The Last Hurah

“Here’s some advice about keeping secrets: it’s a lot easier if you don’t know this in the first place.” —Alan Turing, The Imitation Game

Well, in case you do know your secrets, let me give you some perhaps more applicable advice. 

Knowing your secrets can absolutely be a burden. If there’s anybody who understands this, it’s the 17-year old boy writing this blog. But since the very first post of this blog, when I turned a burden into an advantage–a relief–I have been a strong believer in the notion that our secrets can be equally as empowering as they can be dangerous. Yes, they can be empowering in the sense that if we know something about another person that the rest if the world doesn’t we can use those secrets for ill to manipulate that person. This is true of stories in general…that they can be used to malign. What I actually mean, though, is that the secrets we keep can be used for good. To help people. To connect with somebody that feels more alone than they should be. To change the course of , well, just about anything we want.

On a slightly different note, I find myself wondering about what the secret is. What is that all-fitting key, the golden ticket, the magic bullet that will help us all succeed. Sorry to disappoint, but I cannot possibly write for you in a couple of lines something that might satiate the curiosity I may have just provoked in you. I’ll give it my best shot, anyhow.

The secret to the game we call life, at least in my opinion, is to do whatever it takes to leave the world a better place than you entered it. Before continuing, I should point out a flaw in that sentence. Instead of trying hard with little success to make the world a better place in a variety of aspects, pick something that has been an important part of your experiences—something that, left out, would alter the purpose of your story or kind of story you tell—and think of ways to improve it for the next person. 

I am going to toot my own horn for a couple of sentences. Doing so for longer than that would be a waste of precious time for you and for me. I recently coordinated a presentation on the importance of including LGBT-specific sexual education into our schools’ Health Education curricula. Without using this blog as another means of getting my ideas across about why it is so important that this curricular change occurs, I’ll explain how this went from secret to successful in my mind.

Last year, when friends of mine from the student newspaper and I had just started talking about this issue, I was still in the closet. I was scared and, frankly, pissed that there were people even considering not allowing this curricular change to occur. As I had conversations about it with more and more people, and better understood that people were open to discussion around issues like this one that pertained to the LGBTQ+ community, I became more and more comfortable in my own skin. I also began to realize that I was somebody who not only had a voice I was willing to use for good, but I also had a perspective few others did that could make that voice more than good. That perspective came from secrets I had been carrying around with me. What I formerly viewed as baggage, I then began to understand that same baggage as a sort of weapon. And I grew increasingly passionate about seeing this discussion turn into something more tangible, more meaningful, than I imagined it could be a year ago. Indeed, I acted upon that passion, and did something that was important for my own personal goals, but that will hopefully make a difference of students after me.

Not all secrets are meant to be used. Know that. For each individual, a different set of judgment calls occur with respect to what we choose to lay out on the table and what we don’t. That being said, remember that secrets are only damaging to us if we take a passive or even frightened approach to dealing with them. On the contrary, they can play a pivotal role in helping to improve our own lives and the lives of those who come after us if we choose to confront them, converting them into a part of our stories that empowers us. 

Supreme Court Report: Gay Marriage

On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments (read the transcription and hear the recording of them here) in what is the culmination of a decades-long struggle for equality for gay people. The Supreme Court took this case on after the bans on gay marriage that were upheld in the lower courts of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee were struck down in other states' appellate courts.

These states are going up against 12 couples and two widowers, according to this story that aired on National Public Radio (NPR). Given how nuanced of an institution marriage can be, especially for gays, it comes as no shock that there is more than one question. In fact, there are two. The first is about whether or not states have the right to ban gay marriage at all, and the second is concerned with whether states that ban gay marriage must recognize marriage must recognize same-sex marriages that occurred in a state that permits it. The debate is messy, to repeat myself, nuanced, exceedingly tenuous and highly emotional for many parties involved.

