The Lost Art of Sharing

On the political drama The West Wing, a family friend who has known the show's president for decades says that, even to his kids, he has been the king of every room he has ever walked into. Still, Jed Bartlett has to grow into the role, and he needs help. When President Barlett slips out of a White House Christmas event to attend to a crisis, he needs a subtle reminder from a trusted aide. "Sir, your absence in the other room is conspicuous."

I felt that a couple of times this week. Twice, I wrangled my unruly ego, all the more inflamed for being recently wounded, into a manageable, if temporary, subordinate position. Twice, I resolved to learn from the candid experience of someone I trusted. Twice, their personal absence was as conspicuous as that of the fictional president. Oh, the people I looked to were physically present, but their offering didn't have the authentic ring of personal experience. Instead, they trusted market-tested phrases as their broad-spectrum antibiotic for the infections of life. I wanted to know where THEY as individual, growing people, had been gobsmacked with the glory of God. I wanted to know where THEY tripped over His Truth and experienced His grace in getting up again. Instead, in choosing someone else's phrases, they hired a substitute.

I'm prompted to write on this because I realize how often I've done the same thing. My bank of quotes and illustrations from my reading and listening is as ever-expanding as is my ego. Sometimes, I proffer the perfect quote when I'm not even asked. Other times, I recognize, I hide behind the fitted body armor of a favorite phrase, or the nearly unassailable aegis of the C.S. Lewis or a G.K. Chesterton rather than offer personal vulnerability. Even the Bible, infallible through the ages and faithful to its promise to discern even between soul and spirit can, I recognize, serve as my barrier to personal connection and accountability. Here's the verse. Read it twice and call me in the morning. Or don't. After all, I must focus my energy on storing my phrases in my brain or my computer, ready to dispense to the next person who is in crisis. Whatever the wound or burden of those who try to connect with me, I'm convinced in advance that the remedy is to go away impressed with my intellect.

Hollow in my application of the under-share, I'm equally tactless with respect to the over-sharing which is the ill of this age. Even a tabloid indicted the modern assumption that we believe we talk, or tweet, or post to Facebook, primarily for our own therapy. Guilty as charged. Where I fail to share my own experience when it is sought by a vulnerable friend in need of encouragement and edification, I am ready to broadcast the zinger into which I have distorted life's complexities to hundreds of strangers. That's the Truth I've tripped over recently, and I don't believe I need to compound that error with more details in order to illustrate the principle. In the instance which is on my mind a lot these days, I market tested my own words to my own concept of the masses, most of whom likely weren't paying attention. I played to the imaginary gallery in my own mind rather than, as I sought a couple of times this week, seeking to build up a person or a few people in specific ways.

As I close and continue to think about choosing words with the true benefit of the recipient in mind, I'm reminded of an instructor I had near the end of my undergraduate experience. His was the task, in my mind, anyway, of giving the final sharpening to the tools in the professional inventory of his students. Ours, then, would be to take those tools, or weapons, and write the story of our quest with our string of successes. Instead of focusing on the tools we would need to succeed, or the problems we were likely to face, this instructor shared anecdote after anecdote with himself as the star.

Given the size of my confessed self-regard now, I have no doubt that it was larger a quarter century ago and that this inflated sense of self interfered with my ability to learn from someone else’s experience. Nevertheless, as self-centered over-sharing has exploded since the quaint days before my commencement, I wonder if we might strengthen one another in the in between. I wonder if we might be personally present, candid, and vulnerable in the examples, counsel, and prayers, and tears we offer to the hurting without overshadowing the uniqueness and present pain of their own experience.