Lives

My dream –

It is thought that everyone lives, simultaneously, three lives – a public life, a private life, and a secret life. What, though, if those three lives were to coalesce into one? Would that not be more efficient, more integral, more satisfying?

Concealment and invention are certainly as important as honesty and reality, but why might they not coexist in one manifestation, rather than two or three. Why may one not appear as one is, and be as one appears?

Secrets, too, are by nature difficult to keep, and equally difficult to share. They can make us sick. They can also heal us. Without them, we are empty.

In the lives of many, the public life is the life of illusion, devoid nearly entirely of reality. The experience, the skills, the reputation represented in and with that life, though apparent, are masked, hidden beneath the veneer of one’s ego ideal. Can any of that be taken seriously? Is any of it ever taken seriously? Perhaps only with politicians, lawyers, and liars. Big truck, big weapon – small cuckolded dick.

And the private life, is it any more real? This face is no more real than the public face. Instead of facing outwards, though, its gaze rests upon the narrow band of threshold between the outer life and the inner life. That threshold is merely a mirror reflecting a superficial image, either auto-engaged, or bounced, rebounded off another – a partner, a companion, a spouse.

The sweats, the pyjamas, the unshaven chin, the absence of makeup, even the nakedness, upon that threshold, before another, the one in the mirror, or the one before whom one is mirrored, all remains at least somewhat, and, often, wholly, contrived; artifice of the ego ideal, again, raising its beautiful head, brandishing its self-congratulatory countenance.

Does reality, then, dwell solely in the secret life, a life that seldom, or never, sees either the light of day, or the dark of night? Does a secret unconfessed continue a secret, or does it, over time, for lack of breath, for want of reach, diminish to but an ember? Is it not the courage to confess that gives it spark, then grants it flame?

Latent is inactive, unrevealed, potential. Dormant is inert, fallow, quiescent. Secret is apprehensive, irresolute, pusillanimous.

It is not better to be hated for what, for whom, one is, than to be loved for what, for whom, one is not?

Brilliance is only transparent, visible, viable, when not enshrouded by secrets unconfessed, by fear unextinguished.

To render anything public is to render it spurious, feigned, performed. To render anything private is to render it masturbatory, submissive, contrite.

The secret life, the life at the heart of one’s being, beyond the definition of the public, and farther, deeper beyond the identification of the threshold of the private, into the realm of mystery, with measured, deliberate disclosure, in interest, fascination, infatuation, fulfilment, obsession, and love, is where, alone, truth and magic collide.

So, how does one live one life, then, instead of three? Is it possible? Do you believe in unicorns?

I do believe in unicorns. I search for them. I am one – a unicorn. But that’s a secret.

And this is how to turn three lives into one.

A vast surrender is your only strength. To become who you were meant to be, you must first surrender to that notion, accept it; and like a secret, given breath in confession, grant that belief, now imbued with life, the life it was conceived to live.

In elucidating the secret life, its brilliance naturally subduing the blur of the public life, the twilight of the private life, in the revelation of its courageous light, or in the blinding of its splendour, three lives conform into one.