Self disclosure is something we all have control over; whether with new acquaintances, strangers, family, or friends. Giving someone else information about ourselves is in our control, but is the lack of this considered lying when we’re afraid we might change someone’s opinion of us?
I haven’t told someone that I’m a writer because I’m afraid her opinion of me would change.
I stand tall to the view that no one should worry what others think. Honesty is the best policy. If someone has a problem with your honesty then let them have a problem with it. But I also believe that even the loudest good advice is often unheard by the man who speaks it. Here is where I am a shining example of that.
I haven’t told this woman that I am a writer for the simple reason that she is no fan of popular fiction. She doesn’t read bestsellers in the fashion that many do. She is a devoted fan of the Nobel Prize winners and a student of the Pulitzers. She speaks of literature as if it were sacred, abhorring anything driven by plot.
Why should I be reticent in telling her? What is it about her that makes me reluctant? I’ve gone over these questions incessantly for an answer, without any peace of mind.
Meanwhile, I continue to interact with this person. We get along incredibly well and have become good friends. We are not the best of friends, but we have reached a point in our friendship where my profession should have come to pass in multiple conversations. It could have been brought up, but she hasn’t asked and I haven’t suggested.
Today, not only am I reluctant to tell her, I’m a bit afraid to. I feel it may damage the friendship, and I value it too much to threaten it. I want it whole, shiny, something I can look at and be glad that it exists in my life. If I tell her, she might feel betrayed. She may feel that my lack of self disclosure has been a lie; then my shiny friendship will be tarnished.
For all the honesty that I stand for, this one instance may be the biggest example of hypocrisy that I’ve had to live with.
. . . then again, this may also be another kind of example: just how human I am.
Copyright © Tyler Gant 2009
