The Loneliest Planet

I've recently had a string of good luck in which I've managed to watch movies whose themes are readily apparent only due to the circumstances under which I watched them.  A few examples: I first saw Miranda July's The Future when I was panicking about deciding what to study and the ways in which that would limit me.  I watched The Sweet Hereafter for the first time the day of the Sandy Hook Massacre and recognized the need to approach tragedy with empathy and humanism - the emotions of everyone involved must be not only understood, but felt.  I first saw Greenberg when I was at the very lowest point of depression and self-loathing, and identified how Roger's sensitivity and regret motivated his destructive behavior, his anger, etc.  The latest film I've watched, The Loneliest Planet, takes the cake for topicality.  But to tell that story, I have to tell this story.

Right now I'm back seeing a therapist, and today she was interested in why I'm so focused on putting the needs of others before my own, and I tried to explain as best I could but found myself struggling to think of an example that would best describe why I think the morality of selfishness operates on a very skewed scale.       My skewed morality scale works like this:  whether you are a good person has very little to do with the number of good things you do, or the ratio of good things you do to bad things to do.  (Of course, good actions and bad actions are subjective, but since morality is subjective your own view of what is good and bad is really all that matters in this case.)  It depends almost entirely on how successfully you've avoided doing something bad.  I'll use the film as an example to demonstrate what I mean by this, but be cautioned: SPOILERS ABOUND.

The film focuses on an engaged couple, Alex and Nica, very much in love, on a backpacking trip through the Caucasus Mountains.  The first hour of the film is essentially just this - not much really happens and there isn't much to be gathered about the characters other than your ability to empathize with them.  About halfway through the movie, though, they encounter a few men who are suspicious of them.  One of them suddenly draws a very large rifle and Alex instinctively hides behind his girlfriend for a split second before regaining his composure and pushing her behind him.

That split second is really the only event of major consequence in the film, but its effects on the viewer's perception of the film (that is, if they're anything like me) are devastating.  That event isn't even mentioned again for the second hour of the film, but its repercussions are huge.  That split second was ruinous.

It's not my intention to discuss the movie here, because I think it does a much better job speaking for itself than I ever could - but I think this is as close to the perfect example of skewed morality as it gets.  It's pretty evident that Alex is a great person simply based on the fact that Nica is so in love with him.  But we define him by that split second in which he fucked up anyway, because our bad actions carry more weight than the good.

The act of being born is like being handed paint and a single canvas and being told to go to town.  Naturally, we all want to create a masterpiece and be revered for our work, so we struggle to craft a work of art of beauty the likes of which mankind has never seen.  But if we aren't hyper-vigilant, we will make mistakes.  Imagine a cross-eyed God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or a hard edge from a drop of spilled paint on any one of Monet's Water Lilies.  Their value as works of art would plummet.  They would be considered the works of amateurs.  And the artist's capacity to correct or cover up those mistakes is limited - first of all, those mistakes must not be known to anyone but the artist, and if they are too severe no amount of cover-up will hide them.  And in either case, the artist is still painfully aware of the mistakes that he has made.  For example, in the film, Alex is the character most traumatized by his mistake.  He alternates between hanging his head in shame and half-heartedly attempting to repair his relationship with Nica.  But he can't forgive himself, not fully.  He knows that he will have to live with what he did in that split second for the rest of his life.  He knows he will be haunted forever.  He spilled red wine on the Mona Lisa.

I am terribly afraid that I will do the same.  I am terrified that in the split second when I am needed, I will do the wrong thing and it will utterly destroy everything I've worked for in the twenty years I've been alive and I will have to live with being a bad person - a bad artist - for the rest of them.  And the scariest part of all is that I know that this moment will come, but I don't know when.

This year has been confusing.

