It’s obvious what Montaigne is up to in his project, but it’s nice to get clarifying thoughts like this from time to time (From On The Education of Children:)
For likewise these are my humors and opinions; I offer them as what I believe, not what is to be believed. I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me. I have no authority to be believed, nor do I want it, feeling myself too ill-instructed to instruct others.
That part about instruction is important to keep in mind. Unlike the stoics, Montaigne is not writing anything in his essays as a form of moral instruction. To the extent that they are lessons he shares, they are particularly about himself, not for everyone.
But this raises an issue that I have been thinking about recently—if you’re a revealing person, someone comfortable talking about emotions and who makes an effort to share them in a productive way, what do you do with people who won’t share?
First of all, there is a matter of trust and comfort. I do not share everything with everyone, even though I put these thoughts on a public website. I simply know that there are a lot of people who don’t know about this site and who wouldn’t bother reading it even if they knew. Enough people I know have never bothered to stop by, or only did so once or twice, to confirm this belief.
And with many people in my life, I am not terribly demonstrative. There are people I see every day who haven’t a clue about my social life and I’m content to keep it that way. There are also family members who I let talk on at length about their lives mostly because I often don’t feel like talking about my own. The people who I share with in this forum, even though they have not revealed themselves, I feel worthy in a way, simply because they’ve shown up.
Which brings me to my second point, that a person you might perceive as being closed off might actually be quite open with other people, you just aren’t in that person’s circle of trust. As a parent of teenagers, I’ve learned well that a surly teen is often a very different person with his friends, and they will undoubtedly know things about my child that I may never know.
You can be around people you care to know more about, and they may even be quite interested in knowing about you, but for whatever reason, they’ve decided to close themselves off from you. This can be frustrating, but it is not evidence of a universal personality trait.
But final point, which is a contingent opinion of mine, I am not wedded to it, is that at a certain point, you might just have to give up on people. This is not to argue that you should throw them away, rather that you just lower your expectations. If you’ve made an effort to expand your comfort and trust with someone and that person still refuses to share, it’s probably best to assume that it’s not going to happen. Not every person is a puzzle waiting to be unlocked.
This is partly what Montaigne had in mind when he said we should “lend ourselves to others.” Let them have contingent parts of you, but if they are not willing to openly share back parts of themselves, keep the best to yourself.
As an audio pairing, I choose this very early Radiohead song with a highly Montaigne-friendly title.
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