Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

I ran across this poem today, and found it to be quite thought provoking. Though it's not distinctly Christian, I think much of what it says holds weight with what God desires us to be. If you can take the time to read it, I encourage you to do so. God doesn't desire us to be superficial in our relationships with others, He wants us to live in truth and in love.

Sincerely,
Emily

Please Hear What I’m Not Saying:

By: Charles C. Finn

Do not be fooled by me.
Do not be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a mask, a thousand masks, masks that I am afraid to take off, and none of them is me.
Pretending is an art, that is second nature with me, but do not be fooled.
For God’s Sake, do not be fooled.
I give you the impression that I’m secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name and coolness my game, that the water’s calm and I’m in command, and that I need no one.
But don’t believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask, ever varying and ever concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion and fear and aloneness. But I hide this.
I do not want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed.
That is why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant sophisticated façade, to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation.
My only hope and I know it.
That is, if it is followed by acceptance, if it is followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self-built prison walls, from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself, that I’m really worth something.
But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare. I am afraid to.
I am afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance, will not be followed by love.
I am afraid you will think less of me, that you will laugh, and your laugh will kill me.
I am afraid that deep down I am nothing, that I am just no good, and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game, with a facade of assurance without, and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks, and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, of what is crying within me.
So when I am going through my routine, do not be fooled by what I am saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying,
What I’d like to be able to say, what for survival I need to say, but what I can’t say.

I don’t like to hide. I do not like to play superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me, but you have to help me.
You have to hold out your hand, even when that is the last thing I want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you are kind, gentle, and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings!
With your power to touch me into feeling, you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.

I want you to know how important you are to me,
How you can be a creator—a honest-to-God creator—of the person that is me, if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble, you alone can remove my mask, you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic and uncertainty, from my lonely prison, if you choose to.
Please choose to. Do not pass me by. It will not be easy for you.

A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me, the blinder I may strike back.
It is irrational, but despite what the books say about man, often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
However, I am told that love is stronger than strong walls, and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls; with firm hands, but with gentle hands, for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet, and every woman you meet.