I have to admit that I haven't been wholly honest with whoever may have read anything prior to this.  Not that I was lying at the time that I said anything, but it would not be truthful to say that I was enjoying myself by writing.  I enjoy writing, yes, but I was realizing more and more as time progressed and I became more and more fucked up in the head (which, by the way, has mostly been rectified, thanks to the standard one-two punch of prescription drugs and counseling) that the less I was enjoying my own life, the less fun it was to talk about myself.  I suppose this would raise questions as to my perception of myself relative to everyone else (I tend to think that people love to complain - which I don't) but that's exactly what got me into the mess I found myself in.  Life is not a competition, despite the fact that every institution and/or authority figure in this free market economy would have you believe it.  It occurred to me that one should never evaluate oneself relative to other people.  At any given point in time, any two people can never be compared on equal terms.  As a familiar example, I may be better or worse than my friend in a class - but that doesn't necessarily mean that I will end up the better student, or the better person.  In fact, better is a word that we mostly apply arbitrarily due to the fact that we live in a society that wishes for us to compete against one another - it makes it easier to assess the individual abilities of a group of people at a given snapshot in time.  The problem is that we only use that snapshot when evaluating an individual.  More often than not, that snapshot is a completely inaccurate assessment of an individual's skills.  Does a standardized test score really give an exact portrait of a person's abilities throughout their lives?  Not even close.

I'll stop rambling about semantics.  The point is that we so often apply the word "better" in work and academics - just because it's easy to describe people in that way when you apply a scale on which you evaluate people - that it secretes into our personal lives.  Losing a game turns into "I'm no good at this.”  Watching even a close friend succeed where you fail sends the message, "My friend is more successful than me."  This wouldn't be a problem if our memories were fluid - if we were able to forget this assessment as soon as your respective values of success returned to neutral.  But instead, we define the people in our lives based on these snapshots in time at which their lives experience an extreme - if only temporary - shift in value.  This is why we are so entertained by stories.  The action in stories is defined by a comparatively fast-paced shifting of values, because those are the aspects of life responsible for the majority of our long-term memories.  If an office worker living a monotonous, repetitive lifestyle is suddenly transported into a magical world and saves a kingdom and a bunch of cool shit but doesn't learn anything in the process, our perception of them is likely grounded in the adventure rather than their routine.  The reason this is important is because our self-awareness leads us to perceive our own lives based on our routines rather than the value-altering events.  This is why we tend to perceive everyone's lives as being "better" than ours, when in reality they are more or less the same - just remembered and experienced at different moments.

My big problem was that I was - and really, I still am - far too invested in the "story" behind people's lives rather than their actual persona.  As a result, I consistently evaluated myself on unfair terms.  In other words, because I selectively identified people based on the most significant value-shifts in their life and instead identified myself based the current state of my values (which were more often than not unwavering), I had no way of telling myself that I was "better" or even "on par" with people without being self-deceptive.  I think this might be true for many people, which is saddening.  To be truthful, I'm still not wholly over this perception, either.  Just because I've identified the error of my ways doesn't mean I've identified the proper method of correcting it.  It's really hard to define people by anything but their most memorable moments.  In fact, it's really hard to define people anyway, because those value-shifting events are often accompanied by a shift in self-perception.  Our self-perceptions and others' perceptions of are at odds with each other as it is - the more this changes, the harder the time we have trying to piece together an accurate, dynamic portrait of a person - ourselves included.  Sometimes even we are limited to defining ourselves based on the events of our lives rather than our normal value-states.  Such is the tragic case of far too many victims of rape, molestation, bullying, etc.  Maybe it's just a memory that one is most ashamed of - it doesn't matter.  We wish to limit our identities of ourselves to as close to a "snapshot" as possible, despite the fact that anybody with a life worth living will never be able to accomplish this. 

So don’t compare people to each other.  That was probably the most significant realization of this year, although I have yet to enact it, based on the fact that my life has, for so long, revolved around comparing people to each other, comparing myself to what I perceived as “normal”, etc. 

