Great speech on speaking the truth about ourselves

This evening I was all set to write about a different subject. Then while eating dinner, I watched an episode of a streaming series that I've become addicted to. I'm on season 4 of the seven seasons, having belatedly discovered this show.

Which is going to remain nameless, because I don't enjoy having plot twists revealed in a series that I'm watching, and I don't want to run the risk that I'll do the same to someone else. 

Good actors with good scripts can convey messages about life that are deeply moving. I was hoping to be able to share a video of the actor saying what I've transcribed below, but such doesn't seem to exist. So I replayed the scene with a pen and notepad in hand, getting his words down as best I could.

What follows is almost entirely accurate. To set the scene, the actor, who plays a well-known attorney seeking political office, was prepared to tell a press conference that he was going to withdraw from a race, because a shameful truth about him was going to be revealed by an opponent.

He has those remarks in hand. Then he puts them away. What came next captivated me. Reading his words won't be nearly as powerful as watching them acted on screen. Still, the message resonated with me big time: none of us should fear speaking the truth about ourselves.

Unless we have a very good reason not to. Even then, generally it is better to be open and transparent -- naturally with exceptions. Most of us feel that if other people knew who we really are, they wouldn't like some parts of us.

Maybe. However, it's also possible that because everybody is hiding something from other people, an act of radical honesty would be refreshing, not off-putting. I could say more, but I'll let my transcript of the scene where the attorney reveals his secret do the talking. 

Nope. Not going to read that one.

"A lie," the wise man Winston Churchill purportedly said, "goes halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants off."

But, uh, I have a feeling that this truth will find its way quick enough. It's high time for truth, for openness, for unburdening. 

I'm not here like most politicians might be to ask you to trust me. No, instead I'm asking if I may trust you. With my deepest fear. Which is that you might know me for who I really am.

The idea of a prosecutor is to expose that which is hidden away, the evil, the dirty, the crooked, and the untruthful, to shed light, to reveal what is under all that darkness.

And I've come to realize that to do it right, I must first shine light on my own dark parts. Which is why I've asked you all here today.

You know what, I'm just going to say it. I, uh, in my private life, in the confines of my happy marriage, with my consenting wife, practice sadomasochism.

Uh, yeah. Bondage. Dominance. All the rest. Masks. Binds. Ropes. Fire. Wow, even just saying it like that I can feel my shoulders loosen for the first time in decades.

I am a masochist. In order to achieve sexual gratification I need to be tied up, pinched, whipped, kicked, or otherwise tortured. By my loving wife.

And here's the bigger truth. All of us need something, right? I don't know what you do in your bedroom, with your loved one.

But I do know that you're probably a little embarrassed about it. You probably don't want the rest of us looking at you while you do it. Unless that's your thing. And if so, great.

But wouldn't we be better off if we didn't let shame win, if we didn't feel sheepish, like we need to hide what moves us?

There are those who believe I've just ended my legal and political careers. They don't think that you can handle what I've just told you. 

I know that you'll get it because, at the end of the day you want the truth. At worst, maybe it won't stop you from getting to the polls to support me.

But at best, maybe on the way you tell someone who you really are. And maybe they like it. And maybe you feel just a little more comfortable in your own skin. As I finally do in mine.

OK, having typed in the transcript, I decided that because I like what was said so much, Iwant to share a You Tube video of the last part of the politician's speech. It begins with a spoiler alert, but you're going to know the show I'm watching from the video. That's the price to be paid for seeing a great acting job where a powerful messge is conveyed.

Understand: the attorney, though invariably fascinating, is a complex mixture of good deeds and bad deeds. Revealing who he really is in the bedroom was both good and bad. It made him feel better and took away a threat to use his secret against him, and surely inspired others, but his wife wasn't at all pleased with him. Such is life, a mixture of good and bad.

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

Agreed, that was a cool piece of acting!