I think it would be fairly obvious where I come out with regards to my opinion. I support gay marriage. I support gay marriage along with significantly more than half of the nation's populous. At that point, you might ask yourself why, if the approval ratings for gay marriage are that high – more than doubled since 1996, the year the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed – we are still debating this? Why is this even a question? Don't we live in a democracy, where the opinion of the majority rules? Well, think again.

One might detect a tinge of bitterness in my tone. My apologies. What I am more than bitter is saddened. I'm saddened by the seeming inability of those who oppose gay marriage and/or those who wish to discriminate against gays in other ways to learn from history. The reality is that progress marches on. It is the people that enter the courts with personal fear, hatred, or a vendetta against the gays that try and attach rational arguments to discriminating against a certain segment of the population that I actually feel most sorry for. Have you not understood that the last thing we need in this nation right now is discrimination? Can you not fathom that two people can love each other regardless of sex, and that they deserve the same protections that every other couple does that lives in this great nation's many states? Right now, this case brings to the surface far more questions than it does hypothesized answers in my mind.

At this point, I pause to ask myself just how this has to do with secrets. I'll say this. It doesn't really. As a matter of fact, this is a very publicly divisive issue. For example, while we currently permit gay marriage to occur in 36 of our 50 states, for example, many of the states that are holding out legalize discrimination in other forms against gay people. We are at wildly different ends of the spectrum as a union of 50 smaller entities. With regards to secrets, though, what is to be said for the thousands upon thousands of men and women who have kept secret a part of themselves for the last, I don't know, forever? Personally, I am not very confident in a decision by the supreme court that will prohibit states' gay marriage bans. In my opinion, the unwanted decision would be an invalidation of countless men and women, especially those fighting for this right as part of larger movement, who have chosen to both keep and share their secrets with a world that doesn't understand them and often doesn't accept them. So, in my mind, the decision this court makes has a great deal to do with secrets. Honoring secrets. Secrets shared and secrets hidden.

I would like to end this with the prophetic words of Virginia Senator Chuck Robb, who argued against DOMA before the senate. As a representative of a conservative state, this raised some eyebrows. He knew this speech would cost him re-election, but he knew he could not sit on his hands and let DOMA go uncriticized in the ways he imagined it needed to be critiqued. I believe it is time for our Supreme Court justices to do a similar thing with the casting of their votes that Robb did with the opportunity he had to speak out. Here is what I think is the most salient excerpt of his speech:

"What we do know is that time has been the enemy of discrimination. It has allowed our views on race, gender, and religion to evolve dramatically and inevitably in the American tradition of progress and inclusion. We're not there yet, Madam President [of the Senate]. In matters of race, gender, and religion, we've passed the laws, implemented the court decisions, signed the executive orders. And everyday, we work to battle the underlying prejudice that no law or judicial remedy or executive action could completely erase. But we've made the greatest strides forward when individuals faced with their moment in history were not afraid to act, and time has allowed us to see more clearly that the humanity that minds us rather than the religious, gender, racial differences that distinguish us. But I fear, Madam President, that if we don't stand here against this bill, we will stand on the wrong side of history, not unlike the Supreme Court justices who upheld the separate-but-equal doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson...Most of us are uncomfortable discussing, in public, the intimacies of life. And most of us are equally uncomfortable with those who flaunt their interests, whether they be gay or straight. But in the end, we cannot allow our discomfort to be used to justify discrimination. We are not entitled to that indulgence. We cannot afford it."

On Oil, the Media, and Consciousness

It wasn’t more than a couple of weeks ago that millions of student and their families flocked to some pretty incredible destinations. For some, that consisted of spending time skiing. For others, that was a beach vacation that took place near some of the bluest waters in the world. I’ll say that I was in the latter camp. 

I was extremely fortunate to have gone to Cancun, Mexico with my mother. And when we began our descent through the wispy layer of clouds, I realized what people truly came to this place and others like it for. This is what I saw!

