All my life, I’ve read biographies that describe famous and interesting people as “difficult,” or “notoriously difficult,” and on the eve of 2021, it’s only fitting that I share a revelation: I’m one of those people.
It took me a long time to see it, but it’s other people and their responses to us that teach us the most about us, if we can listen.
When I was 14 and in despair, I wandered into a Quaker Meeting and heard the Friend’s conviction that there is that of God in every person.
This was a new and revelatory idea for, having been raised in the Jewish tradition, which saw Jews as chosen people apart from other people.
Seeing God in every other person required a profound change in perspective, empathy, and spirituality.
I was so drawn to the idea that I joined the Meeting, and although I rarely get to Meetings any more, I will always be a Quaker in my head and soul.
I felt closer to them than almost any other faith, other than that of the Christ himself.
Most of us” wrote Thomas Merton, “live lives of self-impersonation.” Reading this in my 50’s, I saw the truth of it, was shaken and resolved to spend the rest of my life as my God-given self if I could find it. I had lived a life of self-impersonation almost all of my life.
The idea of life as a paradox was central to Merton’s spirituality and faith. He was deeply aware of the many apparent contradictions in his life, as I became aware of mine.
Resolving these paradoxes – or at least owning up to them- is central to my idea of spirituality. We can’t ever be perfect, but we can always keep trying.
More than anything else, to me this meant understanding the truth about myself and facing up to it, for better or worse. I didn’t know myself, and thus could hardly be authentic about me or anyone else.
I got a jolting lesson in self-impersonation this week.
I have a friend who I value greatly who I talk with once every month or so. He lives far away.
I’ve enjoyed the conversations; living in a small village in the country; I rarely get to have conversations like that; my friend is an accomplished and intense thinker.
I looked forward to these conversations, some in person, some on the phone. I felt good about them. Then the paradox.
I got an e-mail from my friend saying he was troubled by our talks.
He said they were not deep enough, and he felt I often interrupted him and didn’t let him speak. He knew most of what I said from my blog and wanted a different kind of conversation.
He wanted more silence and space in the conversations and was not happy with them. He wanted more depth.
I wrote back to say I was surprised and sorry. I had to think about it.
He hoped we could stay in touch.
I was truly shocked by this message; I had no inkling of it and no sense of it. The picture he painted hurt me. I wasn’t deep enough, he said, and I was mortified that I could have been so inventive as to think these conversations, precious in my mind, were so unsatisfying to my friend, with whom I have been talking for some years.
The image I saw of me in his message was of an insensitive boor, talking too much and saying nothing of value. I am often tough on myself, but never saw myself in that way, nor had anyone else ever suggested it.
How could I not know this? Why hadn’t he said something? Why didn’t I feel something? Could I possibly be so narcissistic and oblivious that I prattled on, completely unaware that I was making someone else uncomfortable?
Given the contradictions in my life, I was drawn even closer to the paradox’s idea and how I ought to respond to it.
What did self-impersonation mean? It seemed to apply. Here I was having this thoughtful discussion with myself, unaware that the other person involved – a good friend no less – was uncomfortable and unwilling to participate.
(A paradox is a statement or belief that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense or self-interest and is perhaps true. It applies to people who have contradictory qualities, traits, or phrases.)
I was stung and also humiliated. It would help if you had a big ego to be a writer, but egos can also make one blind and frail.
But coming to the God-given self instead of fantasizing is central to being in a lived reality.
The Merton idea taught me how important it is to look at all of life not only through the either-or way we are taught but also through a different lens: “Both and.”
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Neils Bohr wrote that the opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.”
Thinking paradoxically is central to being creative, which depends on the ability to hold divergent ideas in a way that opens the mind and the heart to something new, even something painful, especially something painful.
Living paradoxically depends on me embracing my own numerous flaws and contradictions rather than being humiliated, hurt, or angry about them.
I think the challenge is, to be honest about yourself, but not to give yourself away.
I am continuously running headlong into truths about myself that I did not know, struggle to accept, and have a hard time believing. But many of them are true. Life is never a straight line for me.
The greatest change in my life, and the most meaningful, has come from seeing that the things I didn’t want to see or hear about myself were so often true. That is the God-given self.
These contradictions are who I am, and any friend can accept or look elsewhere for friendship. I’d rather with no friends that have friends who can’t accept me. The very core of my love for Maria and hers for me is our acceptance of one another. That is the foundation of trust, and trust is the foundation of love.
No one is at fault when this happens. Accepting myself is not necessarily changing myself or faulting myself. It is really just a matter of learning who I am and how best to live with it.
The ego makes that very difficult. The soul makes it very necessary.
I have never made friends easily or frequently or even been able to keep the ones I have. I’ve accepted that – an important part of Radical Acceptance. I’m wary of friendships that fail or crumble.
