The Art Of Not Sharing

There's what we might call the art of sharing.

The art of sincere communication.

The art of creating depths with others.

The art of truly listening and beholding others.

And I want to get to that art.

But before I do,

I want to also mention that not sharing is an art too.

Not a beautiful kind of art,

But an art many of us have become masterful at.

The way we throw out platitudes.

The way we talk about the weather.

The way we deflect back to the other person.

Many of us have built our whole lives in defense against being vulnerable.

In defense against being transparent.

Hiding who we are and making our way through life,

Never bringing our true thoughts,

Our true feelings,

Our true embodiment of our experiences in a way that can be witnessed and beheld by others in a way that leads back to really embodying ourselves.

For some of us,

We're like ghosts.

We're walking dead.

Our thoughts and feelings exist in some sort of nothingness,

And we refuse to use this physical plane,

Our material existence,

To bring who we really are forward.

Now sometimes not sharing can be kind of cute.

I'll give you an example.

One of my favorite shows of the 2000s was called Rescue Me.

It was a show about New York City firefighters after 9-11,

And we get to see all their hijinks.

One of my favorite relationships in the show is the relationship between Tommy,

Played by Dennis O'Leary,

And his father.

At one point,

They have an exchange,

And we're given subtitles of the exchange.

The exchange is normal,

But the subtitles express what they're really feeling.

Hey,

Dad,

Where's Mom?

She's upstairs.

The subtitle reads,

I'm too tired to go upstairs.

Hey,

You gonna watch the ball game today,

Dad?

Yeah,

I sure hope that pitcher for the Mets gets skin cancer.

Not enough to kill him,

But to keep him out of the game.

And in the subtitles,

We read,

I love you.

I miss you.

I'm so proud of you.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Dad,

I hope the shortstop,

Et cetera,

Et cetera.

And we hear and read,

I love you too.

The scene ends shortly after,

And it gives us a laugh,

And yet it gives us a viewpoint into how the art of not sharing has become such an important part of our lives.

And I don't know,

Maybe we don't need it.

Maybe my son doesn't need to hear me tell him how much I love him.

Maybe I don't really need to hear how loved I am.

Maybe there are a lot of secrets that are best kept that way.

Maybe there are a lot of conversations that are too deep,

Too emotional to have.

I grew up in a family without a lot of intimacy.

It wasn't that love wasn't present,

But intimacy wasn't expressed a lot.

We weren't very huggy people.

We didn't say I love you back and forth.

Often courageous conversations that needed to be had didn't have.

And maybe like your family,

There were always secrets or elephants in the room or things you would just never bring up,

Things that weren't talked about.

And up into my late 20s,

Even when I was a minister,

I would say to you,

If you asked me what my greatest fear was,

It might be saying I love you to a family member.

And it's not that my family didn't know that I loved them,

Or I didn't know that they loved me,

But there was so much pent up emotion.

Those words had never really been shared,

At least in a long time,

And if they had,

It was probably just in a kind of salutation of once on Christmas here or there kind of thing.

And so to say it for me would be to bring up so much emotion that my fear would be breaking down.

And I do remember finally saying it to my father,

And we exchange I love you's all the time now,

But it was really simple,

But it was a big deal.

But when we keep stuff hidden inside so long,

I think I had too this great fear of rejection that it wouldn't be received,

That there was a fear that my dad didn't love me,

Or my mom,

Or whatever it may be.

And it sounds ridiculous to say out loud,

But that's the importance of sharing.

And that's the trouble that the art of not sharing can get us into.

It can make us paranoid.

It can make us not real.

It can take us away from being grounded.

Having the courage to practice the art of sharing can change all of that.

I remember having a fiance once,

And we had a few weeks near the end of our relationship where we would go out to dinner,

And we'd have nothing to say.

And we both kind of agreed,

Well,

This probably just means that the relationship's over.

Looking back now and talking to so many couples who break up,

You know,

We'll say something like,

Well,

We just grew further and further apart.

The great Norman Lear talks about an ex-wife of his and says,

We lived in separate universes,

Separated by infinity.

And I always appreciated that.

But what I really wonder,

Looking back at that past relationship of mine,

Or friends of mine that have broken up,

Not that they haven't broken up for good reasons,

But I do wonder,

Is it that you grew further and further apart,

Or did you just not have the tools to grow closer and closer together?

What I'm going to invite you to do today is not to become a master in the art of sharing,

But my message is for those of us who have been masters at the art of not sharing in the past.

I'm not talking so much about the art of sharing,

But for those of us who have practiced the art of not sharing with such skill,

Would you be open to building the environment where the art of sharing can take place?

And it's three distinct qualities,

Presences,

Environments.

It's about environments of listening,

Environments of support,

And environments of trust.

What I'm saying to you is you don't have to share yet,

But what I am saying is can you practice listening a bit more?

Can you practice listening by asking more clarifying questions?

