how much do we know about our friends?

July 13, 2025

The Questions We Don’t Ask

Much as we understand others, there are often things of which we aren’t aware. The painted acquaintance remains unfinished, no matter how long our association.

Secrets separate — the embarrassing imperfections, the naked truth. All the uncomfortable territory the other prefers to shield, and we never inquire about.

Humans, including the most intelligent, also hide shortcomings from themselves. Intelligence counts for little in such matters. Our species defends against recognizing its flaws.

Even those who have taken several looks in the mirror might ignore or miss shadows. Figurative blind spots cover troubling thoughts.

We repress elements of the dark side, an unconscious, self-protective act. The psychological defense of denial recalls an old play on words known to counselors: “Denial is not a river in Egypt,” a phrase referencing the famous Nile River. The Nile, not denial.

Rationalization cannot be escaped in full, an attempt to give reasons that purify and satisfy our conscience and those who stand in judgment of what we have done.

Projection is another part of our defensive toolkit, characterized by assigning our flaws to friends and strangers. One might go on. There are more ways to keep knowledge of ourselves from ourselves.

Since we don’t want to reveal everything or allow the other to ask us about the guarded portion of our life, we hesitate to open the door to mutual shared intimacies.

Here are a few of those questions (below each photo) that often go unasked and might be experienced as an interrogation by the one from whom answers are expected:

  • Are you as happy as you appear to be?
  • What single moment in your life would you repeat?
  • If you conclude that the afterlife you believe in isn’t real, how would you alter the way you live?
  • How often do you think about death?
  • What is the thing you’ve never told anyone?
  • What is the action you are most proud of?
  • The worst? Why?
  • How do you determine what is right and good in a moral sense? To what degree do you depend on sacred texts or clerics?
  • Do you think you are moral? In what way do your actions demonstrate your morality or fall short?
  • Do you attempt to reduce climate change? In what ways?
  • Do you live by the commandment in Leviticus 19:33-34 of the Hebrew Bible? “The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
  • What role does anger play in your life?
  • Kindness?
  • Do you aid the poor and homeless?
  • What does money mean to you? Why? Do you display generosity?
  • When did you recognize you were aging? How did you react?
  • How have you changed in the last 10 years?
  • Will you be recalled in 100 years? What would you like to be remembered for? Why does it matter?

  • Do you travel much? Why? Why not?
  • Do you value enjoyable activities more than purchased objects? Which of these is more fulfilling? Why do you think so?
  • Do you envy the life of another? Why?
  • Have you committed adultery? Why? What happened?
  • What is the state of your marriage? Would you marry the same person again? Would you stay single? Why?
  • What have you learned about life that you didn’t grasp in early adulthood?
  • Describe the most courageous act of your life. How about the least admirable?
  • What must you change to improve your life?
  • Are you lovable? What makes you so?
  • Do these questions cause discomfort?
  • Are you answering them truthfully?
  • If a genie gave you three wishes, what would you wish for?
  • Are you happier alone or with others?
  • Can you be yourself with others?
  • Are you more emotional or logical?
  • Are you more like your father or your mother? In what ways?
  • Are you happy with that? Have you tried to modify any of those qualities?
  • Do you worry about what people say about you? Why? What difference does it make?
  • Does anyone see you as you would like to be seen?
  • What are your values and which do you give priority? How high do you place your own happiness? Justify it.
  • Do you expect reciprocity in most relationships?

The list could go on.

Of course, you might want to ask yourself these questions before contemplating the uncomfortable task of questioning anyone.

Another way to approach the subject would be to ask, “What would Jesus do?” As an alternative, fill in the name of the historical or religious figure of your choice.

There are no requirements here, but you might learn something by considering the thoughts and feelings the list has provoked.

So would we all.

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The top image is The Two Faces of Juliet by György Kepes, sourced from Wikart.org. The two photographs are the work of Fan Ho. The first is called Smokey World (1959). The second is entitled Black Lane (1960).

June 28, 2020

Wisdom in Common Things

A typical zoo, lots of kids, and two bears. Or is it something more?

Perspective is everything.

We are in Berlin. The time is the early 1930s.

The question becomes, who is behind bars and who is on the outside looking in? The past gives us one answer. The photographer’s subject appears to be German Jews or any people imprisoned within a totalitarian state.

Yet the image provokes us to reflect upon our “point of view.” Do we accept our way of perceiving the world as the only valid one? Do we think twice, look again, reconsider our history, our actions, and the people around us?

The process of psychotherapy demands this on a personal level. Peaceful protesters in the streets also challenge us to recognize conditions we don’t wish to confront. The psychologist and the demonstrator carry the same message. As Rilke wrote, “You must change yourself.”

Counseling should cause the client to alter his frame of reference, clean the mirror he holds to his face, reevaluate whether his approach to life is working. If he does not, he remains like those children in the menagerie, on the wrong side of a high fence. But unlike them, he is incarcerated in a cage of his own making.

Try this photograph:

There’s a bit of a story here. I was on a morning walk. If you inspect the photo you will notice a quarter: a 25 cent piece. I bent to pick it up.

The hard object could not be separated from the walkway’s grip. What caused its fondness for the ground?? I suspect the coin dropped before the cement dried. The metal stuck.

Was it an accident or the result of someone’s plan? With what intention?

Several possibilities come to my mind:

  • to make a permanent mark lasting as long as the sidewalk. A kind of immortality.
  • As an experiment. Imagine the experimenter stationing himself nearby and tabulating how often people awaken to the object and hesitate over it. Or recording how many passersby attempt to dislodge the quarter and for how long.
  • Perhaps a prankster wished to frustrate anyone wishing to put it in his pocket.
  • Did the “two bits” offer philosophical instruction on the question, “how important is money, and what are you willing to do to get some? Break the pavement? Break the law? Where does the dollar fit in your system of values? Will you get on your knees in worship before its streetside alter?”

Here is one last picture to contemplate:

We all carry secrets. Perhaps the boy is sharing one and cautioning nondisclosure. The observer is left to consider how genuine and open we are. Anton Chekhov composed this about a man with a hidden life:

He began to judge others by himself, no longer believing what he saw, and always assuming that the real, the only interesting life of every individual goes on as (if) under cover of night, secretly. Every individual existence revolves around mystery, and perhaps that is the chief reason that all cultivated individuals insist so strongly on the respect due to personal secrets.

One wonders. For some of our friends, even those closest, is the most essential element of their life unknown to us? Might we also be unrevealed to them? If so, what is the cost of our concealed state?

They and we connect the observable dots of words and behavior, hoping we know the whole. Do we harbor shameful moments, episodes of cowardice, a haunted gender complexity? Is a sequestered, buried heart still bleeding, a boxed-up desire locked away, an ancient loss lurking?

Inertia resides in an undisclosed soul, just as stubborn in its stuckness as the 25 cents on my local sidewalk.

Will someone tell the person who left the melded money that there are those who would cherish the other side of the coin? Like the boy’s inner life, we only see half.

Shall I talk to the immovable, rounded copper the next time I pass its way? I’ll read him the Rilke poem about change. You’d think changing would come easily to a piece of change.

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The Rilke quotation is the last line from his poem, Archaic Torso of Apollo. The Chekhov quotation comes from his short story, The Lady With the Dog. The first photo is Roman Vishniac’s People Behind Bars.