I was totally taken by that bird’s eye view (right). Not only were the colors amazing, but what struck me most was my ability to see the reflections of the few clouds in the sky on the ocean floor. Oh, how clear it was! I was dumbfounded once again when I walked into our hotel room to find the view you see (below on the left). Tiny waves of crystal clear blue Gulf water fighting with white sand for the hearts of beachgoers brought a twinkle to my eye and a smile to my face. 

Thinking about brief experiences like the ones I mentioned and photographed in the context of Earth Day today, I begin to wonder about the things that are really endangering beautiful moments, places, creatures, and the places where people live. After experiencing what the beautiful Gulf of Mexico has to offer, why not focus for a quick bit on one of the most destructive events that happened within it – the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

According to this list of the biggest oil spills in history (by volume), the Deepwater Horizon disaster comes in at number two (however, it is the biggest accidental spill in history) with over 210 million gallons of oil spilt. How could this ever have happened, and what was BP thinking by putting the environment at such great risk by engaging in dangerous offshore drilling practices? I remember asking myself the exact same questions almost 4 years ago to the day. I sought out some answers, but here I am with an even deeper curiosity because the media at the time never really answered them. It never told me how things really happened or answered my question about what we could do to not let something similar happen going forward. The lack of clear information I had four years ago made me honestly feel like BP and the media were keeping secrets from all of us.

 Shortly after my return from Mexico, we watched a documentary-esque TV show called VICE in my journalism class. In this episode, the correspondents were tracking oil theft and illegal oil production that was occurring in the Niger River Delta. The illegal production plants were right on the water. One local resident said that the plant was so dangerous that it could practically explode at any second. At that point, the camera man pointed his camera down into the murky muck the investigating party had been wading through. If the plant were to explode, the entire swampy ecosystem would have been ablaze as well given the volumes of oil in it. All I can say is that there was limited to no possibility of any life being able to survive in such a poisoned environment. I know the same was true for many hundreds of miles of coastline following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. 

Having read many items now about how we talk about nature in our everyday lives, I think it is interesting to examine how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and other catastrophic spills play into the debates that occur about man’s relationship with nature. Thinking eco-critically, there is no doubt that many people blamed BP for the incident. Rightly so. However, this only further pitted big business and economic productivity (that’s why we consume oil, right?) against environmental health. What could have been done was, instead of leaping straight to the catastrophe, news sources could have done a far better job of actually explaining what happened and then reporting on the measures that BP and other off-shore drilling companies were taking to ensure that this never happened again. The suspicion I had four years ago that somebody was guarding information couldn't have been that far off. But that seems moot in comparison to the notion that that also means information about how to prevent future incidents was being and may still be withheld. Some may say too little too late, but the reality is we have never experienced “too late” in a dramatic way when it comes to the environment. “Too late” won’t occur for a long time, truth be told. But the media is “too late” almost always in covering events in a way that can actually make a positive contribution to society instead of merely assigning blame and creating fear. 

Good Will Hunting–movie review

In a day and age when films often fail to please – often lacking originality and the ability to actually make viewers feel something substantive – I was pleasantly surprised to take a trip back to 1997. It's notable for two reasons. First, it's my birth year. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly depending on your perspective, it was the release year for director Gus Van Sant's iconic film, Good Will Hunting, featuring a budding Matt Damon and a still-rising Robin Williams. 

While I don't intend to spoil the film for any of this blog's viewers, I will give a brief (mostly) exposition to help you all contextualize some of the analysis I do of this transformative movie. Will Hunt, a 20 year old youth who has spent his entire life in and out of foster care on the poor south side of Boston, commutes to M.I.T. every morning to wash floors until long after students and professors exit the lecture halls. One such professor is Gerry Lambaugh, a Fields Medal winner, who is considered a mathematical genius. He challenges his Advanced Theories class to proving one of the most complex theorems in the field, which Lambaugh and his colleagues took years to devise. While washing floors at night, careful that nobody has eyes on him, Will takes chalk to the board outside the lecture hall on which the proof is to be done. He completes it within minutes on a break from serpentines with his mop. And correctly. When a student of Lambaugh's notifies him the next day that the theorem has been proved, Lambaugh is stunned and eager to find the mysterious mathematician, who he believes is in his class.

