Vulnerability
Here's an excerpt from a book I read recently called Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson:
"People like it when you tell them things in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to."
I can divide every single relationship in my life into people who know me and people who know about me. Here's to letting people in, to letting others see who I truly am, to making the effort to meet without assumption.
