Living Authentically
I don’t talk much about my dating life here. But I do have one. This mostly-unmentioned part of my existence involves an embarrassingly large number of approximately-one-hour, one-time meetings with women I’ve met online.
Lamentably, I still have hopes of finding “the one.”
When I do talk about “dating” (oooooh, how I hate that word), I often comment on the high percentage of women who engage in some sort of deception. Mostly, their dishonesty takes the form of lying about age and/or posting photographs, on their online profiles, that are very dated. But there are other topics that are exaggerated or misleading, as well. For example, I’ve met women who claim to do this or that for a living, but it turns out they don’t do this or that at all.
I was recently provided with yet another example of this kind of behavior.
Last week, I received am email from a woman who said:
Hi,
We seem to share many common interests -- reading, writing, photography, personal/spiritual growth, qualities we think are important in a relationship partner...and more. I'm curious to know more about you. If you resonate, please drop me a line.
Best wishes.
[no signature]
The vital statistics she listed about herself, height, body-type, age, etc., seemed consistent with her photograph. She was attractive and had produced a very appealing profile narrative. Her listed age was five years younger than me.
I wrote back and we agreed to meet for a short hike (weather permitting) on (Super) Sunday (before the game). During the week, when we were making these plans, I offered her my cell-phone number. On Friday, she finally emailed me her number when I reminded her that I didn’t have it…just in case we had to change plans if the weather wasn’t cooperating.
She also indicated she didn’t have a cell phone. And that she didn’t check emails during the weekend. [Totally not my lifestyle, but what the heck (I thought to myself).] She also didn’t furnish a last name, but I Googled her phone number and was rather surprised at what I found. So, Friday night I wrote back:
Hey Gaylene (not her real name),
I know you said you wouldn't be at the computer this weekend, but thought I run something by you just in case...
There seems to be weird information out there on the internet. Your phone number yields a Gaylene Luvall, but also leads to other Gaylene’s with last names of Anderson, Drake, Damasch, Swelton, and Wexler. And an age ten years older than your profile.
Good ol' Google must be confused??
-jim
As it turns out, Google was not confused.
Google hardly ever is.
When we met (yes, I showed up…I was curious), and asked her about these issues, she expressed surprise that so much information was “out there.” She never did tell me exactly what her age was or how she got all those “aliases” (which is what the web page I found called them). She said that she really hadn’t been married THAT many times. And proffered the argument that age is a state of mind. I countered that chronological age is a precisely a matter of biology and arithmetic.
Gaylene (again, all these names are made up…I don’t have the intent to “out” her) is a therapist and life coach (presumably). She said that in her practice she helps people “live authentically” and she, herself, places a high value on honesty.
All I can is: wow. Be careful out there.
This is Life
So, I’ve decided: my life is not stranger than fiction. My life is precisely like a real life, filled with joy, sadness, large and small risks, successful experiments, failed ventures, good people, weird and bad people, health, illness, disappointments, met and unmet expectations, and lots and lots of loss.
The differences I spoke of in my last entry turned out to be, as I had thought, irrefutably irreconcilable. There was simply going to be no way for the two of us to pursue a life path together with the clash in values that had emerged.
In an incredibly brief meeting yesterday, we parted ways peacefully and amicably. It took less than ten minutes at a local coffee shop to exchange keys and trade a few personal items from car to car.
While there are residual feelings of sadness and loss, feelings that I imagine will hang around for some time, at this point those negative emotions are offset by a profound sense of relief.
I tried. She tried. In the end, it simply didn’t work.
What Do I Know?
In the movie Stranger than Fiction, IRS auditor Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is asked by university professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) what his favorite word is.
“Integer,” is the reply.
Now, that isn’t a bad choice for an accountant.
I’ve often thought about how I might answer that question; I believe what I’d say is “epistemology.” It is a word with such lyrical quality and, additionally, has great meaning to me as an academic. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, asking such questions, “what does it mean to know?”
Of course, one does not have to be an academic, scientist, or philosopher to love that word or be concerned with epistemological issues. How it is we know, how we come to know, and what we count as knowledge, are concepts everyone deals with in everyday life, in our ordinary and not-so-ordinary interactions with others.
Naturally, what we know, or think we do, bumps up against the elusive, oft-debated, and intellectually-and-emotionally-charged notions of “truth” and “reality.” What is true? What is real? … are questions we do not typically spend a lot of time thinking about, mostly because we tend to take a lot of things for granted. But our differing beliefs about what we know as true and real, as individuals, groups, organizations and nations, are the source of immense miscommunication, angst and conflict in the world. Perhaps we could and should spend a little more time paying attention to how it is we know what we know.
As I write this, I am in the midst of a gigantic inner struggle about the nature of reality: about what I think I know. Over the course of the last couple of weeks or so, a significant person in my life has expressed a worldview about our shared experience that is hugely at odds with my own. In fact, where once there was some sense of shared understanding, and a mission of mutual purpose, it all seems now to have been replaced with confusion, defensiveness, anger and distance.
Our versions of reality are, to me, incomprehensibly disparate. They are, perhaps, totally irreconcilable.
So, here I sit with my thoughts: about the nature of reality. And relationship.
Breathing in and out, in and out. Alone. Confused. Finding myself, once again, in the middle of a life that’s stranger than fiction.
My Mission Statement
Last March, I posted an entry entitled “Really: Who Are You?” – an essay where I attempted to outline, as clearly as I could, some views on the meaning of my existence. Since that time, it’s been a summer of continuing reflection as I significantly changed most of my vacation plans in order to address health issues and to confront, once again, the matter of my mortality.
As I was browsing some of my older computer files yesterday, I came across a document composed sometime in 2004. [That was the year I found myself struggling to redefine my identity after being involuntarily displaced from long-term employment (with the Oregon University System) and commenced a process of job-search (and high stress) that ultimately lasted three and a half years.] I entitled that 2004 file “Personal Mission Statement” – which I restate here:
The multiple purposes of my lifetime on this planet are to:
Nurture my intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual selves
Have deep and meaningful relationships
Experience life to the fullest and live until I die
Show up, be present, and tell the truth
Be involved, yet free of attachment, and, above all things
Be true to myself.