Anonymity

February 24, 2014

Greetings from my I.D.,

I grew up in a time when neighborhoods were like Facebook pages.  Well, like low quality Facebook pages; without the excellent graphics, the pictures of kittens, and the pithy quotations overprinted on dramatic scenery.  So, not really like Facebook.  But what the heck, I already started the analogy.

When something was going on with a family in the neighborhood, the news was ‘posted’ in a variety of ways.  There was ‘sharing’ at the back fence, or while walking the dog. 

There were party lines, which transmitted news directly and indirectly, depending on who was listening in.  Gossiping almost always included ‘tagging’ someone who lived down the street.   It was a social network which was astounding in its intricacy and vitality.

And ‘Friending’?  That was invented by kids on my street.  And we ‘Liked’ things all the time.  Record keeping wasn’t as rigorous, but we got the general impression of what was getting thumbs up or not.  Eskimo pie from the ice cream cart?  Like.  Mr. Berry yelling at us to get out of his cherry tree?  Not so much.

Everyone knew everyone else’s business, which was in part because people cared about what happened in the neighborhood.  And in part because we didn’t have Facebook to distract us from the real life drama happening next door.  The result was that most of the details of the lives of the families on our street were pretty much public knowledge.  It was a forecast of one of the challenges that Facebook would present.

It was that era when communications were primitive, but somehow information was transmitted at lightning speed.  Ask any kid in my neighborhood who got in trouble at school, and somehow the news made it up and down both sides of the street before they got home.

As quaint as that is, there became a time when it felt a little claustrophobic. 

Most of my formative years were spent wishing I was someone mysterious.  So many of my heroes were secret agents or super beings with hidden identities.  And here I was trapped on a street where everyone knew about my last cavity or my D in math.  I envied the few friends I had that came from different neighborhoods.  They arrived on my street like celebrities. 

And so there was this great liberation in going other places, faraway places, where anonymity was a luxurious cloak I could pull on.  There was mixed results.  I remember one particularly humiliating moment when I tried to effect a believable British accent while were camping in Canada.  There are more embarrassing stories, but I will save those for the biographic Broadway play.

The desire was less about misleading people and more about just being interesting, which I mistakenly assumed meant being someone I hadn’t been yet.  Being anonymous allowed that.  It was part of maturing, of shedding insecurity about who I was, which has largely faded, thankfully. 

There is an interesting tightrope that we walk between privacy, anonymity, and being public, the desire to be expressive, and known and even famous. It is not just a battle of ego and humility, it has to do with how we view that valuable part of ourselves we choose to share. 

What we reveal of ourselves is a function of our personality, our history, the environment, the level of trust we have in our audience, and time.   There are other effects, other pressures, but that’s the short list. 

I know that this is a commodity that is taken for granted.  There is the cliché about celebrities who fought to become famous and now long for normal anonymity.  We might all learn from that example before we post our next morsel on Facebook. 

One of the great pleasures of life is being comfortable in your self.  I will admit that, for me, some days that still doesn’t fit, but most days it does.  There are still times I fantasize about being James Bond, and luckily I have the opportunity to travel to places where I am unknown and can practice my accent.

The new, powerful influence in this struggle is the internet.  Anonymity often leads to a lack of responsibility and civility.  It also provides a freedom of expression, including good ideas, that is not found elsewhere.  The argument online today is about privacy about the risk of ‘persistent identity’, about the loss of authentic intimacy, replaced by this new connection we make with untold millions in the ether.

Quite often, anonymity and its cousin, privacy, is simply the space to which you retreat to reflect, to examine, to change, under your own terms.  When we give that up we lose something important, so it’s critical that it be a choice.

The beauty of my old neighborhood was the element of community.  The challenges brought to a struggling secret agent notwithstanding, it was a supportive, encouraging, safe place to spend the early years of my life.  It also provided some inspiration to look at wider horizons, for new possibilities, for new places to explore who I was to become.

If nothing else Chandler Street provided this lesson for me; it is important to be known, to be part of a community, to share yourself in a way that allows others to share themselves with you, to the benefit of all.  I learned I would rather be open, aware and heard, expressive and attentive.  And I know that is really good to have that as a choice, not forced upon me by circumstance.

What you give away of yourself is not a commodity to be treated cheaply.   I believe when we make acquaintance, trade friendship and intimacy, we are best served to see the exchange as a valuable, irreplaceable connection.  Each time you slide aside the curtain of anonymity to reveal more of you, to allow others in, you walk a new tightrope between opportunity and risk.  I believe it is always worth doing, not recklessly, but by using the gifts of balance we have been given.

Hope this finds you known,

David

Copyright © 2014 David Smith