrop McBop, combed through his thick dark tresses with his manly hand, and told me recently that, later in life, he felt forced to choose between loyalty and authenticity. Never would he have imagined making this choice. One would image these qualities would go hand-in-hand, but they don’t, he said. One would think reality and forthrightness are something people, especially our close friends with good sense, want to cling to, or at least, have a rudimentary acquaintance with, but no. Many people just flirt with the idea, and then abandon it. All of us will take a swig from the moonshine of guise at some point. Maybe we’ll even ruin on the stuff.

One particular friend, for instance, grew to seemingly bar certain kinds of comments and subjects, and consider their mention disloyal, like an affront to the friendship. It was quite subtle at first. Winthrp noticed he would change the subject. He would feign a poor memory. He would become sarcastic, or defensive. Not wanting to betray a kind of unspoken trust, Winthrop, avoided these kinds of unappreciated conversations, as best he could, some mishaps notwithstanding.

All the while Winthrop felt like he was increasingly compromising, not only the potency of his close friendship, but of his own authenticity. It was like eating at a fine restaurant where the sprinklers were spurting, and then pretending your dinner rolls weren’t soggy, he said. (Or he said something less amusing. Or maybe he didn’t use a metaphor at all.) He had to pretend reality was something that consisted of very different things than it truly did. It became apparent, to wise (and ruggedly attractive) Winthrop, after about a year of curtailed, inconsequential, or awkward conversations, that his friend valued a diminished view of loyalty more than a friendship of genuineness. Loyalty wasn’t faithfulness and love to a friend; building up good character in a gracious way. Instead, it was devotion to not offending that friend on an assortment of uncomfortable topics. This was a loss for them both. The conversations grew steadily more uncomfortable, and more wearisome for Winthrop, as he tried to tip toe around his friend’s conversational preferences. Although he valued his friend’s opinion on certain topics, and still sought out his counsel for time to time, a level of trust grew absent, rendering character building and bonding all but null. Eventually, his friend took a job in a different city, their paths ceased to cross, and their once-close friendship dwindled down to very rare sightings, of a strictly professional business nature. It was a loss Winthrop still seems to grieve with a kind of unmistakable sadness.

After Winthrop shared this story with me, I realized how easy it is, for all of us, to trade in our value of authenticity for other values. It’s less messy that way. How quickly we do this. Our characters are improved only within the often messy, but beneficial contexts of sincere, and straightforward relationship. We can view a friend’s perspective, or challenge as an insult, or as a chance to perceive and improve. We can settle for being friendly and having the saccharine veneer of ostensible harmony, or we can be humble and pliable, willing to grow, and mature, with the help of, and along side others. It’s ugly and messy enough that we’ll switch our values. But, then everybody suffers.

This whole process is no easy task. It takes a virtual maintenance plan, but how else can we hope for progress? It takes burning down our exits to make sure we don’t have an exit strategy, sabotage plan to hinder our development to become a better person. That means we purposefully allow ourselves to be truly seen, helped, and healed. We can’t leave too many ways to egress growth, or we surely will take those exits. Holding hands and running through the fire, and out the main door won’t be our first instinct. We’ll try dashing away, alone, through one of the 45 doors we assume are marked “Exit”. They are actually only small closets, with little air. These dark and lonely firetraps will soon swelter and become more unbearable with each moment. They will burn us alive. Without authenticity, how can we begin to see life as it really is, and how can we truly get comfortable in our own skin?

Keep on the journey, friends.

And thank you kindly, Professor, McBop.

Lisa DeLay

©2007