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Posts Tagged ‘Life’

Have you ever wondered how much nerdiness is acceptable in your life? How will the other commuters take it when your bumper informs them that your other ride is a Millenium Falcon? How many Star Trek collector’s plates and Suzumiya Haruhi figures can you display in your house before your dinner guests begin to wonder about you? What will the boss say when he finds out you’ve been tele-commuting from a Battlestar Galactica themed case-mod? Some say that it’s a double standard that we nerds hide our ways from the general public, especially when we have to deal with the play-off beards and smelly jerseys of so-called “normal” people. We often forget that until recently, being interested in Science Fiction, Fantasy or Video Games didn’t have the built-in social component that sports always did. We are always fighting the image of the shut-in fan, locked away in his parents’ basement, wearing an ill-fitted “Lum” t-shirt and cat ears, surrounded by moldy towers of comic books, dvds, game discs, or whatever the heck else he’s used to keep himself off the streets. One can avoid running afoul of this unfortunate creature by being alerted to his distinct musk of corn-chips and feet. Granted, the shut-in fan represents a large enough percentage of nerds that he’s become the stereotype. People from all over the nerd spectrum are wondering, how far can we take our interests before we end up like him?

To solve this dilemma, some nerds have taken to letting their geek flag fly at their weddings. What better evidence is there that you like human contact and have left your parents’ basement than promising to spend the rest of your life with a real live human of the opposite sex? That’s the idea on paper, which holds up rather well until you break out the prosthetic  makeup.

Never mind that these guys will have to explain this picture to their future children, how are the bride and groom supposed to appreciate how young they both look under those tire-tread foreheads? I don’t even want to know what they used for centerpieces at the reception. Now, I understand that the mighty Klingon warrior culture can add some military pomp and circumstance to your ceremony, but the focus should be on the happy couple, not on how well the guests wield their Ma’stakas.

After seeing pictures like this, most nerd couples would probably  want to keep their nuptials free and clear of the hobbies that made them so happy and may have even brought them together. However, some nerd theme weddings go a little bit differently, such as this couple from my favorite tropical hotspot, the Philippines.

If it weren’t for the lightsabers, you wouldn’t know that the groom’s suit was inspired by Han Solo’s jacket from The  Empire Strikes Back or that the bride’s dress combined elements of Princess Leia’s medal ceremony gown and Stormtrooper armor. I showed the photo gallery to Sara, and after reassuring her that we weren’t going to renew our vows this way, she agreed that it walked that fine line between nerd and outcast. Star Wars complemented and enhanced this wedding rather than just taking it over.

Nerdiness has gained increasing social acceptance in recent years. Thanks to the internet, most cities can hold conventions that bring nerds that social interaction generally reserved for sports fans. For me, being a nerd is a wonderful thing. It allows you to appreciate the things you love in popular culture in the most ostentatious way possible. It is an unpretentious an honest way of life. When we find the right way to share this way of life with other people, the results are enriching, fulfilling, and spectacular.

More pictures of K’Allen and Torsha’s wedding can be found here

Star Wars Wedding Gallery found via Toplessrobot.com

It was time to go home. We had a rental agreement that was expiring, travel insurance that was running out, and a plane that wouldn’t wait up for us. Our two weeks away felt like the true meaning of a trip of a lifetime. We had traveled to the other side of the world, saw towering mega-cities, steaming jungles, ancient temples and forsaken battlegrounds. We had met people from completely different backgrounds than our own, tried to speak their language, and engaged in the occasional misunderstanding. There are so many more stories to tell from our trip, but mostly they are quick vignettes without any real point to them. This series on my trip is starting to give Friday the 13th a run for its money, so this is as good a place to stop as any. If I learned anything from this trip, it’s this:

• Tokyo is not expensive, they just use a lot of sales to bleed you dry.
• Marketing is not a dirty word, and there is a way not to sound desperate.
• Never give anyone directions in Japan that end in “It’s near the shrine”.
• Gindako makes the best Takoyaki in the world.
• Filipino hotels are places where everybody knows your name.
• If you have kids, let them have fun. You will too.