Also agreed, this thing about embracing the vulnerability of letting it all hang out, of letting your inner self be known to people, even the embarrassing parts of it, that’s …very empowering, very cool.

But…

First, guy doesn’t say this out of the bigness of his heart, or anything like that, right? He’s already got a gun to his head, an opponent who’ll in any case out his sexual kinks to the world. All he’s doing is simply trying to put a brave face, and an idealistic-sounding spin, on to sordid necessity. Typical politician, that, to my mind!

Two, his wife’s expression suggests that he’s sprung this on her unawares. Or at least, that she’s not onboard with this. That’s kind of a dick move, no? This wasn’t his secret alone, it was his wife’s secret as well. It was a low thing to do, his exposing his wife’s sex life to the world at large, without first taking onboard her complete agreement.

Three, he’s into consensual SM? Meh, that’s no big deal, not unless this is a period drama set about sometime in the middle of the last century! That sounds like a lot of song and dance about a proverbial nothingburger! If he’d been outing himself as into poly-amorous bisexual BDSM, well then, while even that would be completely cool today in many circles, but I can see how for a politician, and particularly a politician in the US, that might be troublesome. But just some vanilla BDSM, indulged in in the privacy of his own home and with none but “his loving wife”? Those gasps in the audience seemed a bit out-of-place to me!

-----

Sorry, I realize I’m over-analyzing a simple post, where you intended only to present a simple message! But, while agreeing with the simple message, and appreciative of the acting here, but I don’t think that scene, overall, struck me in quite the vein that it seems to have struck you!

[um]

@ AR

Maybe it is all about trust AR.

Trust having the possibility to show an other person what is at the back of one's tongue, es goes the saying here.

Lack of trust, the fear to speak up, is at the root of many relational and psychological problems, fear that does make persons end up in the office of psychologists or even in a clinic, as there are limits to the amount of suppressed emotions and thoughts, a body can process.

It is a great good, if one encounters even ONE person in one's life, to whom one can speak up, without being afraid of negative consequences.

Unfortunately the RC is on its way to the grave yard and with it the office of confession ... THE possibility, for believers to empty their mental garbage bin on another human being for free and without consequences. These days that role is played by counselors ... often poorly and at great costs.

P>S
If people would trust one another and had not to fear negative backfire on speaking up, trembling for fear of loosing a relationship etc. Most of the people that end up in a counselors office would not have had to go there, let alone use pills.
Nobody ... family or fiends, and .. not even professional counselors, are interested in anybodies shadow,

[Appreciative Reader]

Agreed, um. Having even one person in your life, with whom you can be completely honest, and to whom you can reveal the entirety of who you are, knowing that you'll be loved and accepted nevertheless, is a great boon and benediction, a simple thing that might do away with so many of the trouble we see people plagued with, in their mind I mean to say.

And so much the better, if it's not just one person, but a whole lot of people, and best of all if it's everyone, absolutely!

While all of that is right, but in this case, this politician, he's simply putting a spin on to a necessity pushed on to him and that he can't wriggle out of; and in the process compromising his wife, apparently (basis what I read in her experession) without her consent. Neither those seem particularly noble to me.

Like I said, that's completely over-analyzing a simple enough post and simple enough message! Heh, I feel slightly ridiculous at having given in to the impulse to go to town examining threadbare this simple message Brian wanted to present here, and that you also chime in with now --- because at the end of the day I do agree with that message, completely.

[um]

@ AR

The tittle contains a "hidden" message AR ... otherwise it was not worth reacting.
What people writes is most of the time unimportant but the "collateral information that it contains" does.

Intentions!!

[SantMat64]

But the attorney didn't reveal himself. Someone spied on him and was ready to dox the intimate details of his sex life to the whole world. This put the attorney in the position of damage control of his career. Rather than lie, which would probably have been useless to counter the evidence his doxer possessed, he instead chose to play the Honesty Card.

The attorney was betting that a certain number of people would be taken in by the eloquence of his moral grandstanding. That's all we have here.

