There is a subjectivity to "truth" that is often held out by some -- as, for example, by Mr. Bill O'Reilly -- as a core difference between "seculuar-progressives" (get it, S.P.?) and "real" Americans. Now I'm not an adherent of post-modernist theory, in that I do believe there are objective realities, but I am willing to credit it with the notion of subjectivity of experience and interpretation.
What is truth and what is a lie? I know from convos recent and recently past that WAW was already thinking down the D road at the time the picture in question was taken. So the smiles in that photograph, while "true" in the literal sense (say 'Cheese' - Cheeeeeeeesse!), seem to impart a meaning to the photograph as a whole -- "we're a happy family" -- that is belied by the subjective, interior reality of at least one person in that photograph ("hmmm, wonder if I should divorce SP?"). So why is she smiling? Because one smiles in a photograph? Smiling is a socially expected performance in group photography? Because she's with the kids? Because of the interior dialog on divorce?
Who knows? But it strikes me that the meaning -- to borrow a phrase from consumer law -- that a "reasonable person" would impart to that photograph is misleading. It isn't a photograph of a happy family. It's a photograph of what appears to be a happy family -- a photograph of a group in which one person is representing herself as a member of a happy family.
It's all very weird.
And the whole question of subjectivity of experience and meaning has been brought into high relief for me by an email exchange with WAW overnight. Some selections from the series of WAWgrams ought to suffice (my replies in italics) to show why I'm questioning what is real, what isn't, and when it is real, and when it isn't:
Quote:
And, you have said yourself and are correct, that we share fault for this....You weren't a bad husband. I was very happy for many years. Things just fell apart.
From my POV "things fell apart" is too passive. Things were made to fall apart...and you've never heard me deny it - that's what your favorite mantra "taking responsibility for yourself" means to me - not tolerating the comfortable lies we tell ourselves to justify and rationalize and explain away. Self awareness is a terrible thing. You've often said you fought like hell and did everything in your power and more, and I threw it all away. That's been your claim, and that's been one basis of my self-evaluations since.
I didn't fight like hell, I just tried, I could have tried harder.
Don't know what to make of that. "Like hell" has been your story thus far, to me and others (and variations - everything, all humanly possible, etc). That's how you evaluated it then & I have no reason to believe you were lying
I wasn't lying. Maybe I have re-evaulated. You said you didn't see it coming, so maybe I wasn't clear and didn't give you enough of a chance. Problem is that until the very end, I didn't really know it was going this direction either. That's why I didn't threaten divorce. Even though I thought about it, I didn't think it would really happen . . . until it did.
When she dropped the D-Bomb, and during the first round of MC after, WAW was fond of the phrase, "That's my Truth." Now there's a different Truth.
What does it all mean? Perhaps it means this whole thing -- separation, divorce, perhaps even relationships themselves as a whole -- is a moving target. Constantly evolving, constantly shifting shape and scope and boundary, never remaining the same and -- ineluctably -- never remaining certain.
Dangerous thoughts. For think about what that implies about DB'ing. "I want him/her back." No; no you don't. You want him/her back now, perhaps; yesterday, perhaps. But tomorrow? Who knows? And as for him/her, who is that? What is the truth of that person? You can't know -- indeed, s/he can't know. And where does that leave you? As if cast adrift on an unknown sea, able only to set your course for the current tide.