The second most important step towards ensuring my happiness is that expectations are bad.  Goals are good, and predictions are important when analyzing risks.  But living the future in your own head just for the sake of forming goals or predictions is never beneficial.  Reality only matches the expectations of the clairvoyant.  Even for the pessimist, the vision of the future one forms in one’s head is likely the most fantastic – the one with the most ideal outcome.  Alternately, it could be the worst.  A nightmare.  Should one’s expectations be positive, any deviation from the plan in one’s head will be automatically disappointing.  Should one’s expectations be negative, one is prepared to avoid disappointment by nature, but the psychological consequences of anticipating the worst of every situation is bad.  And it applies to me. 

My problem is that I do not live in the present.  Every moment I’m not dreading the future is a moment spent soaking in regret.  I have always been this way and I do not foresee anything about that changing, and I suspect it will be the eventual death of me.  Pessimism is a defense mechanism at best, and the inability to not form expectations about life is a weakness that I find exploited with every thought I’ve ever had about what I want to do with my life, instigated by the pressure over choosing a field of study – with every moment of eye contact with someone, and with every word spoken with me in mind – with every criticism of every ounce of media I ingest on a daily basis, and even the criticism that I begin to form in my head before I finish ingesting it.  And when it isn’t pessimism about the future, it’s a progressively skewed vision of my past.  All of the best moments of my life have been mulled over so much that they’ve been warped by my negativity into a bastardized, nightmarish version of what they once were.  And to cap things off, I’m embarrassed both by the fact that I acted the way I did in those good times and by the fact that I considered them good in the first place.  In other words, I manipulate myself into thinking I’m ignorant – an act which is, in and of itself, ignorant. 

Essentially, the achievement of this second step is impossible, which is why I don’t think it takes as high a position on the hierarchy of things that are wrong with me.  But I need to try.  “I don’t know anything else” isn’t a justification for blatant self-destructive thoughts, because for those increasingly rare moments where I am lucid – where I am experiencing my life in the blissful “ignorance” free from the active and retroactive judgment of my own brain – I am not being self-destructive.  I am living life through from the same perspective that normal people do – and should.  Just not nearly as often. 

The third step I feel I must take to become happy is, ironically, to cut out the sensitivity.  Despite what my masturbatory deconstructions of my own emotional states may suggest, there is more to life than constantly finding the best way of living it in order to never feel sadness.  The trick to never experiencing negative emotion is to never experience emotion – something that for an especially sensitive person like me is impossible.  Emotion is a spectrum – for the normal person, it is a balanced spectrum; for me, it is skewed in favor of negative emotions that facilitate self-destruction. 

It is likely a combination of immaturity and introversion that lead me to be emotionally self-centered.  As I think (and hope) I’ve noted previously, empathy is one of the human traits I admire most and I am tragically empathy-deficient.   It may seem counter-intuitive to think that becoming more empathetic will enable me to cut out the reactionary, over-sensitive part of my brain from dominating my life, but I believe that since all the trauma in my life is self-inflicted and since I am so self-centered, taking a deeper look into the lives of others will help me – or at least distract me. 

I have said this for ages and it may come as a shock to some that I’ve actually been looking into the best ways of learning to think empathically, and the conclusions I’ve reached generally revolve around Buddhism and the practice of meditation.  Effectively meditating involves intense concentration, and intense concentration involves thinking outside oneself.  Identifying the true nature of things – including the true nature of others – means objective thinking, and since I am currently incapable of looking at myself objectively, I can’t learn to think empathically and think introspectively at the same time.  I’m not converting to Buddhism or anything – I’m just trying to put some of their ideas into practice to try to better myself. 

Regardless of whether or not my self-loathing is justified, one thing is clear – I need to be better.  I refuse to accept myself as my current “snapshot” because it’s not what I want to define myself by.  I am a dynamic portrait of a human being and although I am the sum of all the individual moments of my life, changing now means that I no longer have to look at myself as a self-destructive fuck-up whose only redeeming quality is his intelligence.    

Normal

I really don't think there's much more to be said.

