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Yet another person emailed me the other day to marvel at how I can be so
open about my life, writing about anything and everything that is important
to me about my life and posting those writings on the web. It's true, I am
rather open about myself in Living Groups (, but know that I am not the only
person out there with a propensity towards stark honesty).
There is one person whom I can't be this honest with in real life, and
who I hope will never read Living Groups; my mother. Now don't get me wrong,
I have a wonderful relationship with my mother and am very honest with her,
but there are just a few things that I can't tell her about.
No, Hippo's little "accident" involving beer is not one of those things; I
seriously doubt that either of my parents failed to realize what was really
going on that next morning. In fact, I think my father is trying to torture
Hippo by keeping a few bottles of Hornsby, the beer in question, in the
fridge; sometimes I see Hippo openning the fridge and pulling out a bottle,
bringing it under his nose and smelling it for the lingering smell of his own
vomit to see if it is one of the beers which he placed in the trash can after
finding them in his drawer the morning after his night-o-beer. No, I would
have no problem telling my mother about that little incident.
Some things which I would have, and have had, trouble telling her are
about my idea of uniquely normal people, my intense desire to know them, and
my ideas about portrait photography as a fun way of achieving my goal in life.
I have a hard enough time explaining this stuff to total strangers, trying to
make my mother understand it would be impossible. You see, I don't even
really care if total strangers understand my goal in life and the ideas
surrounding it, they at least will either never say anything to me or pretend
to understand; it's so nice to have a modest audience of people who almost
never email me, I can just pretend that they read and understand fully and
that they approve.
My mother is another story entirely. Not only have I never been able to
explain things like this, or even things of much less importance, to her, but
it is totally obvious when she doesn't understand something because she asks
lame questions or makes unrelated comments. The worst part is when she
doesn't see things my way, when she doesn't understand the excitement behind
whatever it is that I'm trying to explain to her, when she asks a pointed
question to mask her clear disapproval of whatever it is that she thinks I'm
talking about. Yah, one reason why I don't tell her about my recently
realized goal in life is because I'm afraid that she'll not understand and
that ultimately she will disapprove.
But it's more than that, and this is the crux of the matter. I was never
really sure why it was that I never wanted to tell her about certain things
until one night a few weeks ago when I realized the real reason, that
once you tell your mother something of your plans it goes from an
idle whim or perhaps even a hopeful plan to a commitment.
Once you've told your mother what you want to do with your life not only are
you open to her disapproval, not only will you be forever trying to explain
it to her, but you are locked into that future. Once she knows your plans
you have to actually go through with them or lamely let them fizzle out, only
to have to explain to your mother why it was that you didn't try hard enough
or how you changed your mind because yes, you are a fickle child.
I don't want to tell my mother about these things primarily because I
want to have the freedom to achieve my dreams without her knowledge, without
the stress of knowing that if she knows and my plans don't work that I'll have
to admit to her that yes, it was a stupid idea.
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