What is hidden

Something occurred to me a few days ago, and since I haven't managed to forget it yet, I'll write it down here. Maybe it turns out to be useful to someone.

We human beings experience all kinds of impulses and motivations. Some are agreeable to us, others not so much. We wear the nice ones openly, so to speak, while we hide away the ones we don't like. We act upon or at least react to them all regardless, they all shape and fill out the contours of who we are and what we do.

Observing myself and those around me, I've come to notice the tell-tale holes much more clearly than previously: the careful poker-face or play of features, the unspoken words papered over by a joke or other remark, the artificial bustle, the deliberate body language, everything which implies, "there's nothing here to be seen, please move on."

None of this is likely to be news to anyone. It's just become a lot more obvious to me. Nobody is perfect, there is always rude graffiti underneath the white-wash.

This isn't any kind of appeal to sincerity or authenticity, that would just be more white-wash, wouldn't it?

It's just something which I used to consider "well, duh", which seems a lot more poignant to me now. I don't know, some weird kind of compassion.

Cheers,
Florian

Thanks Florian. This reminds me of a few months ago. I was feeling really bad, but I was having to put on the 'be a team leader', 'take care of my family' face. I finally just went up to my wife and said. 'Right now, I need to be vulnerable, I am tired of being the strong supporter, so tonight, can I just be OK with being vulnerable?' She of course was very supportive and happy I said something.

Man, what an amazing feeling it was just to say that and take the poker face off for a small period of time. Really refreshing.