Ever hear a mindless ‘motivational’ phrase, feel a reflex eye roll in the offing, and then say to yourself, “Wait a minute, that’s actually kind of deep …” ? Well, that recently happened to me while watching a YouTube workout video. The instructor was mentioning how he had to overcome some challenges in life, things he was having difficulty bringing to light, but when he realized that everybody has something similar, something they’re afraid to talk about, it put his personal challenges in a new perspective. He told himself, “Everybody’s in the closet about something … ,” and I thought “That is a true statement.”
‘Everybody’s in the closet about something’ may simply be a less poetic restatement of ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged,’ but it’s just as true now as it was hundreds of years ago. Maybe we don’t want people to know that we’re six months behind on the mortgage, or that our oldest son has been expelled from middle school, or that our garage is a storage facility for everything we should be throwing away or donating to Goodwill.
Maybe we don’t want anyone to know that we hate dogs because we’re scared of them, or that we don’t talk to our parents anymore, or that we are aware that we’re not very good at our job, or that we go to the casino every Friday and lose half a paycheck. Maybe we’re lapsed Mormons, or we never wanted to have kids, or we just love collecting garden gnomes, or we’re pretty sure we can build a flying car.
I mean, the list goes on and on.
Maybe it’s a truism that the truth will set you free, but if you’re not ready to be free just yet, it’s okay. And if your coping strategy of ‘staying in the closet’ isn’t hurting anyone — other than yourself (and hopefully not hurting yourself too badly), perhaps knowing that everybody’s got their something lets you go a little easier on yourself.