Openness

Okay, I decided that I'd post the "personal reflection paper" from my "Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships" class that I took last semester.  I said I'd write down some of my observations from that class in here because most were relevant toward the subjects covered in my blog/online diary - namely, how fucking hard it is to have a satisfying relationship with people.  We were each required to keep a journal in which we documented "interpersonal happenings", or moments that provided us insight into the way we communicate and relate to each other, so that's the source of many of the examples referenced in here.  Hope you at least find this interesting.  I've tried to explain a few of these stories and left some notes in square brackets.  Although the degree of insight isn't exactly tremendous, I sort of like the way it turned out just because of the way it sounds.  It was simultaneously academic and personal, so I was able to maintain my own typical style of writing (which you are probably familiar with if you've read anything else on this blog).    It was good enough for an A- (which is the grade I'm positive they gave to everybody in the class, although the minus might also refer to the negativity that practically drips off of this paper, as this was written toward the worst part of my depression {which is currently being treated, I'll let you know how it goes if/when I stop being depressed}). 

@@@@@

Although much of the material I’ve discussed in my journals revolves around issues in communicating effectively, I believe that discussing that sort of topic at length is neither productive nor insightful.  This has made the subject of what to discuss for a personal reflection paper a serious challenge.  There isn’t an aspect of my interpersonal relationships that I believe have improved at all over the course of the semester despite learning all that I have about how to make them work.  Much of the blame for this can be placed squarely on my shoulders.  Over the course of the semester I’ve withdrawn from many communications that would have allowed me to really demonstrate what I know about establishing supportive and beneficial relationships.  The truth is that I’m not really in any sort of condition to introspect, since everything I’ve done outside this class involves growing detached from people with whom I already had strong interpersonal relationships and not becoming particularly close with anyone, with the possible exception of [name of friend] in this class.  However, one of the connections I made in a previous collection of articles about openness in interpersonal relationships proves to be a promising avenue for discussion and self-improvement.  Neglecting the details of what I have said about openness in the context of other, more precise areas of study in interpersonal relationships, openness is good.  I see it as the source of fulfillment that one receives from one’s interpersonal relationships, which arguably makes it the key to experiencing a satisfying relationship (in addition to being empirically demonstrated to be the key to personal growth and relationship strengthening).  Thus, it is one of the most important things for a relationship to possess.  However, it cannot exist as part of a pair.  In order for a relationship to truly be “open”, both partners must be willing to present themselves honestly and completely to each other.  This seemingly simple requirement for achieving openness in a relationship is unfortunately very difficult to meet.  It is this difficulty that has motivated me to reflect mainly on the topic of openness in interpersonal relationships.

Openness in a relationship is the degree to which partners are willing to communicate honestly with each other.  It is the comparative lack of pretenses that define everyday communications.  It is, for the most part, directly related to the level of intimacy (emotional or physical) between people.  It is defined by true understanding of oneself and one’s partner.  If it is still difficult to grasp the concept of openness defined on its own terms, it is because it seems to be seen so rarely.  Most relationships are built on some degree of pretense that prevents that relationship from achieving true openness.  The relationship between a loving parent and child, for example, though undeniably intimate, is actually one of the less open relationships* (as I am defining them here) that the child especially is likely to remember in his life.  Most parent-child relationships preclude the possibility (or, at best, willingness) to discuss topics that are often a large part of the child’s life but are considered “inappropriate”, such as sexual activities, drug/alcohol use, etc.  In fact, many children even in healthy, supportive home environments can’t be bothered to share with their parents the most basic parts of their lives, such as, “What did you do today?” or, “What are you learning about in school?”  The parent-child relationship often revolves around the child ensuring that the parent holds him in high regard, which almost always means refraining from sharing with their parent a certain aspect of their lives and ensuring that they are seen as a model child, or at least a child who doesn’t need a parent’s intervention in order to be successful in his life.  Most interpersonal relationships operate on some level of pretense rather than total openness.  Even strong romantic relationships begin with a mutual attempt between partners to impress each other with their strong qualities rather than with their complete self-portraits, character flaws included.

