There is a false form of honesty that suggests that nothing should remain hidden and that everything should be said, expressed and communicated. This honesty can be very harmful, and if it does not harm, it at least makes the relationship flat, superficial, empty and often very boring. When we try to shake off our loneliness by creating a milieu without limiting boundaries, we may become entangled in a stagnating closeness. It is our vocation to prevent the harmful exposure of our inner sanctuary, not only for our own protection but also as a service to our fellow human beings with whom we want to enter in a creative communion.
Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed. Our world is full of empty chatter, easy confessions, hollow talk, senseless compliments, poor praise, and boring confidentialities. Not a few magazines become wealthy by suggesting that they are able to furnish us with the most secret and intimate details of the lives of people we always wanted to know more about. In fact, they present us with the most boring trivialities and the most supercilious idiosyncrasies of people whose lives are already flattened out by morbid exhibitionism.
The American way of life tends to be suspicious toward closedness.
When I came to this country for the first time, I was struck by the open-door life style. In schools, institutes and office buildings everyone worked with open doors. I could see the secretaries typing behind their machines, the teachers teaching behind their lecterns, the administrators administering behind their desks and the occasional readers reading behind their books. It seemed as if everyone was saying to me, “Do not hesitate to walk in and interrupt at any time,” and most conversations had the same open quality-giving me the impression that people had no secrets and were ready for any question ranging from their financial status to their sex life.
It is clear that most of these are first impressions and that second and third impressions reveal quickly that there is less openness than suggested. But still, closed doors are not popular, and it needs special effort to establish boundaries that protect the mystery of our lives. Certainly in a period of history in which we have become so acutely aware of our alienation in its different manifestations, it has become difficult to unmask the illusion that the final solution for our experience of loneliness is to be found in human togetherness.
It is easy to see how many marriages are suffering from this illusion. Often they are started with the hope of a union that can dispel all painful feelings of “not belonging” and continue with the desperate struggle to reach a perfect physical and psychological harmony. Many people find it very hard to appreciate a certain closedness in a marriage and do not know how to create the boundaries that allow intimacy to become an always new and surprising discovery of each other. Still, the desire for protective boundaries by which man and woman do not have to cling to each other, but can move graciously in and out of each other’s life circle, is clear from the many times that Kahlil Gibran’s words are quoted at a wedding ceremony:
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.
Stand together yet not too near together
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
and the oak tree and the cypress
grow not in each other’s shadow. 1
~Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: the Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
1. The Prophet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951)
