There is no shortage of things tearing us apart. Gay versus straight. White versus black. The Constitution, for God’s sake, has become a Rorschach test. I consider myself a reasonable man. Generous in my sympathies. Willing to sit across from almost anyone and find common ground.
Almost.
There is one flaw I cannot get past. I don’t even want to try. Not politics. Not religion. Not the various catastrophic choices people make in their personal lives, which are frankly legion. But there is something more fundamental than any of that. Something that reveals a person’s true nature with a clarity that a psychologist never could. A detail about a person that once you know it, you are done. The generosity simply drains out of you and it does not come back.
It never surfaces in public. That is the insidious part. People keep it hidden, whether from shame or simple obliviousness is unclear. It emerges only in private, in homes, among people who feel comfortable enough to drop the performance. Som…
