Recently, I was tagged by Evelyn Rodriguez to share five things about myself others don’t know. I had been tagged previously, however, and had already responded. But thinking about Evelyn’s tag somehow reminded me of another disclosure “game” I once played. Here’s how it worked: five people sat together in a circle with a facilitator. Each of us were asked to write down a list of six or seven groups we identified with. The groups could be anything: guys in mid-life crisis who bought electric guitars; parents of children with disabilities; Democrats, university students, poker players, people with personal demons — basically, any group we felt we had something in common with.
The purpose of this game was to think about and share with others the social networks, real or perceived, that helped us define our personal identities. Once we had privately named these groups, we were invited to speak in turn about our sense of affiliation with each one and what it personally meant. Each particiipant spoke about one of his or her affiliations, then the next person spoke, and so on, going around the circle many times until each person had had a chance to talk about all of his or her “identifications.”
The conversation gradually transitioned from people talking about their “safe” affiliations, such as “stamp collectors,” to ones that were more socially risky, such as “cancer patients,” “people who have spent time in prison” or “gay men trapped in discriminatory work environments.” This process of sharing personal stories rapidly built trust in the group — in part because no one felt coerced to share something he or she did not want to divulge and also in part because the faciitation itself created safety. We didn’t have to build a team or make personal judgments of good or bad. This wasn’t about confessions. The exercise was just about listening, looking at our preconceptions, and asking a few questions out of curiosity or for clarification, with the ultimate objective of accepting the differences among us — not shrinking back by immediately trying to find things we all had in common. The goal was simple: to experience and stay with any tensions that arose (especially subtle ones) and accept self and others for who we are. In practice, I experienced the exercise as a series of dialogues about the aspects of difference that were most important to us.
In about an hour, I could easily see how I was structuring my social world differently than others in the group. And I think all of us had a sense of the slope from presenting a relatively “safe” identity to others to sharing a more complete and real one. I remember becoming increasingly concerned about my own last couple of identifications (one of which was middle-aged white men trying to understand ‘privilege’). I suddenly became acutely aware of others’ reactions and my own inner noise coming to the surface (which of course I worked to hide!). Here I was, an experienced facilitator myself who had done lots of “identity” and personal growth work, but suddenly I was feeling a little heat, and it was all coming from how truly we depend on one another, vulnerably, to help mirror self-acceptance. Would I really be accepted in this multi-cultural group? And yet I also wondered why on earth there was any tension at all. Why wasn’t this the most common dialogue people could ever have? I wondered why we didn’t do this exercise everytime a new organizational team was formed; why it wasn’t done in my daughter’s junior high school, why it wasn’t part of my own work. I became incredibly aware of differences that were relatively easy to talk about — at that time, Republicans and Democrats — and ones that were not so easy, like sexual orientation. I could see how and why informal groups form and how we reinforce separate realities. But instead of thinking about this stuff, I was feeling it viscerally. I physically experienced my programming.
At one level, what a simple exercise this was. And yet it was all about breaking open a little more as a person, breaking through the personal preconceptions and personal anxieties held by the cells of our bodies. It was about feeling difference without trying to erase it, rationalize it, or ease into it. It was about just being the differences, so that they actually become a source of grounding for a group, a deep part of its collective sensibility. I was convinced after a short time that had we been an ongoing team of folks who frequently worked together, we would have enjoyed a much better chance of dealing with any “undiscussable” issues simply because we knew this deeper exchange was possible.
Disclosure can do that.
My reaction to the “five things” tag meme is that it is a mild form of this same kind of exercise. Perhaps it panders to the “social voyeur” in all of us, as pointed out by danah boyd. Perhaps it is a little too self-absorbed and could be transmuted into something better, as suggested by Kathy Sierra. Perhaps, the meme is just an intricate chain letter leaving a path of electron bread crumbs. But also — maybe — it is an attempt to get past our most comfortable facades to begin sharing something a little more real out here in the blogosphere. However silly the game, however much it replicates the schoolyard (including a sense of exclusion if you are not tagged, as someone commented on danah ‘s posting) — I believe there is a subtle intention that hooks us. Self-disclosure, telling our unique stories, is a way to connect. We want to know each other, learn from each other, feel the differences and similarities, know ourselves by telling others who we think we are. We want to know, and maybe we are not as good at that as we believe we are, and for what it’s worth, a game helps.
Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.
How is it with this love,
I see your world and not you?
— Rumi
There often seems to be something viral about self-disclosure (at least to me) — others’ willingness to reveal more of who they really are opens the door for me to reveal (and perhaps be) more of who I really am.
Aside from the explicit “5 things” meme, I think that the blogosphere can be a space where this viral self-disclosure unfolds more implicitly (or naturally) over time … and that the increasing transparency that seems to be at least a second order effect of Web 2.0 will help to reduce the scope of undiscussability.
Thanks for sharing the group identification exercise — and for disclosing your personal experience with it. I particularly like your insight about “how truly we depend on one another, vulnerably, to help mirror self-acceptance”. Food for thought (and action).