Private life in public

All writing is inherently personal. Even when we're not writing autobiography or offering insights of heart and opinion, a lot of who a person is can come through in how they write. The choice of language, the absence or presence of logic, compassion and other such qualities. Even in supposedly factual report writing, the prejudices, assumptions and lack of effort put in can speak very clearly about the author. And yes, I have seen one of those recently.

There are many reasons for putting aspects of the private self into public spaces. Some more noble and productive than others. Kiss and tell celebrity stories, the angst of famous people, the fad diets, infidelities and other reasons for shame are frequently fodder for magazines. I look at the covers every now and then to make sure my own prejudices are up to date, but I wouldn't read one unless someone pointed a gun at my head first. Selling the sordid and intimate details of your life can be a way of getting public attention and courting fame. I wonder what some of the people who go in for it imagine they are going to get. There are also magazines devoted to the hideous real-life stories of the 'ordinary' where the more grotesque the tale is, the better. Freak shows are alive and well, and living in paper form.

When a person is famous, or infamous, the appetite for insight stories goes up. When you are trying to become famous for work, or a cause, it can be tempting to use anything that will bring the cameras round. If you think the ends justify the means, that might make it even more tempting. However, the media is seldom kind, and loves the opportunity to make people look stupid. Many are the well meaning pagans who have agreed to don ritual attire for a camera, only to be presented as an object for ridicule. Any time we put part of the private self into a public space, there is considerable scope for humiliation. And not just for the individual. It can impact on families too, on neighbours, communities, the orders and organisations you belong too. Anyone might be tarred with the same brush, and these things can so easily get out of control.

Talking about spirituality, or druidry, or any other aspect of being alive and human, calls for honesty. It is easy to use that authoritarian third person voice and keep the content impersonal, but that kind of work doesn't resonate. I have tried it, long ago, it did not achieve much. If I wrote this blog from a place of calm authority, with a tone of 'you should be doing this' or worse still 'this is what all druid do' then I rather hope that most of my readers would have buggered off in search of something more useful. Spiritual experience is personal. We also learn more from the mistakes, the falling shorts, the flailings and the personal trials than we do from ease and success. If I want to share in a meaningful way, I get more mileage talking about the things that I get wrong, or struggle with than ever I do by speaking impersonally.

I've had very little scope for privacy in the last few years, required to recount painful, personal things to police, doctors, social workers, solicitors, and more. I've endured invasive physical examinations. People have read and photocopied my diaries,, which was such an unwanted invasion of privacy that I still smart over it. For the purposes of getting my bloke into the UK I've had to write to faceless officials about the details of a love affair. As court business proceeds, all aspects of my life remain open to scrutiny, and I have no right at present to any kind of privacy at all. I also have publishers who want me talking in public in ways that will encourage the sale of books. This has not been an easy process, and has forced me to look hard at what I want to keep private and how it might be possible to hold a sense of self that does not belong to anyone else. Do I have any entitlement to privacy?

Holding the boundaries of self in face of adversity and scrutiny, is not easy. We've not quite got to the stage of my being publically stripped naked and displayed, but from an emotional perspective it has felt a lot like that at times. And yet, I have this growing impression. All the exposure, all the poking and questioning, is only superficial. The answers are truths about my life, exposures of pain and history. But I am more than this. My own knowledge of self is bigger than what is taken from me continually by processes I cannot control.

Part of why I write here, is because I choose what to share and how to say it. I have no problem, I realise, with high levels of openness and honesty. But I would much rather choose to give than have it prised from me.