A more complete understanding of the concept of openness can be provided by examining it from a strictly personal standpoint, free of the context of one’s interpersonal relationships.  Openness in a relationship is mostly dependent on both partners being willing to present themselves to others as they are, free of as much pretense as possible.  The willingness to be open is not so much a conscious choice as it is an aspect of one’s personality.  The reason we surround ourselves with pretenses is to mask our insecurities, which are as much a part of our personalities as anything else.  Based on this logic, I would conclude that our willingness to be open with others is generally inversely proportional to our degree of insecurity.

For a while, I considered myself one of the most open people that I know because I do very little to mask the parts of my personality that other people seem to care about.  I quite naturally speak at the speed of thought, speak my thoughts even they don’t really make sense, take (mostly) genuine interest in the lives of others, think in a goal-oriented fashion despite working as a perfectionist, etc.  Of these traits I am fairly proud.  I am willing to share these with other people because it not only allows others to think of me positively, but it allows me to think of myself positively.  It seems that by sharing the parts of a man that reflect positively upon him, he comes to be defined by both himself and his interpersonal relationships in those terms alone.  In this way, refraining from being completely open with others is a somewhat effective way of seeking escape from one’s insecurities.  Therefore, I am not actually as open as I thought I was.  My inability to comfort, my inferiority complex, and my short temper are as much a part of me as the positive qualities I listed above.  Choosing to ignore them at the expense of being able to be truly open with myself and with others is a choice that I may not have made consciously but one that nonetheless hinders my ability to actively participate in an open relationship.

I believe that our generation is far more closed-off and unwilling to be open in our relationships than previous generations for this reason.  There is so much pressure for children to be absolutely perfect in every way these days – academically, socially, etc. – that children’s perceptions of their own shortcomings are exacerbated and develop into a great deal more insecurity than other generations.  If the degree to which one is willing to be open in one’s interpersonal relationships is inversely proportional to one’s degree of insecurity, this increased responsibility toward being the perfect child is likely the cause of this closed-off behavior in which children define themselves far more strongly by pretenses of perfection rather than their true selves. 

Connecting back to openness on the larger scale of entire relationships, I believe that lack of openness is responsible for much of the generally negative interactions I experienced and documented in my journal.  Although I could honestly connect each entry in some way to the concept of openness, I will limit myself to a few examples of the damage that can be caused by the lack of openness in interpersonal relationships. The most obvious example that comes to mind is Entry #12, regarding my experiences with suicide.  [Short version of the story: witnessed the entire immediate aftermath of the kid across the hall from me attempting to kill himself.  He lived, thankfully.] Regarding my unfortunate experience after class, I believe I can somewhat accurately attribute the misery that my fellow resident was obviously experiencing to an extreme lack of openness in his interpersonal relationships.  The reason “nobody saw it coming” was likely because there was no one who would have seen it coming.  The only person who had previously ever known some of the darker aspects of this young man’s personality was himself.  He had done such a great job at concealing a complete, non-ideal version of himself that he had lost the ability to form relationships in which true openness could ever be achieved.  Thus, nobody could know that the real man was actually suffering deeply.  To be in a situation where one fully recognizes his insecurities but cannot do anything to overcome them or share them with others in a truly open relationship is one of the greatest tortures I can imagine.  It is for this reason that I continue to see the short story read in class (described in that same entry) as a trite reflection of the author’s wishful thinking and/or excessive idealism. [Seriously, this was one of the dumbest things ever - we were asked to analyze the story of "Kyle" which was a fucking chain e-mail from the early '00s if I remember right.  This story is some of the biggest bullshit I've ever read in my life.]  There is absolutely no way that one can hide suicidal urges that were very nearly acted upon from others and find a relationship that is open enough to completely change his outlook on life.  The only way this could occur is if he were ignorant enough to completely forget about his insecurities and fully embrace the pretense he had built for himself in one instant as a “cool guy”.

