If there is one thing that we as humans tend to desire more than anything else and yet go to such extreme lengths to avoid, it is intimacy. Nothing nourishes the soul like sharing something deeply personal with another or sitting still and listening as another unburdens their own deepest thoughts and fears. Why then, when such interactions are the ultimate win-win for those involved, are these moments so rare? What, if anything, can Thanatism teach us to make these moments as common as they ought to be?
We’ll discuss this paradox a great deal in the coming posts, but fundamentally, the reason we lack intimacy with each other is because we each make the decision to hide ourselves. We each have a private conversation going on in our heads throughout our day that we keep inside. This conversation is our most precious secret and we guard it intensely.
Not only do we choose throughout our lives to keep this conversation private from the world at large, but most often, we also hide ourselves from those we are closest to. Children hide their private conversation from their parents. Parents hide their private conversation from their children. Spouses again and again hide their internal dialog from each other. And most interestingly, we often, to some degree, even hide our deepest and most intimate thoughts from ourselves.
On some level, this is adorable, of course. Nearly 7 billion little monkey people sneaking around the earth, telling themselves stories about their world, others, and themselves, each fully intent on never letting their secret conversation be discovered. What makes this especially cute is that we’re all so bad at hiding and so expert at perceiving. We’re like toddlers who cleverly sneak into the kitchen to steal a cookie, only to leave the cookie jar open, make a trail of crumbs to our bedroom, and fall asleep clenching our half-eaten prize.
This picture of humanity, all of us playing a childish game of hide and seek would be entirely charming if it weren’t so utterly tragic. The tragedy lies in the consequences of our hiding. We understand these consequences on those rare moments in life when we stop playing. Every once in a while, perhaps even just a few times in a lifetime, either because we learn to trust another fully or just as often, because we just simply can’t keep it inside anymore, we let it all out. Like a dam, overwhelmed by a storm, our secret person, that person who has been held back for so long, gushes forth, often literally, as the tears stream down our faces.
And what most often in these moments of vulnerability is the reaction of the other? Are they horrified? Do they mock us for our pain? Perhaps, but not often. What we most often encounter is love. What we most often feel is a vast opening up on their part as well. The breaking down of the walls that keep us locked inside unleash our personhood so violently that the flood of who we are destroys the walls of the other, and for a brief moment in time, the waters of our secret lives commune with each other freely.
And that’s the word isn’t it? Free. In these moments of intimacy, in these moments where we stop holding ourselves in, we feel free. As we cry, the tears turn from tears of grief into tears of laughter. A lightness takes over our being and we wonder to ourselves why we’ve worked so hard to keep ourselves hidden. For a brief moment, we feel viscerally the foolishness of keeping ourselves locked away. Why, we ask ourselves, have I been living in a prison of my own creation for so long?
Obviously, once we’ve experienced this freedom and the absurdity of the game of hide and seek, we stop playing it forever. Once experienced, we run from our self-imposed cage, never to experience captivity again. If only. What happens, of course, is that our freedom lasts only a moment. Almost as quickly as the flood came, so do the waters of our being recede back into their hidden place. Like a diligent colony of ants whose passage is covered over by a curious child, we quickly rebuild our private world so thoroughly, it’s as if the walls were never breached.
This is our secret dilemma as the people of earth. We spend incalculable mental resources to hide ourselves from each other, in spite of the fact that we clearly see the futility of others’ attempts to hide and have experienced the joy of freedom when we have stepped outside of our own walls. What great force must keep this paradox alive? What could be so psychologically powerful that we would willingly imprison ourselves throughout our lives?
Fear is what holds us captive. We hide because we are afraid. We build walls because we are afraid. We turn inward into our private worlds because we are afraid. And what is it, ultimately that we fear? The answer is rejection. We hide from others because we’re afraid they’ll reject us. We’re afraid that if others see us for what we are, they’ll reject us. And yet we’re still left with the question of why. Why do we believe others will reject us?
The answer to this, and the key to rebuilding our intimacy with others, is that we fear that others will reject us, because we’ve already rejected ourselves. We’re ashamed of ourselves. Our ever-me wants us to be eternal, but that’s not what we are. Our ever-me wants us to believe that we are in charge, but we are not. Our ever-me wants us to believe we put others first, but it categorically does not.
Because of this, the ever-me tries to convince others we are something more than what we are because it knows it is a lie, and it needs the affirmation of others to prop up its existence. It knows on some level that it’s an illusion, so it projects the lie of itself unto others, so that they might mirror back a reflection of ourselves it desperately wants to be true. It is this projecting of false selves and rejecting of the person we are, that destroys human intimacy. The good news, however, and what we shall explore in what follows, is that when we escape the self-centered illusion of original sin, when we destroy the ever-me we love so dearly, much of what divides us as humans crumbles along with the walls of our former selves.