What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness

We tend to be people with fences, walls, and barriers. Many of us have built entire fortresses around our hearts, keeping safe what we truly feel and think deep inside. When it comes to being real with even those closest to us we often move into vague speech. If people really want to know us they must swim a mote of humor, scale a wall of sarcasms, only then to find the gate of our hearts bolted shut with distrust. Don’t be too clear and nobody gets hurt. Practice the art of vagueness and live to distrust another day.

But being vague has its downsides. Who can really know us if we live a life of vagueness? Who can really love us when we have a flare for obscurity?

Living in vagueness we become a people who distance ourselves from reality, left to search for relief within the virtual. Drink it away. Smoke it away. Eat it away. The bottle, the food, and the one nightstand can never truly know or love us.

Vagueness rewards us with loneliness, isolation, and a life lived with little love or truly being known. Sound familiar? Ask yourself what is at risk if I become a little more open with people who have, thus far, proven themselves to be safe and trustworthy? If it all goes south then you are no worse for the wear, left with the same loneliness, isolation that you walked in with.

But what else is possible? What if those who have proven themselves to be safe and trustworthy remain safe and trustworthy? What if they listen to you, and seek to know you better? What if they witness your moments of joy as well as your times of pain and sorrow? What might happen to your loneliness and isolation if you let others in to love you right where you are?

What happens in vagueness stays in vagueness. The power is yours. The choice has always been up to you.

Posted by Thaddeus Heffner, LMFT April 6, 2014

Posted in: Community,Healthy Intimacy,Isolation,Living,Loneliness,Love,Safety,trust,Vulnerability