I know I can talk a lot, have strong opinions, get passionate about ideas, and I know my very open blog makes it difficult for friends to talk to me or to not know everything about me without talking to me at all.
The spiritual writer Parker Palmer has written about reframing life in terms of paradox; for him, this was a lifesaver. Living paradoxically was, he said, “the key to personal wholeness, which depends on the ability to embrace one’s self-contradictions without denying or defending them.”
My friend hurt me, for sure, and said some sharp things about our friendship, including that he had little time for the kinds of topics I brought up and talked about.
I didn’t understand why he couldn’t simply say so while we talked, but he may just have been too sensitive to do that when I thought about it.
I was hurt by the idea that my conversation wasn’t deep enough, but that was the ego speaking once more. Perhaps it just wasn’t what my friend wanted to do talk about, and he was honest for telling me so.
At first, I was angry also. But that is not a good place to stop.
I hope my friend and I stay in touch, but I will also be honest; perhaps the God-given self’s biggest part is self-awareness. The heart and soul of our friendship are over.
I would find it difficult to trust a conversation, worrying that I was causing my friend to suffer, and thus suffer myself. That isn’t what friendship is about for me.
In my long lifetime of therapy, I learned a critical thing about friendship: it should be nourishing and uplifting. If it isn’t, run. My friend crushed the heart of our friendship in the note he sent me; I’m sure we will stay in touch and talk once in a while.
He is a very good person.
Like everything else of meaning in life, this was good for me. I think I’ve learned something about who I really am, and perhaps even, who I want to be.
At the same time, I’m respecting who I am, and accepting it. I guess that’s the paradox.
But I know that I am not a person who makes friends easily or keeps them easily. I am delighted to see how easily Maria makes good friends and how loyal and dedicated she is to them, and they to her. That is a beautiful thing.
I can admire it, but I can’t learn from it or emulate it. Maria is Maria, and I am me.
In paradise, we all could learn to love one another, as the Quakers try to do, but in the world of paradox, that isn’t possible for me.
I’m okay with that. I love my good life and have no wish to change it.
None of us can have everything; I am a rich man in almost every way.
I will think about how I speak and talk and make sure my friendships feel nourishing and meaningful.
My friend did both of us a service in speaking up and being so honest. That’s what the truth is.
I am committed to doing the same. I don’t need to be angry or debate what was said, or to be diminished.
Merton’s fully lived understanding of paradox always rescues me.
I must be able to say that I am both shadow and light.
This is a wonderfully thought-provoking post. And more than deep enough, in my humble opinion. Thank you.
Just a tip from a longtime reader—you’ve been writing a lot about how much you’re exercising and getting healthy, and maybe you’ve been talking to your friend about that as well. In general, it’s boring to hear about how much other people are exercising, and it can also come off as smug and has the effect of making people feel bad about themselves. You might want to cut back on the subject a little—reading about how many minutes someone did on a stationary bike is only so interesting.
Jon, one thing to keep in your mind if you will….you were open to hearing your friend. That says a lot. And now, you will think about what he said, remembering too, his needs as well as your own, we are only as right as we feel we are. It does not have to be so, one way or the other. This is an interactive relationship, two people’s minds, two people’s thoughts, two people’s reactions to what is said. Sometimes we are not always on the same path with our friends as we once were.
Sandy Proudfoot and let us hope that in the year ahead of us, we live and we survive.
Ouch. Bandaid please. I seem to have lost a bf this year. We’ve always talked, hung out, rode around the back roads. I was begging during this pandemic, “ let’s sit out in our lawn chairs, 6’ apart, and catch up!”, “ let’s have our coffee on our tailgates out at the river!”…” can you help me do google pics I can’t get them to go”… nothing. Kind of a blah put off… yet I saw she had come into town daily for coffee at Tim Horton’s with my neighbor. I’ll be truthful, it hurt, and it pissed be off because I see it as dishonest. ( “ I haven’t been anywhere or seen anyone!”… BULL! But, my belief tells me, when someone’s not in your life, they’re not supposed to be. That’s my compass.
I believe it all started when I saidI didn’t think the 600.00 covid money should go to anybody except people who lost their jobs due to covid closings/ lay offs. She had been unemployed for years, got it, I didn’t say anything more. That was the last conversation I remember. Drama! Trauma, I apologize if this sounds petty. Friendships are important.
I used to think I was too judgmental of others. My Catholic faith preaches “do not judge.” But the older I became the more I realized it was more observation than judgment. I believe writers are extremely observant to their surroundings and especially personalities. In my experiences with friends and work acquaintances I find people love to talk about themselves but rarely are interested in hearing and more importantly listening to what the other person has to say. The conversations are one-sided and the topic is them. I rarely converse with a good conversationalist. It’s hard to come by these days and I believe it’s because the world is packed full with narcissists. I find it very tedious to get along with narcissists.