A short while later in the movie, Lambaugh puts up another, far more challenging theorem to be procved. Him and his assistant see Will writing on the board and think he is vandalizing the Institute's property, but soon discover that Will is an enormously talented individual. It was good that they did because this winds up being Will's ticket out of jail after he gets into a bloody brawl with a rival posse of him and his buddies. He is only let out of jail on a conditional basis, however. In addition to doing math with Professor Lambaugh, who, it becomes apparent, is more interested in Will's gifts than actually helping him out of his current and rather dire living situation, Will also has to do therapy. As a hard-headed, hard-bodied, self-proclaimed womanizing badass, Will is very reluctant to the idea of this, as one might imagine. After getting underneath the skin and into the minds of multiple shrinks, Lambaugh reaches out to his college roommate, Sean (played by Robin Williams) – a professor at a community college slightly more than slightly less prestigious than M.I.T. – in a last-ditch effort to keep will from going back to prison and thus help himself make a great deal of money. In their first meeting, it seems as if Will is going to break Sean like every other therapist he'd seen prior, insulting Sean, his dead wife, and all of his life's accomplishments. By some miracle, Sean agrees to see Will for another session, and the rest of the movie follows the importance of the presence of their two opposite personalities in each other's lives. 

Judging by the fact that it's unlikely my brief summary did any of the movie justice, you might get the sense that this is the cookie-cutter wise-presence-in-a-troubled-young-boy's-life kind of film. It is that...minus the cookie-cutter portion. It is too often that the oh-so-influential wise man in these kinds of movies is actually too wise, and his ability to learn from his student, for lack of a better term, detracts from the use of the archetypal character. 

To help Will understand that the finest thing in life is love and that the hate and uncertainties about the world Will harbors are actually detrimental, Sean opens up about his own past professional and personal life. As the two grow closer and Will asks questions about Sean's personal life in particular, the therapy becomes mutual, helping Sean process years of agonizing baggage. I was genuinely surprised by this kind of depiction of therapy in mainstream culture being such a positive one (especially for this representation approaching 20 years of age). Usually therapeutic experiences are belittled, but what this got right was the give-and-take of secrets between patient and doctor that makes for most effective therapy.

It was fascinating to look at secrets as offensive and defensive mechanisms. It was certainly never going to be a deeply wounded Will that was going to be the first to volunteer a part of himself the world doesn't already see. Therefore, it had to be Sean that put a part of himself on the table. That being said, he uses his own secrets to bridge the disconnect that exists with Will at the beginning of their meetings. On the other hand, Will's strongest defense mechanism is his lack of willingness to open up. This goes to a show that we all use secrets, which fall under the larger umbrella of story, to our advantage and to get what we want, whether we realize it or not. 

Among the most telling scenes of the movie is in one of their last sessions when Sean cautiously steps closer to Will, repeatedly whispering the phrase: "it is not your fault". This winds up in an embrace between the two men that I as a viewer felt, and the shoulder-shaking sobs that come from Will as his tough-guy facade finally dissipates and we understand Will on a level we never would have imagined we would, even in moments just prior to this scene. Here it is on your left.

Even though we use secrets to get what we want, Will never intended to become this close to anybody, nevertheless some shrink whose life he tears to shreds in their first meeting. But the difference between somebody like Sean and another like Gerry is that the genuine concern Sean has for Will's well-being instead of the shallow interest in his intellectual gifts that Gerry maintains throughout the movie create the unintended consequence of Will finding himself attached to Sean. This testifies not only to the unintended results that often come from keeping/sharing secrets, but it also goes to show that the ways in which one person handles another's secrets can either make or break a relationship. In Sean and Will's case, it certainly made it. 

