Each, Our Private World

Sometimes, when I look at another person—usually a stranger I've never seen before but whose substantiality at that moment for some reason strikes me—I think about the fact that he too has a vast past, a whole other world from mine that has shaped him, educated him, hurt him, pleasured him, sometimes rewarded, but maybe mostly disappointed him, and that has deposited and formed the substantial weight and depth I'm struck by now, even though I am not acquainted with its mysterious otherness. And not only is it unknown to me, but much of that stranger's private world is hidden even from his intimates, just as much of mine is hidden from the people who think they know me.

I was prompted to reflect on this again yesterday, when I read the following passage from Colm Tóibín's novel, The Master:

It struck [Henry James] all these years later that he had been thinking something which he could not tell [John] Gray or [Oliver Wendell] Holmes or even Minny [Temple], that his mind during these few minutes had wandered over a scene whose meaning would have to remain secret to him...He thought about the result if he spoke his mind out, told his companions as truthfully as he could what the name Gus Barker had provoked in his memory. He wondered at how, every day, as they moved around each other, each of them had stored away an entirely private world to which they could return at the sound of a name, or for no reason at all [emphasis mine]. For a second as he thought about this, he caught Holmes's eye, and he found that he had not been able to disguise himself fully, that Holmes had seen through his social mask to the mind which had strayed into realms which could not be shared. Both of them shared something now, tacitly, momentarily, which the others did not even notice. [pp. 99-100, Scribner edition, 2004]

And I am prompted to share it here because of a comment I made on another blog the other day, about how I dislike polite banter but dearly love significant disclosure. Unless we are as observant as Henry James, we need to disclose ourselves significantly to others in order to disclose ourselves significantly to ourselves.