[umami]

He's in error about the quote. Winston Churchill is a false attribution, and "pants off" is more commonly "boots on" or "shoes on." Freudian slip. The writers must not want us to like the character very much.

No one should be shocked at kinkiness in a lawyer, but his carelessness and lack of depth stand out. The maxim has a long history, which he entirely missed. It reaches back to 1710 at least with Jonathan Swift, "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it." Footwear entered in 1820. "A Lie would travel from Maine to Georgia while Truth was getting on his boots."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/?amp=1

[Spence Tepper]

Rather than merely admire honest self-disclosure of what might be taken as embarrassing information, why not actually exercise that directly?

Let's stop making this about "The other" and practice what we preach? It's very healthy.

Freud wrote and said repeatedly, "Secrets will make you ill."

So be healthy. What repercussions, what cost could possibly equal that? None.

[Spence Tepper]

The character in this video bravely resigns to the situation and rises to the challenge by taking the high, and very expensive, road. His integrity is more important to him alone than his career.

Everyone knows this is right, though we make excuses to avoid going there.

How many of us simply hide what we know is the truth when that truth is unpopular, and should it come out, costly to us?

But in hiding, we ourselves create the secret, we harm ourselves. We secretly make excuses for doing so. W did nothing wrong we say. And we defend doing so by blaming the situation, the environment, even the God we don't believe in, just to remove ourselves from our own shame and fear.

But this is nothing compared to the harm we do to others. Revealing how we have hurt others is verboten socially. Who will trust us?

Personal progress is expensive! But the reward, true love, is worth it. We may be false, the whole world may be false, but real Love is not. Maybe it is the one thing that isn't.

And so that one chance, to find true love, it's costly, but worth it.

"Be like melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself."
Rumi

[Brian Hines]

As noted in this blog post, I agree with those who don't look upon the attorney as an exemplar of human rectitude. Yes, he's a schemer who goes up to the edge of the law and even over it, albeit a highly interesting schemer. What attracted me to this scene is its generality beyond the attorney's particular situation. I do believe that we are overly inclined to keep certain things about us secret when we'd be better off being honest about our health, sexual orientation, politics, religious belief/nonbelief, etc.

Regarding the attorney, previous episodes showed that his masochism really is a deeply rooted part of his makeup. This isn't part of his scheming. It's a plain fact that he both embraces and struggles with, because masochism is pretty much a taboo topic, worse than, say, admitting to homosexuality. So regardless of his political motivations (he correctly saw being open would help rather than hurt him, since the info was coming out anyway), it took courage to admit his masochism publicly.

And since I've blown this plot point, might as well mention that the next episode shows that after being elected Attorney General of New York, he's still with his wife, though she's still rather bitter and angry at him for revealing their sexual secret. PLEA: I'm only on episode 5 of Season 4, so if someone has watched all of the episodes, don't reveal key plot points in a comment. Though if you did and I saw it, I guess that would be justifiable "instant karma" for me revealing plot points.

[Ron E.]

Owning up and telling the truth – not always necessary or wise in my opinion. Obviously, the attorney here had the choice of either having someone else spill the beans or do it himself, and, doing it himself he pre-empted – and probably took the wind out of others revealing his secret- to his own benefit.

Sometimes owning up to something can cause more hurt and harm than keeping it to yourself. Also, such off-loading can be a selfish act in that the real motive is to make yourself feel better. I would say that if what you have done (or thought) is harming no-one, then man up and keep it to yourself.

Perhaps being a person rather than a nebulous entity is part of accepting who and what you are – with the possibility of addressing that which may be undesirable.

[SantMat64]

" I do believe that we are overly inclined to keep certain things about us secret when we'd be better off being honest about our health, sexual orientation, politics, religious belief/nonbelief, etc."

Precisely how are we "better off" to forgo all rights to personal privacy?