I Can Contain These Thoughts No Longer

Since my last post, where I considered secrets as translucency, I've been thinking about other metaphors and similes that I could use and have used in my writing of these posts to discuss secrets. Although I can think of a couple, I feel as if the most common is talking about how to keep a secret is to put something into a container.

Well, what kind of container? At first, I think of these little tupperware containers I have sitting in my fridge--the ones that separate hold certain foods to keep them all from spoiling immediately. Only a certain size secret can fit into these smaller containers, but as is the case with the losing battle in which I engage when I need to clean out the fridge and there are many containers with old food, the psychological containers we have for all of these tiny secrets and white lies begin to stack. Tupperware containers may sit there for a week, two, or three if there's not time to clean. Then we notice the lack of available space in the fridge and repeat the process of cleaning it out and filling it up again. But do we know our brains as well as we know our refrigerators? If you're like me, which for my own self-confidence and for the purpose of this blog we'll assume you are, then you've devoted far too little time over the course of your life to cleaning your mental refrigerator. And much of what we feel like we've done ourselves a favor by hiding from the rest of the world has since rotted.

Now, there's a reason why we chose to but somethings in these metaphorical containers in the first place. This is why they're called secrets...because we didn't want people to know about them. But when secrets become a burden is the point where we keep them--and they take up space that we could use to otherwise house newer and more pertinent secrets--when opportunities to address those in a constructive way are beginning to present themselves and we aren't taking them. In other words, the fridge starts to smell bad because of the old and nasty food and there isn't enough room to hold fresher secrets, which are more important in that moment of our lives to keep anyways.

So there are the small tupperware containers that the fridge holds, and then there is the shipyard full of our big, big storage containers. While the fridge remains closed until somebody decides it needs to be opened, the storage containers that we can compare our big secrets to are individually locked and oftentimes for good reasons. Sometimes they become more like vaults instead of containers, though. Do we really know what's happening inside? Can we access them to find out? These aren't just things we can forget about, even if we wanted to. These containers are big, heavy, voluminous and dark. But the way we limit these larger secrets to exposure to the outside world, preventing ourselves or others from unlocking the container door and bringing some light into this dark space, can also be quite dangerous if taken to an extreme.

An important characteristic is what the metaphor connotes as a whole in addition to the function of the individual words of or implied by the metaphor. "Container" has a fairly neutral connotation, but "closed", "sealed", "dark", "mask", "bury", and "under wraps" suggest things more forbidden and not so healthy to keep to oneself. That's certainly not to say that keeping secrets is a bad practice--it's a necessary one to maintain our private selves--but it is important to be aware of just what exactly we're containing and if we are missing the opportunities to healthily expose it.

Secrets in a Word--Translucency

I think of a Law & Order episode. The suspect sits in an unforgiving chair set before a metal table with two detectives in the room that are even more unforgiving than the chair. There's a single lamp dangling above the interrogation table, the buzz of the electricity audible as it courses through the inner tubing of the bulb. The disdain for the suspect and the saturating light shining down on him concoct to form a haze. It's eerie. We know the confession will come. We know that secrets of unthinkably devious crimes will spill forth from his lips.

The aforementioned haze isn't a great example of translucency, but that's what I thought of. So, let's run with it. Since the early days of all of our education, we have been conditioned to understand the importance of light in books, movies and other art forms. For me, it was reading The Allegory of the Cave that pounded these notions into my head. It is the ultimate, and perhaps most common, motif. Even the famous short story I am currently reading in my Hispanic Literature course deals with the importance of light. "Las tinieblas" (the darkness), "la lucidez (the light) and "la penumbra" (the semi-darkness) are the three levels of light this work deals with. I was most intrigued by the role "la penumbra" played in this work, and I soon leapt to the concept of translucency. A filter for light (light representative of truth) which distorts the image on the other side. Who would have thought that the filtering of truth would have the same effect on our lives?