Length of years can lend perspective. I have found that as we age friendship has more meaning, but is more difficult to achieve. The idea that we ALL carry the darkness and the light within us is a good and true lesson. If everyone could agree to this and at least try to understand the true meaning of that paradox, humanity could be on its way to bettering itself. Thank you for your honesty and your ability to see clearly.
Hey Jon. Lovely post as usual. Friendships are tricky. I had an extremely good friend, like a brother… go off on me recently and I kept saying let’s change the subject. I had to do that a few times until we reached a neutral place. I thought I was in the clear but he went back near the end. Luckily I realized what was going on. He was in a vulnerable place. Very stressed out over some personal situations he had lost control over. This year was full of those right?? Anyway my mother always told me if someone is upset it is in their mind, not yours. So be still and quiet… as Miguel Ruiz
Says in the 4 agreements “don’t take it personal “… I hope you patch up things with your friend. I’m betting you will.
“The greatest change in my life, and the most meaningful, has come from seeing that the things I didn’t want to see or hear about myself were so often true.” This could not have been more timely for me, Jon. It does take guts to say what your friend said, and then guts for you to consider it, and plumb its depths to see if it was true for you, or not. My auto response to criticism is usually defensiveness; I have been taught and have learned NOT to act on that first feeling, but to go within instead, and see if there’s truth in it. Most of my learning has been uncomfortable, downright painful, yet, as you said, the most meaningful. If that’s the price, I will (mostly) gladly pay.
Jon, you are one of the most interesting conversationalists I know (based on your podcasts, books and blog). I think of a conversation as a two-way street with each participant contributing to the content of the discussion; it ranges across a wide variety of topics based on what is happening and what is important to each contributor. If your friend was dissatisfied with what was being discussed, he could have steered the conversation in a new direction or introduced some ‘deeper’ topics of his own for discussion. In my opinion, sending such a message to you via email was just destructive and lame.
It’s a fine line we walk Jon, but I wouldn’t give up on having friends aside from your best friend, Maria. No man is an island. God forbid she leaves this world before you, you may still need the support of others.
I can relate to your friend although I don’t have any history at all with you. When I first discovered your blog many months ago, I was so excited! Besides being of the same mindset about politics, I admired your ability to express yourself so succinctly, your knowledge, and your past successes in your career path. I shared your blog with a number of my friends because I thought your take on politics was well thought out, sound and sensible. You were the voice of reason. You were, besides my coffee, the first thing I turned to every day. Once in a while I would post supportive affirmations to you. Rarely would you respond but that’s my issue. You have a considerable following so I was still content just supporting you.
As time passed I reached out to you, particularly when you would mention your difficulty or lack of friends, although it appeared that you often featured people you enjoyed in your community. My mistake was to cross a boundary with you. I offered to be your friend. Most people probably don’t do that when they haven’t even met someone.
A few times thereafter, I reached out again. Being sensitive as I am, I was startled by your responses. I am not sharing this to “gang up on you” but I thought I would take the opportunity to share my thoughts. I have had very similar experiences in my life, as you have, and I know how long it has taken and still takes, to shift myself from my past to living in the moment.
The good part about my last post to you is that I too am learning to have more grace. Accept and not pass judgment on others. I reminded myself that creating a blog IS primarily a one sided conversation, it’s the nature of the beast. Friendship should be nourishing and uplifting and not to be taken lightly. I hope you work things out with your friend and I wish you and Maria a much better, happier, healthy, and peace filled New Year. Namaste.
Powerful column. I’m deeply moved by the depth of your sharing.
Are you unwilling to consider that listening more deeply and not interrupting your friend could be an important first step to repairing the relationship? It sounds like you are not prepared to make any changes in how you engage with others.
A mentor once advised me when I was frustrated with a friendship I thought was rather one sided and shallow..”don’t escalate unless you are prepared to recommit to the friendship.” Ultimately I decided to let go of this “friend”…,
We all need to learn to be as good of listeners as talkers. This can be very hard for those of us with thoughts racing through our heads.
I think it was pretty disparaging of your good friend to let months and years of what you thought were friendly conversations go by and then suddenly drop a bomb on you. I would feel humiliated too if I suddenly found out that my good friend was basically “white knuckling it” through our conversations. No close relationship exists without irritants. If we value the other person’s friendship then it seems to me we first accept the “shadow side” of our friend, and if there are traits that are getting in the way of our relationship, we discuss it at the time. I totally want that from the friends and people I love and value. I am not always comfortable facing my flaws, but I am willing to do so to maintain a valued relationship and to hopefully become a better person. To stockpile grievances and then dump on someone, is unfair and frankly mean.