Certain pieces of writing have changed my life unalterably. At the top of that list is Adrienne Rich’s essay, “On Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying.” I cannot imagine who I would be in this world without having read it. I can barely remember the woman, the girl, I was before.
As bell hooks would generously put it, as a girl and young woman, I had learned “the fine art of dissimulation” – meaning, in her words, “taking on whatever appearance is needed to manipulate a situation” (All About Love, 35). At the time, I would never have regarded my changeable personas or my secret acts to be manipulative, but rather simply attempts to be liked, to gain approval, to be “nice” so as not to cause others to feel discomfort. It took Rich’s strong words of “lying,” “liar,” and “manipulation,” to get me to face the harsh reality of my actions, to call me to account, to own my lies, secrets, and silences. “When someone tells me a piece of the truth which has been withheld from me, and which I needed in order to see my life more clearly, it may bring acute pain, but it can also flood me with a cold, sea-sharp wash of relief” (193). Adrienne Rich did this for me.
So many of the lines in this piece spoke truth to me. “Lying is done with words, and also with silence” (186). It had never occurred to me that silence was a form of lying. Yet this was so often the form my lies took – silent nods and smiles, not articulating my true feelings and thoughts, hiding my true self. “A subject is raised which the liar wishes buried. She has to go downstairs, her parking meter will have run out. Or, there is a telephone call she ought to have made an hour ago” (187). Avoidance. “The liar is afraid. . . .She is afraid her own truths are not good enough” (191). Ah, there it was, at least in part. If I exposed who I truly was, what I truly believed, and later on, the sheer weirdness of being so sick, weak, and most likely dying in my twenties, I would face rejection, judgment, and loneliness. The irony is that by hiding so much of myself, I was alone.
“The liar has many friends, and leads an existence of great loneliness” (187). Having been taught that it was most important to make people comfortable, to be pleasant, to avoid or smooth over conflict, I was likeable, agreeable, nice. I had lots of “friends,” “knew” lots of people, but nobody knew me, including myself. I rarely shared my true thoughts or feelings with anyone, in large part because I didn’t know them myself. I remember those years from adolescence through my twenties as floating along the surface. I often wondered to myself, “Who am I?” and never knew the answer.
“In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. . . . Thus we lose faith, even with our own lives” (188). I had lost faith with myself. In the center of my being was a bottomless abyss – what Rich named “the void.” However, she wrote, the void “is not mere hollowness and anarchy. . . . the void is the creatrix, the matrix.” Nevertheless, “the liar fears the void. . . . The liar in her terror wants to fill up the void, with anything. Her lies are a denial of her fear; a way of maintaining control. . . . We are not supposed to go down into the darkness of the core. Yet, if we can risk it, the something born of that nothing is the beginning of our truth” (191).
And so my journey began, and I discovered that Rich was right. Far from an empty abyss, here breathed the greatest depth and substance of my being. This marked the beginning of my encounter with my truths, my self, my deepest spiritual knowings and connections. The truths uttered by Adrienne Rich guided me back to myself, grounded me, centered me. I know that dark core now. It is indeed the matrix, the dark mother out of which I give birth to myself each day.
In living a life of truthfulness, I discovered the quality most essential for a spiritual life – integrity – the quality of being whole. In Camus’s words, “everything here leaves me intact, I surrender nothing of myself, and don no mask” (Lyrical, 69). To surrender nothing of myself is to be open to all possibilities, questions, intuitions – wherever they may lead. It is to travel the sometimes arduous, often surprising, always blessed journey of an authentic encounter with existence. “The truth” said Rich, “is not one thing. . . It is an increasing complexity” (187). I learned to embrace paradox. As Rich wrote in her poem, “Integrity,” “Nothing but my self? My selves./ After so long, this answer./ . . . Anger and tenderness: my selves./ And now I can believe they breathe in me/ as angels, not polarities./ . . .the spider’s genius/ to spin and weave in the same action” (A Wild Patience, 8-9). Angels, and the genius of spiders.
Anthropologist Angeles Arrien wrote that the essential task in the second half of life is that “we actualize all aspects of ourselves and weave them into an inherent symmetry and whole” (Second Half, 18). As we engage in the vital process of integrating our internal and external worlds, “we move beyond polarities and dualities to see both worlds at once” (17). In learning to befriend paradox and to live in ambiguity, we are able to plumb our spiritual depths. I have known this to be true. This was, for me, the greatest of the many gifts of “On Women and Honor.”
Who would I have been without the wisdom of this piece? Perhaps one day I would have stumbled onto these truths, but perhaps I would still be floating on the surface, still wondering who I am. I would have missed out on the best of my life – deep and cherished friendships; the discoveries that come of self-scrutiny and self-awareness; soul journeys into the depths; profound connections, relationships, and community; my true work in the world; unimaginable wonder, joy, and love; and occasional encounters with angels.
Notes
Arrien, Angeles. The Second Half of Life: Opening the Gates of Wisdom. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2007.
Camus, Albert. Lyrical and Critical Essays. Ed. Philip Thody. Trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy. New York: Vintage Books, 1970.
Hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow & Co. Inc., 2000.
Rich, Adrienne. A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1981.
______. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978. New York. W.W. Norton & Co., 1979.