I also feel as if many of the issues involving hostile or ineffective communications are a direct result of the lack of openness with the people with whom I was trying to communicate.  It should be both understandable and expected that my relationships with my group mates in my engineering class are mostly impersonal and detached.  Although I feel as if this might be a bit of a stretch in terms of applying the concept of openness to the communication problems in my engineering group, it may be possible that the general defensiveness in our conversations may be a result of misunderstanding each other’s true selves.  [Short version: one guy didn't know his shit even though he acted like he ran the group and that pissed the rest of us off.]  Presented only with a few brief moments of small talk with my newer group, we were expected to get to work immediately with only a very limited knowledge of each other’s personalities.  The member I described in one of my article responses (note: not in the journal) I now realize was actually relying on his self-confidence to mask his insecurity regarding his understanding of the material we were working with.  This resulted in a notable lack of open communication in our group.  Although the definition of open communication is somewhat different in a technical setting (openness refers more to ensuring that everyone understands what is going, what they should be doing, etc.) it is still the result of these insecurities that a lack of openness is established.  The feigning of confidence results in both the member himself and group perceiving him as someone knowledgeable and useful.  It is only when these insecurities are called to attention (i.e. when asked an especially complex question) that one becomes aware of one’s insecurities.  

Discussing this topic has led me to contemplate some of my relationships that are open rather than defined negatively by their inherent lack of openness.  Unfortunately, there weren’t any real instances of interpersonal openness to document this entire semester.  The closest instance I can think of was when I met my friend (who I hadn’t seen for eight months) for coffee when I was staying at home over spring break.  I honestly do not know why I chose to document visiting my friend’s college instead of this date [unrelated story, but I visited my friend's college and discovered that their dorm was a tight community while at UM there was barely a support system at all], because what followed was one of the most memorable and engaging conversations of my life.  As far as I can remember there was no aspect of our personal or interpersonal lives that wasn’t discussed freely and without pretense, and we both empathically understood of each other’s successes and woes.  It is worth noting that my relationship with this person is some sort of helping relationship – our relationship has always been one of close friendship, but she had previously been both a role model and a teacher to me.  Many of the articles we’ve read about the helping relationship directly address the idea that openness is an absolutely vital characteristic of an effective helping relationship.  The fact that we were fairly open with each other before is likely why I was able to be helped by her in the past, and I also feel that I can attribute some degree of personal growth over the last few years of my life to this as well.  However, the fact that we were not open with each other in the truly fulfilling sense of the word until this night tells me that true openness might be even harder to find than we think.  If my experience with true openness in interpersonal relationships is limited only to brief, one-time experiences, how can I demonstrate that openness can define entire relationships rather than singular encounters with people?  I can’t.  The fact is that true, unabashed, lasting openness is very hard to find between two people.  The closest example I can imagine is the openness between two lovers, but I can’t back up that context with any recent personal experience.

At the beginning of this semester I was of the conviction that these moments of openness in relationships were something of a climax – this is the level of interpersonal connection that cannot be topped and relationships only weaken from this point on.  I have experienced both examples of this belief and counterexamples as well. (I still believe I can safely have an open relationship with the woman in the previous paragraph, although not being in my hometown means I can’t know for sure.)  I no longer believe it to be entirely true.  The reason for this is because I believe I have defined openness too strongly.  Referring exclusively to euphoric moments of intense interpersonal connection absolutely free of pretense would leave everyone under the belief that they were incapable of being in a truly open long-term relationship.  A relationship can still be considered open to a large extent with both participants occupying a certain role (i.e. pretense) such as that of a therapist and a patient.  While this is not what I would consider “true openness” because it is incomplete, there is still huge potential to foster personal growth in the patient, which is what the openness of therapeutic relationships exists to do.  It must still be asserted, however, that the degree of fulfillment that one receives from being involved in an open relationship really depends on the degree to which both partners are willing to be open with each other.  One can be completely open to others – strip their very soul bare to another – and if that is not reciprocated, it can’t be said that there is any openness at all in one’s interpersonal relationships. 

