TRANSCRIPT
Something that I’ve found incredibly valuable in my life is to be able to find someone to whom I can bear my soul. I can open up my soul and really just share who I am, share what happened to me in my life, the painful things that happened to me, share some of the ugly, or all of the ugly things that I’ve done in my life. To share with someone who won’t judge me, or better yet, will love me for being honest, love me for being true. And that’s very hard to find in the world.
I think that in a way is the ideal of psychotherapy. The problem is the psychotherapy field has set itself up to have real limits about how much someone can share, especially if they’re sharing stuff that, well, is considered a danger to self and others. There can be a lot of pressure on this, on the therapist even, to break somebody’s confidentiality, to call the police perhaps, or to get that person put in a mental hospital. So it becomes very risky in a way for someone in a completely uncensored way to bear their soul to a modern therapist. Unless, of course, the therapist goes against the system and breaks the rules of the mental health system and refuses to break confidentiality. And I have known some therapists like that, but I’ve also known a lot of therapists who aren’t like that.
I’ve actually worked in therapy clinics where several times suddenly walking down the hall of the therapy clinic is a bunch of police and ambulance and a stretcher, and they go right into a therapy office and take someone out because the person was burying their soul in a way that made the therapist uncomfortable. Oh, this person was a danger to himself and has to be taken to a hospital. So I’ve become very cautious in recommending that people go to therapy if they really need to bear their soul. But where else can people go?
Friendships. Friendships is one great place if you have the good fortune of finding a friend who really can hear and sometimes can share in return. Friendships can really hold confidentiality. I also think, even though I’m not religious, I’m not a religious guy, I’m certain I’m not a Catholic or anything like that, Catholic confession in the ideal sense might be a place if you get the right priest who can actually hear a deep and true confession. And I’m not an expert on this, but I understand that from what I’ve heard that they may have a greater degree of confidentiality to which they are beholden.
I actually, out of curiosity, went to a Catholic priest some years back. I was in a South American country, and I was walking along, and I saw they had a sign in Spanish, and I speak Spanish. I saw a sign that said it was a day for confession; you could go for confession. So I waited in line. I was actually late; I was the last person in line, which was actually very fortunate because when it came my turn, I talked to the priest and I asked if I could confess to him all the things that I was thinking. I just wanted to try it, if only to explore this idea that I’m talking about.
He asked me, “Well, are you a Catholic?” and I said no. And he got uncomfortable; he didn’t know what to say. And then he asked, when this is my memory, this was several years ago, “Well, have you accepted Jesus as your savior?” I don’t know about that. “Have you been confirmed?” No. “Well, have you been baptized?” I was like, no, I haven’t had any of that. Well, he didn’t know what to say, got all uncomfortable, and then I said, “I just want to be able to have a conversation. I want to be able to talk in an unfettered, uncensored way about what I’m going through, what I’m thinking.” And he was uncomfortable with it, but then he got on board with it, and I could see actually that he really liked it.
And then an amazing thing happened. When I told him about my life and I told him about some of the painful things that had happened to me and some of the painful things that I did when I was younger as the result of having had those painful things done to me, his heart softened. I think in part, oh, he started out, I remember this well, “Try doing this Hail Marys and you have to do this.” I’m like, I don’t want that. That’s not what I want from you. I want a human being who can listen to me and care and give his heart. And it was like, I don’t think he was used to someone telling him, “Shut up and be a human being with me.” I’d actually told that to some therapists who don’t give me this garbage psycho-babble back to me. I’m paying you to be a human being who listens and cares. I never found a therapist who could break out of this, but this priest, he did.
And something happened to him, and he just listened. And he was a professional listener. This man was older; he was in his 60s, maybe even 70s from what I remember, and he’d done a lot of listening in his day. And even though he probably had been trained to not give feedback of the type that I was looking for, he’d done a lot of listening in spite of that, and he was a good soul because I felt it. And that’s why I wanted to open up to him.
And you know what he did? It was very amazing. After I shared this, he looked at me and he says, “Well, I’d like to share some stuff too.” And he started sharing about his life, and he shared about his pain and his fears, and then he cried, and I cried. And it was like, this is magic. This is what I wanted. And you know what? It’s what he wanted too. And he shook my hand and he said, “You can come back any time.” As it was, I was still traveling, and I never did come back, but it was a magical moment.
Also, I found that hitchhiking could be a place where this happened, especially before the era of the internet, before the era of cell phones where everybody is connected and you’re expected to be connected after you meet someone for 20 minutes. Because it happens. I’ve hitchhiked in the modern era also where you get a good ride with someone and you connect with them, and they give you a lift of 50 miles or 100 miles or 300 kilometers or whatever it is, and you bond. And suddenly, oh, let’s be friends on Facebook, let’s be friends on WhatsApp, let’s exchange emails and telephone numbers, and it kind of kills the confidentiality and the beauty of the moment of the ride.
And what I felt, it still can’t happen nowadays, but it happened more in eras past. Back in the early 90s when I hitchhiked before internet or any of that, many times it happened. And I was younger and wasn’t even as good at confessing or receiving confession from people, but it happened that people felt safer, and I felt safer with people. Sometimes for rides for three, four, five hours, we never even told each other our names. I could never find those people again, and that anonymity allowed people to share much more deeply. People shared about all sorts of wild things from their past, things that in the modern era I don’t think people want to share. You never know what devices are listening and what people’s phones are actually listening. You don’t know with this technology.
But back then, I shared all sorts of stuff with people because I knew I’d never see them again. Good, kind, caring people, the kind of people who pick up hitchhikers. Ninety-nine percent of people that I found who pick up hitchhikers are the kindest people in the world. And then I became one of those people who picked up hitchhikers, people who really had a lot of problems sometimes who were hitchhiking, and we had wonderful conversations that were honest and real and deep. I got a lot of healing from hitchhiking, from just talking with people who listened. And also, when I was a hitchhiker, sometimes people would just tell me the stories of their lives, and often they were so grateful.
Happened in their lives, sometimes disturbing and ugly things that they had done. Afterward, they treated me to lunch. They treated me to dinner, in spite of having treated me to a ride for three, four, five hundred miles. And they shook my hand and they said, “Thank you, good luck,” and then we parted, and we never saw each other again. And two, three, four months later, I couldn’t even remember what their face looked like.
So I think of this: the value of being able to share and share openly without fear of consequences. What an incredibly valuable thing in this modern world, and much more rare nowadays. And it’s something that I really consider—how do we get more of this back in our lives so that we can grow and heal? Because it’s so necessary.