Can you practice listening by being more present to who you're with?

Put the phone down.

Can you practice listening by repeating back what you think you heard your friend or your partner or your child say?

Can you practice listening by maybe even taking that at a deeper level and perhaps interpreting of some of what might have been unsaid?

Not speaking for them,

But checking in.

So seek to create environments of listening.

Seek to create as well environments of support,

Perhaps even without asking.

Share with someone a quality you see in them.

Do what you can to say that you sincerely care about them and sincerely want the best for them by not only listening to what they have to say,

But by letting them know that you support them,

That you see the best in them,

That you think they are doing the best they can.

There's something about that supportive environment that helps the people we're with not feel judged or that we care about their interest versus their not interest.

I had great teachers in love,

Mary and Alan Feldman.

And Alan and Mary used to say to me,

Josh,

Through our whole relationship,

The thing that ties us together is the knowledge that we know the other would never intentionally hurt the other person.

And that's always been meaningful to me because it didn't mean they didn't hurt each other all the time,

But never on purpose so that if someone had a hurt,

It was an opportunity for sharing because the other person got to clarify how it wasn't their intention and they got to hear how the hurt affected the person so they could correct or try to correct that behavior in the future.

So seek to create environments of listening and environments of support.

And lastly,

Create environments of trust.

That's the thing with trust.

You can't fake it.

And those of us who are artists at not sharing,

We really struggle with trust.

So how can we build trust?

That listening and that support really help.

But sometimes we have to be willing to be vulnerable.

We have to be willing to share a little something about how we feel without passive aggressiveness,

But with honesty and with openness.

I always loved a piece from the great Carl Rogers that talks about the ideal childhood,

A way of feeling,

A way of knowing that I wonder might be meaningful to anyone who might be watching this tonight.

Rogers tells the story of parents struggling with their child.

Mom wants her son to do well in school and dad thinks his son should learn things the way he did.

With Rogers' help,

They begin to trust their son.

They begin to listen to him more closely.

After a while,

He starts to figure out things for himself.

Rogers shares,

I sometimes fantasize about what it would mean if a child were treated in this fashion from the first.

Suppose a child were permitted to have his own unique feelings.

Suppose he never had to disown his feelings in order to be loved.

Suppose his parents were free to have and express their own unique feelings,

Which often would be different from his,

And often different between themselves.

I like to think of all the meanings that such an experience would have.

It would mean that the child would grow up respecting himself as a unique person.

It would mean that even when his behavior was to be thwarted,

He could retain open ownership of his feelings.

It would mean that his behavior would be a realistic balance,

Taking into account his own feelings and the known and open feelings of others.

He would,

I believe,

Be a responsible and self-directing individual,

Who would never need to conceal his feelings from himself,

Who would never need to live behind a facade.

He would be relatively free of the maladjustments which cripple so many of us.

Could that be true of the art of not sharing?

That the real consequence of it is that it cripples us?

That it forces us into being superficial beings as opposed to who we really are?

That who we really are becomes alien to us,

Perhaps even non-existent?

It's the art of sharing,

Which I really think is the art of creating these environments of trust,

Of listening,

Of support,

That helps us become who we really are.

The other part of the art of sharing is those moments when we know to keep our mouths shut because there isn't trust,

Or because there isn't listening,

Or because there isn't support.

We have to watch out for that because sometimes that distrust is deep in our most intimate relationships.

We have to build it before we really share.

We have to make sure that we're not trying to share our life story on a roller coaster,

That someone's present to us.

We have to make sure that the person does love us,

And even if they may be angry with us or not support us in something that we're choosing,

That they support who we are.

When we know those things are there,

When we work ourselves to create those environments as well,

We can begin to bring who we are,

Our feelings,

Our thoughts,

Our dreams,

Our visions out in such a way that guess what?

They become real.

So just taking a prayerful moment today,

May we better commit to practicing the art of sharing first with ourselves.

I invite you to ask yourself,

As I ask myself,

How can I better listen to myself?

Is it a commitment to journaling more often?

Is it a commitment to have a little bit more silence on the commute?

Whatever it may be,

How can I better listen to myself?

How can I better support myself?

Ask yourself that question.

How about giving myself the benefit of the doubt?

How about looking back at my life and saying,

You know,

I've got a better track record than I think.

How can you better support yourself?

And lastly,

How can I better build a relationship of trust within myself?

Is there a part of me that it's portrayed myself that I need to call back and forgive?

Is there a part of me that is faking a sincerity with myself,

Kind of pathetically,

Like one who fakes an orgasm and tells themselves that it's true?

How can I better build trust so that I'm aware of my own thoughts and feelings that even if I choose not to share them with others,

I can be clear so that I can articulate them to myself at a later time?

What does it mean to trust in our body,

Trust in our mind,

So that the secrets can be told,

So that the best of ourselves can come forward,

So that real and meaningful healing can take place,

So that better living can get underway?