A New Addiction

There is an insurance ad on television in which a woman pulls a man back from crossing the street, the man helps another person, and that person helps another person and so on until the orginal woman is helped and she again pulls the original man back. The premise is the same as the movie, "Pay It Forward," the possibility of making the world a better place by responding to a good deed by doing a good deed to someone else.

In the last year or so, I have been interested in the power of paying forward something provided to me - an incredible friend, so good at being present, who sat with me, talked with me, asked me hard and intuitive questions to draw me out. A few Sundays ago, a guest minister spoke at my church on the Bible's injunction to be perfect like God. He described his own efforts as a child and adolescent to maintain a facade of perfection, perfection itself being unattainable, even as he routinely made mistakes. He said that 91% of 18-21 year olds describe the church as hypocritical. Interestingly, the word hypocrit comes from the Greek word for Greek actors, those who act. We wrestle with how to be perfect when we are so insanely imperfect and a defense mechanism of pretending things are perfect when things are so insanely imperfect.

I have a natural affinity to southerners - I married one, I hung out with almost solely southerners in New York, of all places, and three of my closest girl friends are from or were raised in the South. I'm not sure what it is I love, but there's something there. In the time I lived in Alabama and Mississippi, I certainly came to understand the invisible boundaries among individuals and the unspoken rules about how close to become with some people. On my trip to Florida last summer, I was again immersed in Southern culture and came across one type of Southern mother - the unflappable, beautiful, perfect mother who wants to know where I'm from, what church I go to and how old my children are. And absolutely nothing else, thank you very much, would you like some sweet tea?

Our public face has an interesting effect on people. It protects us from others getting in but also protects us from having to go there with people. When we can take this mask off, when we share intimate emotions with others, - that can seem so scarey and big to us - when we are real and authentic with others in all its bright goodness and badness, it gives others permission to take their mask off (the power of this on our children!) and, sometimes felt as a threat, asks others to take off theirs. We put up a huge welcome sign. And when others can take their mask off, know they have a place to perch, what amazing things come to light - new dreams, goals, revelations of tormenting events and brilliant moments . . . a better understanding of ourselves.

My good friend helped me to take my mask off - a scary process that started when I had to sit with friends, though not close friends, from church and discuss my marriage as a part of church discipline (perhaps I could have resisted but really, I was ready for the mask to come off). At first, being that honest was felt violating - not because it was but because of my fears. Good friends held me up, and I've found taking off my mask to be infectious and addicting. In the right place, a mask is protecting (it's how one survives in New York City) and in the wrong place, a mask can be a death mask.

I have never read Ayn Rand (through a strange twist of logic, because I was once told my a teacher that I have to read her when I'm young to understand her, I got to be older and belived I was suddenly too old. So I never read her. Pshaw! What kind of book of any worth is that?!), but recently read this quote by her, "Civilization is the progress of a society towards privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." We are never in civilization free from other people, and I don't want total privacy - I can hide so many things in privacy and can turn quite prunish and self-slaying in my own closet. Certainly, I want reasonable privacy (I don't want my phones tapped!), but I always want to have those friends with whom I can be emotionally naked, those friends who invade my privacy to check on me and to show me their hearts, those friends who are my protection in a storm that tears away many of my leaves, those friends that show me the new leaves I hadn't realized were there.