December 27, 2010

Writing this blog has started to put one question on the table in a big way: “When is my life not anyone else’s business?”

Landmark Education puts a great stock in the value of “sharing”. Telling stories and making confessions, asking questions and publically exposing opinions and beliefs are the grist of every one of the dozens of transformational courses Landmark offers worldwide. Another phrase used to describe this public dialogue is “being in the inquiry”.

I’m not being sarcastic – I have seen and experienced that sharing really works! For one, people quickly find out that their apparently private experience is essentially exactly the same experience that 98% of the human race is having. This takes the heat out of lots of issues. For another, once said out loud thoughts tend to move on instead of showing up over and over again for hours, days, months. This gives clearer space, potentially for some fresh, powerful thinking.

After my vocal cords were damaged by steroids when I was twelve and I developed a masculine timbre to my speaking I became essentially silent out of embarrassment. This lack of willingness to speak up was reinforced by other strained and/or embarrassing moments in my teenage years.

Working with Marsha Forest brought me into a great many situations where my deep reticence to state my perspective was strained to the max! On many, many occasions I would be told that I had ten minutes to say something in front of a hundred people with no warning or preparation. The trouble was (and is!) that I really had some things I wanted to say, and at some level I was gratified by the opportunity. It was only after I took the Landmark Forum in 1990 that I began to develop a genuine willingness to speak up and out, and some comfort and skill in being a public figure.

The other side of the picture is that I have never had any real privacy. I share my body with many, many people, year after year. I quickly found out, too, that I gained a certain safety in having few secrets. Since everyone knows that everyone else knows my business, and theirs too should they share something with me, there is no room for the kind of manipulation that many people who are supported by others experience. That is to say I am much less vulnerable to abuse of all sorts because there is no room for: “This is OUR secret!”

The flip side of “tell all” is that I have not been good at understanding other people’s boundaries. I have had a “breakthrough” in that area this year. Simply put, I now know that I don’t easily see other’s boundaries and sometimes need to warn people to explicitly tell me where the edges are. I also now know that I may be wanting to be more obviously setting boundaries for myself. There is some strength in having shores for the river.

So then in the context of this blog is there some sort or level of secrecy that I want to maintain – is there some part of my thinking, feeling and experience that I don’t want to lay before known or unknown readers?

I recently created an identity for Facebook so that I can play Farmville in one character and keep the Judith Snow account free of all the nonsense messages. Right away I realized that I could give this new identity some characteristics, definitely some friends and a new public life.

So now one question is: “Do I share this new life with you?”