honesty VS openness

A few nights ago, I was asked to lead a staff vespers for a cabin here at Camp Dudley. My cabin was fourteen year old guys. A “vespers” is basically a talk about something significant that is going to get them to think and going to also calm their minds before they try to go to bed after a day of crazy activity. We are encouraged to draw from the weekly theme, which this week is “Heartfelt Honesty”. I am not sure where the camp is going with this theme, but in this weird transition for myself where I often feel a bit lonely and isolated, I immediately started thinking about the difference between honesty and openness. For me, honesty is simply telling the truth. It can be about mere facts or events, but never get to the heart of a person. “Heartfelt honesty”, or openness is more of a risky, vulnerable sharing of one’s self. It is not required in order to be an honest person, but it does take guts to let someone get to know us in a real way, maybe even at our worst.

I brought these thoughts to them, hoping for the rousing discussion I had at my last vespers about role models and leadership……and there were crickets. I have to laugh now because I should have known. Teenage boys and openness do not typically mix. I do not like to blindly adhere to traditional gender roles in everyday life, but I really do think we are still in this new millennium socialized into certain ways of handling life. These guys, when asked how they make friends and deal with hardship, genuinely and HONESTLY said they play sports, have fun, live in the moment and essentially suck it up---walk it off. They did not seem to be bluffing---they really believed it, and felt convicted that of course that was how anyone should handle it.

It was a healthy reminder for me, especially in the midst of this whole new stage of my relationship with an incredible and mature adult man, that almost any man who is willing to share feelings and talk out problems is pushing hard against the grain of what he has been taught and what comes naturally to him. Of course there are enlightened exceptions to that, but the men in high school, the men in college, the men at seminary, the men in the hospital, and the boys everywhere……they all find the idea of sharing themselves about as appealing as buying tampons. Thus the crickets in trying to talk about it.

I didn’t mind. I think that we…..or I will speak for myself……I could learn something from them at times. Oftentimes, I get so caught up in worries and racing thoughts and insecurities that I lose the best of me and become a person I don’t like. Over the years one of the things that has helped me with this has been centering prayer and the practice of mindfulness—basically just taking a moment to stop, breathe and return to who I really am behind all that crap and what is really happening in reality right now, not what has happened before or what could happen. It is stopping to get perspective. Maybe these young boys would never liken their coping to all that, but I do think it is the same. When they struggle, as we all do, they go back to what they love, to what they know makes them happy, they remind themselves that there is still fun to be had and a new day to enjoy.
And besides, there will be plenty of time down the road for them to share their feelings at the urging of someone like me in their life……they should enjoy it now while it lasts 