Our Known Secrets
Humans are complex beings, at least most of them are! This complexity leads to many kinds of people ranging from the intriguing attractive mind to the pedantic egocentric intellectual, and from the naïve kind heart to the stupid mean soul.
We grow up living different experiences, feeling different emotions, and hearing different opinions about the people we hold dear to our hearts, including ourselves. We see people who are very close to us doing certain things that make us proud and other things that make us ashamed.
From all this we form a certain number of beliefs, we decide on certain values as our own, and we develop a number of vulnerabilities in the face of life. Depending on the society where we evolve, and the kinds of people surrounding us when we become mature or a little bit older, these vulnerabilities transform into complexes that we unconsciously strive to keep buried deep in our secret garden.
We try relentlessly, throughout our lifetime, to deal with these complexes, which shape our personalities and are often considered as weaknesses. At first, we deny that we have them, and we choose our behaviors, often unnatural and exaggerated, with the unconscious aim of continuing to hide them. Even though it becomes clear to us that we could no longer refute them, most of us stay in that denial phase with a constant over compensation in our behavior. This creates over time a very stressful inner conflict between who we know we are and who we are portraying ourselves to be. This conflict leads to more unnatural and exaggerated behaviors, which eventually produce the opposite effect to the one desired – instead of looking better in the eyes of the people around us, we start to look worse. We end-up coming across as self-centered, over sensitive or aloof.
Some lucky people, mostly intelligent ones, overcome the denial to acknowledge their complexes. It is extremely difficult to admit to ourselves the things that make us weak when facing certain situations in life. Once we finally do it, another critical struggle starts within our souls. Most of us, not to say all of us, have these words echoing in their minds: “I have a complex, I know I have it, I am an intelligent person, therefore I can apply some will power to get rid of it.” The first battle we decide to wage is an elimination battle and we embark into a hard and unfair battle to rid ourselves from these weaknesses, our daily burdens. Ten years, twenty years, thirty years, often all our remaining years are spent fighting this losing battle. Amid that endless strife, our attitude and behavior are not much different from the ones we adopt when we are in complete refusal of our reality, still trying to lie to other people about who we really are! Most of us die fighting against their childhood and the ghosts that haunted it. We never acquire the wisdom to accept our reality, nor the knowledge that enable us to deal with our complexes, live with them in peace, and thus minimize their effects on us and the people in our lives.
Some of us, very few, reach that state of wise truth where we recognize our unchangeable realities. We stand at first bewildered and disappointed, then begins our life long (whatever is left of it) journey with our “known secrets”. How to manage them? Can we change? Can we open-up about them to anyone? If yes who should that be? A question leading to another, for few years we remain without any answer. Few critical years during which we could, if we behave irrationally or under the influence of some recreational substance, screw up the rest of our lives. The most common mistake we make during these few years is to share our known secrets, purposely or not, with the wrong people. The wrong people are simply the ones who will take advantage of these “weaknesses” to have a stronger hold of our life. These wrong people are usually among the closest people to us.
Humans are social animals! This, clearly, has its benefits, but also it has its drawbacks. The biggest benefit is the ability for humans, not related to each other, to collaborate to overcome any danger facing them, deal with very difficult situations, and improve the world they live in. The biggest drawback lies in this constant attractiveness and liking to be with other people. When we are with other people, we rarely stay silent! It is not an acceptable social behavior. Therefore, we talk about stuff, we talk about a lot of stuff with a lot of people, and we talk about even more stuff with the people we spend the most amount of time with, our friends, our children, our parents, and above all our “partners”, wife or husband. When we talk a lot, and I am certain it happened to every one of us at some point in our lives, we stop making the difference between what should be shared with whom and what shouldn’t, especially the closest people to us. The lines become very blurred, without any real appreciation of the dire consequences, we tell many things that would, and often will, have the highest impact on our lives and the lives of the people around us. So, damned with the curse of the social animal feature, wanting to communicate our thoughts and opinions with others, we sometimes undress in front of the wrong people, we show our naked truth to the prying eyes and then we become the slaves of our “known secrets” and the people who know about them and shouldn’t!
Very wise and introverted or withdrawn people choose to become hermits, secluding themselves from the crowds. For them, this way of living is the safest remedy against the social animal curse and humans’ visceral need to talk about things with the one and the other, the wrong ones and the abusers.
Very wise and extraverted or open people, who still love the presence of other humans, choose (and abide by their choices), not to share their deepest complexes with anyone* they know or with whom they might develop a sustained relationship. Therefore, they often hire people and pay them to listen to their stories without any judgment or consequences. Some hire shrinks, others hire prostitutes (male or female); almost the same price, but inarguably different pleasures!
Over time, the shrink solution is the least viable one, as it holds a higher risk of falling in the trap we are exactly trying to avoid in the first place – forming long lasting and regular relations with the people with whom we share our “known secrets”. Despite the above obvious fact, because the shrink is a more acceptable solution by society, especially for women, it is the most used one! The irony of this situation is that the same society which carries the highest responsibility in us having complexes to begin with, imposes on us the least effective solution to deal with them. Humanity is screwed up! There isn’t much hope…
Your complexes, your differences, and your (known) secrets!
Do you know them? Are you still denying them? Are you done trying to eliminate them? Have you shared them with someone you shouldn’t? Are you a slave of your social animal curse or you are the master of your tongue? Only you can answer these questions! Have you?
*Exceptions apply and confirm the rule