Where is the boundary between our public lives and our privacy? Do we have the right to keep certain details of our life to ourselves, or should we live as an example of what we are for other people?
These are hard questions. Some religions demand openness, others demand secrecy. Lives and livelihoods can rise and fall based on what religion one belongs to and to whom one gives that information. Other personal issues can be equally as damaging.
So what do we say? To whom do we say it? And how do we have a private life with a public face?
I am a great believer in privacy. Things exist that are simply no one's business, or should be taken simply as fact and not a matter for people to get involved with. One's family of choice, for example: if one chooses to live with a spouse of the opposite sex, the same sex, three women you see as sisters, or any other choice you make, that is private. It is also public, as people can see who lives in the same dwelling.
Our privacy is our own business. We should be capable of being in public and not wearing our affiliations on our sleeve. I can be an author without being a FlameKeeper, be political without being an author, be a FlameKeeper without being a mother. I am all of those things, and they are entirely intertwined inside myself. Who we are should not be internally compartmentalized. But when we speak of things, when we discuss and learn and exchange ideas, who we are needs to be separable. My religion is not public property except when I am being a public religious figure.
There needs to be the ability to separate the discourse from the underlying drives of it. Not everything needs to be public knowledge. People should be valued or not based on who they are and what they do, not the sex of their bedpartners or their view of the hereafter. These are important aspects of the person and irrelevant in public discourse unless it directly applies.
When we believe we must live as examples, that our private lives must be public, we lose a portion of ourselves. We lose the ability to change and the ability to adapt, because our identity becomes caught up with an image. When we keep ourselves too private, we lose the ability to discuss large portions of our lives and leave the impression that certain options simply don't exist.
We need to learn when to be public and when to be private as individuals. And, as a society, we need to learn when to allow someone's privacy to become public and then to go back to being private. Not everything is our business.
Questions:
How do you know when to keep something public or make it private? Can one aspect of your life move back and forth as is appropriate?
What do you do when the public sphere encroaches too far into your privacy? What if your privacy encroaches into your public life?
What parts of people's lives do you think should be kept public? Kept private? Can you separate your public faces while still remaining whole as a private individual?
