My wife posted a picture of us we had taken for a Christmas card and said the following with the picture, “you know what, 40 years total with this guy and I am seriously madly in love with him, even more than 1979 when I met him on his 19th birthday”. After all the likes and comments my wife and I were laughing, you see it was not our anniversary just a celebration of our lasting love. You see we were married in August not December, 37 years ago, for which I am grateful. Reading through the beautiful comments it struck that we really have lost the art of friendship. We have succumb to the trap of letting the social media machine shape and direct our image of friendship. I realize what was posted could easily be seen as a wedding anniversary message but it was not. I am usually hesitant to wish a friend on face-book happy whatever day pops up on my feed. Hesitant because I know the only reason I realized it is a special day in that person’s life is because the machine told me. Growing up I had a few close friends and we knew intimate details about each other, important dates, important relationships, important secrets, fears, failures, hopes, dreams. Have we allowed a complex digital interface to replace the hard work of relationships? Have we allowed this machine to tell us who to celebrate, when to celebrate, where to celebrate, what to celebrate? I fear if we are thoughtful about that reflection we will answer, “Yes”.
As I read those well wishing words I wondered are we truly connected in ways that grow us, encourage us, improve us, open us, love us. Or are we connected in a superficial, banal and controlled way? I fear the later is more prevalent than the former. I fear we have taken an easier road as we have advanced in our technology and the place it holds in our day to day. This technology has clearly improved how we communicate, how we work, how we live. It has allowed connection and efficiency that was not there a few decades ago. Who has not reconnected with old friends through the gift of this machine, who has not found family or relatives that they had not spoken with in years? I have, you have we all have and that is a wonderful thing. Yet, as with all life improving technology there comes unintended consequences, unintended discoveries, unintended mistakes. The ubiquitous nature of face-book and other digital platforms has created a world where we are to some extent oblivious to the effects. What I think we have given away in this ubiquity is the hard work needed to create deep and long lasting relationships. We well wish without a thought, without an effort, without…..
The art of building relationships is an art of diligence, of painstaking effort to stay connected to another person in a way that does not need the internet to be reminded of a day, an event, a celebration. We have replaced this art with ease, with button pushing and screen watching. What we have given away is the art of knowing someone deeply, knowing their fears, their joys, their pains, their thoughts, their secrets. Secrets that are hidden in deep difficult places that need to be shared in order for those secrets to be freed, freed of the control they exercise over each of us. Frederick Buechner said this in Telling Secrets,
“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.”
I believe that we must rediscover this art, the art of telling our secrets. In this telling we will experience a freedom that we have only dreamed of, a freedom that will empower and grow a love of self and others. This freed love is what will enable us to take back the control of our relationships, our emotions, our lives that will transform. The telling of our secrets opens worlds, opens doors, opens minds to see what we are created to be, not what others want us to be. We must bear each others burdens in this telling, lifting others as we climb out of a world that has made it too easy to think we are connected when in reality we are not. So when we wish someone “Happy Anniversary” we know the story behind that day. When we take the time to bear with each other we enable ourselves, our families, our friends to be more than they imagined. The secrets we tell should not be everything we know, feel, hide. This telling should not be a way to manipulate or harm. These secrets when sincerely told to a trusted and committed friend will enable growth to all involved. This telling should not be self serving or self fulfilling. The sole purpose of our telling secrets is to help ourselves and others to see each other in ways our digital world has taken from us. Its purpose is to encourage, to empower, to grow, to love in new ways, in powerful ways, in freeing ways.
I would encourage you to search your secrets and then find someone you trust, someone you love and share something you have stored in place only you know. Each time I have told a secret with love, with sincerity, with transparency it has helped both the teller and the hearer. This act of truth telling will create a bond, a love, a connection that can not be broken. This is the type of connection we have been created to experience. I encourage you today to start the journey to knowing a deeper, more transparent, more connected life.