Why reveal them? Why do people feel the need to reveal their deepest, darkest thoughts online, in message boards or blogs? Or in diaries? Or in letters or journals? Why?
I think its because we have the feeling that if we reveal what we are really thinking from day to day, from minute to minute, that it will somehow give others a sense of who we really are. And we sort of want other people to know who we really are.
Maybe it does. Maybe. But maybe not because our thoughts change all the time. Our thoughts change from day to day, sometimes from minute to minute. All that anyone else can ever get is just a snapshot of how we were thinking at a given moment. Do you think you know me, because of what I post at any given moment? Can I believe that I know someone else because of what they say or do or write or think at any given moment?
Perhaps a series of same thoughts, or same statements, or same beliefs or well, whatever…may give me a clue about that person. But it will never give me more than a hint, a suggestion, an inkling of what they really are, of who they really are. But in reality, that is what we use to make judgments about each other. These hints, these inklings…
Nevertheless, we do it because we want to think that there is someone ‘out there’ who will actually understand us in the way we want to be understood. Which is funny when you think about it, because most of us do not even begin to understand ourselves…
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