On the other side of the spectrum, translucency is very different from opaqueness--the complete filter of light. Whereas opaquenss completely hides the image on the other side, translucency only makes it challenging to see the whole image. To be translucent is to keep secrets, and we can all agree that we have some of those. Those are the dark spots, the spots inside of us people can't see because we don't let the truth light brings shine there.

Not only is the filtration of light, secrets, and how the intensity of the filter plays a role in the way people see us, but the same concepts apply to the way we see ourselves. Almost all of last year, particularly in the spring, was one of the most sad periods in my life. It was borderline depression. I couldn't perform at all at the same level in any aspect of my life that I had previously been able to do. Coincidentally, or not so, it was also the period where I was much closer to opaque--darkness, "las tinieblas"--than I was to translucent, never mind transparency. After having gritted my teeth through such a tough time, I realized that I needed to open up for my own sake. Although keeping things "bottled up" that will eventually spill over, to use another metaphor, is somewhat trite and cliche, it still rang true for me. When they finally did spill over, I decided to go with the grain and let more than just the overflow out. What I needed was a release, to let more light shine on various parts of me. Thank goodness that's what I allowed happen with the help of important people in my life. I am a far healthier and more stable person, for appearances sake and internally, than I ever could have been living in "la penumbra".

Filtering Secrets in Identity Fracturing

It was just last weekend when I saw the TV show known as Criminal Minds. This particular episode was about a man who had been creating many identities for himself and defrauding wealthy couples. His MO was to sleep with the wife, have the wife introduce him to the husband, swindle the wealthy couple out of a large sum, and then kill the husband. This man had done this in multiple city with multiple couples in each city, and the detectives were only able to catch this near-perfect criminal because of the way he started breaking down and getting “sloppy”. This resulted from a process known as “identity fracturing” (read more about multiple personality disorder here); all of these identities that he had created for himself—despite having the same man behind them—had led him to start blending fictitious traitss with real qualities. 

As much as I’d love to delve further into the criminal psychology of this character’s patterns, I thought it would be better to bring it home. It has become clear to me that we have all been fracturing our identities more than past generations. If you haven’t already guessed, I believe this is almost entirely attributed to technology—more specifically social media.

In considering my own online presence, I went to the most visual and surface-level analysis first: my home screen. In the “Social” applications folder on my smartphone, it appears that I have nineteen photo-sharing, messaging, and social media apps. What was even scarier is that, on most of these apps, I am different people! Combined, my followers, friends, message recipients, etc. experience almost twenty different Aarons! This is in addition to the multiple selves I have in real life. (Here is a blog that helped me consider this personality division on social media.) Is this okay?

Even though there is certainly overlap between many of the online and web personas I have created, I wanted to better understand what part of myself I was channeling through each outlet. With this blog as an important one of those twenty different selves, I was fairly confident that secrets had a fair amount to do with it. The secrets I kept in order to make the main voice of that outlet, whichever one 

of the many it was, m

ore prominent and unique were exactly what gained me followers and likes. For example, taking the lot of emotional baggage I have to Twitter would be totally damaging to the comedic presence I have established on it. Taking the more obscene thoughts I have to the oh-so-monitored Facebook would be catastrophic to my superiors’ perceptions of me later on down the road during, say, a job application.

Once again, I stress that I have almost twenty of these personalities. In the same episode of Criminal Minds, it was noted that the CIA assigns approximately two or three aliases/false identities to its operatives. The number is very intentional so as to prevent the fracturing that occurred to the serial scammer and killer in this Criminal Minds episode from happening to those responsible for this nation’s security. Can we fracture healthily? The most trivial question to ask is: are losing followers on each of our social media outlets by keeping secrets to convey a particular personality on each? The much more important question to ask is: are we losing a part of our actual self and interpersonal relationships in real life at too fast of a rate to recover?

I want to explore this further, so I’m going to follow up on this topic in a couple of posts. In the meantime, let this be some food for thought regarding your use of technology as an enabler to convey a more filtered, refined you. I know I will be doing the same.