The role of this openness in interpersonal relationships is simple.  In addition to the fact that nearly every method for fostering personal growth and strengthening relationships depends on the ability of both partners to be open with each other, it provides the sense of satisfaction that motivates us to be involved in relationships in the first place.  The study of interpersonal relationships revolves around finding ways in which to make interpersonal connections stronger and more mutually beneficial.  This class did an admirable job of demonstrating many of the ways that one can accomplish this, and I feel that I’ve benefitted from it in that respect.  I am most grateful that we at one point touched upon the topic of openness, because although openness isn’t a topic that is highly analyzed in the study of interpersonal relationships, it is one that is often considered a prerequisite to being able to even tolerate involvement in interpersonal relationships.  It is an absolutely vital characteristic on both personal and interpersonal levels.

However, the difficulties I’ve outlined surrounding our ability to make these sorts of connections are a source of great deliberation for me.  If my journals have demonstrated anything, it’s that I have not been able to successfully establish any relationships that possess a satisfactory degree of openness this semester.  The reason for this is essentially due my own withdrawal from being open with people.  Any doubts I had that human beings were even capable of dropping pretenses and being open with each other were greatly exacerbated and reflected in my own behaviors.  At one point I tried to explain my concerns over my own withdrawal and resulting loneliness to a friend, but this person did not really reciprocate my willingness to be open, which is what I believe is responsible for determining my focus on openness as the only aspect of interpersonal relationships worth focusing on for a final reflection paper. 

The reason why I have not been able to exit this state of withdrawal is because there isn’t much of a method for fostering a willingness to be open for oneself.  Several of the articles involved outline methods by which to foster openness in a relationship, but that won’t occur unless one is willing to be open in the first place.  A therapeutic setting, as is described at length, is obviously one in which both the therapist and the patient are both willing to be open.  The same cannot be said for normal life.  On top of the lack of willingness to be open in one’s relationships, no one particularly wants anyone else to be open with them unless they are comfortable with being open themselves.  Openness is thus best created in newer relationships in which boundaries are not set and pretenses are not yet present. 

The most important step in overcoming the fear of being open is overcoming insecurities.  It is impossible to be open unless one drops the pretenses surrounding one’s interpersonal relationships or even surrounding how one views oneself.  As these pretenses are a direct result of masking insecurities, eliminating insecurity eliminates pretense.  Eliminating pretense fosters openness.  I’m not going to explain how to overcome insecurities.  Hundreds of books have been written on the subject of overcoming insecurity and still no one my age really knows how to do it at all.  Despite this, I do believe that there is a way for everyone to adopt a willingness to be open as a part of their personalities.  This is a process to which no method can be assigned, because overcoming one’s insecurities is invariably an intensely personal process.  Once one overcomes one’s own insecurities, one is ready to move on to adopting the responsibility of encouraging others to be open – not only with oneself but with other people as well. 

Although there are many angles from which I could have reflected upon my experiences in this class and their connections to my everyday life, openness is the most important.  Without the ability or desire to be open in one’s interpersonal relationships one can derive no pleasure, no satisfaction, no personal growth, and no purpose.  Thus, the fact that the interpersonal quality of openness and the personal quality of willingness to be open is so lacking scares me.  It is in the area of openness that we have the most potential to feel fulfilled in our interpersonal relationships.  This is the key to enriching our lives.  We must all be taking steps to discontinue bearing the burden of masking our insecurities with pretenses and idealized versions of ourselves – we must simply be ourselves as we are.

*Just for reference, the term “open relationships” in this context will refer to any relationships that possess the quality of openness as I’ve defined it rather than the specific type of romantic relationships.

Fuck it, dude.

Let's go bowling.