Again, the lawyer in this story didn't publicly admit to his (and his wife's) sexual proclivities because he and she had a deep belief that keeping the intimate details of their lives a secret was a bad thing. What the lawyer did was make a calculated political move of damage control that he felt would appeal to a certain number of people. He did this in the hopes of saving his career, and not as some kind of enlightened gesture toward taking the high road of truth.

And the lawyer did this damn what his wife thought about her rights of privacy, which puts the lawyer on the same wretched moral plane as his outers.

Let's not confuse self-serving political statements with acts of actual bravery and merit. Those who declare themselves atheists are no braver or better than those who admit to being religious. The same goes for other areas of our lives. Who wants a world where everyone is a petty activist who can't have a conversation without reminding the listener that they're gay, vegan, a Christian, or an atheist?

In the spiritual arena, Ram Dass was known for his personal honesty. I do think he deserves credit for not pretending, as many other gurus did, to be celibate when he was not (although in fact, Dass did play the perfect guru act for many years). But again, this was a political move to curry favor with a specific audience. I suppose in some measure Dass' disclosures gave him the solace that comes with a personal confession. Whether or not Dass thought his having anonymous sex with many thousands of men over his life was a good thing or a cautionary tale isn't clear. But this notion that personal privacy is itself a bad, unhealthy thing is a radically progressive trope. For those who are saying that revealing the intimate details of one's sex life is "refreshing, brave, honest" etc, I'll believe that when I see you do it.

[Spence Tepper]

Why secrets will make you ill is simple. We are not hiding from others so much as from ourselves. Now there is the secret personality you hide from, and the personality you live day to day. Two people, splintered into parts. To become whole? Connect with all parts, let that happen, don't get in the way.

When secrets are admitted, it need not be in public. Self-disclosure to any good friend who wants to help you resolve and move forward works fine. We are always moving forward so long as that is where our attention is. And, quite honestly, you aren't fooling anyone else but yourself.

To live a life where you can admit publicly doesn't mean it is necessary. But the fear of doing so should cause you to take another look at why you feel that way. What are you hiding from yourself? Can you learn to accept and forgive, in order to move forward? Can you have confidence, not so much that you are right or perfect, but that you are fine. You are the legitimate result of your past. Now, where do you want to go next?

We are not our habits. Habits can change. We must ascertain whether that is necessary or desireable. Do we want to change because we know it is wrong? Or because others think so? What do we think?

Or do we want to change because it is natural. We got here molded and changed, and that process will continue with or without our conscious consent. No one stays the same. They can become harder, less flexible, or more fluid. But you may not know which, unless you can let go and see objectively.

If we can harm less changing what we are doing, let's do that. If we can become our true selves, in a greater harmony, as we discover that, let's do that. Not fitting in with the world may be perfect fitting in with Nature, the natural flow of life. There are things within you specifically geared to help make change. There is strength there. And pushing against that will only lead to inner conflict, splitting into more parts and compartments, compartmentalizing "you" into fractured pieces, whose real strength is to become "One"/

If others will need to adapt and adjust, is that wrong? Or maybe helpful? You have a right to breathe and to have breathing room.

Yes, there are important intimacies that should be kept private. The information is owned by all participants and respect for that information, as the private property of others, must be honored.

But confession is really good for the soul, and the psyche. Because, whatever you are or have done, as your starting point, is legitimate. The moment you disclose, other memories hidden away will come out of their tiny boxes, and begin to come together within you as one transparent whole. Memories you had no idea where there and their power of influence over you that they had all this time.

To see yourself in the past from the third person perspective of today is a reality that you are not your past, even the past of a few minutes ago. Then, where do we move forward in the next moment? To consider that, one needs to be good with where you are and what you are today. Aware. Confident, Consciousness raised! And now more in touch with the power of life and movement within. Those hidden memories were a barrier, a prison. Brought to light, they lose their power.

I'll quote this again:
"Barns Burned Down.
Now I can see the moon."
Zen Flesh Zen Bones