Now that I was in Japan, I would regret it if I didn’t take in some form of anime-themed entertainment that would take months to be released in Canada. Theo and Tarra invited Sara and I to the “Yatterman” movie, which had just come out the week before. It fit the bill perfectly. “Yatterman” was based off of the 1970s anime of the same name. It’s about  two mechanics, Gan-chan and his girlfriend, Ai-chan. They travel the world on a robot dog called the Yatterwan to recover the fantastic Dokuro stone from the clutches of the evil Doronbo gang. The gang consists of Tonzura, a pig-headed muscle-man, Boyakky, the lecherous evil genius, and the bossy Doronjo, who under all the bondage gear just wants to find a good man and settle down. Despite being in all Japanese, the movie was fun, campy and colorful. It made fun of the fact that it was based on a cartoon by showing how ridiculous all of the formulaic transformations would be if they were in real life. I won’t give away any spoilers, but it also teaches everyone about the evils of tea-bagging.

In addition to the lovely film, we were also treated to the little differences in Japanese theater-going. Every ticket was assigned a specific seat. There were detailed maps on the screen showing the way to the exits, which made the theater feel a bit like an airline flight. We saw previews for two American films, “Bolt” and “Marley”. I had only seen both films from their trailers, and the differences were striking. While the American previews played up the snarky humor of both films, the Japanese trailers focused more on the emotional parts of the films and, to my surprise, made me want to see them more. Are Western entertainment companies trying to hide the sad parts from the audience, or do Japanese audiences need to see more of a film before they make the decision to see it?

While we’re on the subject of Japanese entertainment, Sara and I had quite a bit of time to check out Japanese television. There is anime, although it’s not running constantly. If there is an anime cable channel, we weren’t getting it in the apartment. There was a documentary on NASA to commemorate Japan’s contribution to the International Space Station. It was interesting because they would show the stock footage, the narration, and the re-enactments (with Western actors, so this was a well-budgeted production) and then they would cut back to the studio with a couple of stalwart experts demonstrating the distance from the Earth to the Moon to a panel of celebrities. Occasionally, there would be an insert to the reactions of the celebrities to what they were seeing. For example, the actresses teared up on witnessing the funeral of the Apollo 1 astronauts. It turns out that Japanese television shows do this on a regular basis. They would show something, and have a panel of celebrities comment on it. In addition to the space program documentary, there was also a show where people would eat their dinner in a room full of puppies or pot-bellied pigs and the panel would watch what would happen. It seems almost crass to inject the opinions of celebrities into things like the space program, but do we sell ourselves short by keeping the idea of information separate from the guilty pleasures of VH1? We decry that Ashton Kutcher is getting more twitter followers than CNN, but instead of setting these two forces against each other, perhaps we should be getting them to work together.

Concerning Japanese game shows, there are many, and they are wackier than ever. My favorite of these was a show where these two guys dressed like Prince Valiant went to peoples houses offering them money if they could win a game of hide and seek.  The Prince Valiant guys would get clues on the contestants’ whereabouts via traps set near the hiding places. We watched a family win 1 million Yen (around $10,000) by hiding themselves in various places in their own house. The small daughter won by hiding in the bottom drawer of a china cabinet. The 100 million yen (million dollar) contest was much tougher. About 20 contestants hid in an electronics store, and when they were caught they would get mud, paint, and other substances thrown on them. One guy had tarantulas thrown on him, so subsequent prisoners would enter the losers circle saying stuff like, “Why is everyone stuck in the corner-OH GOD NO GET AWAY!” Suffice to say, nobody won the grand prize.

Seeing those people humiliated on national television reminded my why US shows often miss the point of Japanese game shows. They spend so much time trying to bare the souls of the contestants or checking the instant replay to realize that such shows are not about rewarding skill or knowledge, they are about hilariously punishing ignorance!

We met up with our friends Theo and Tarra, who were staying at the same apartment complex we were. We decided to go on a little whirlwind tour of the city via the Yamanote line, an elevated train that circles all of Tokyo. Since this was Theo’s third trip and Tarra’s second, they gave us some important pointers about getting by in Japan.

- When you go to pay for something, you place your money in a small cash dish which gives the salesperson time to wrap up your purchase or calculate your change.

-Don’t tip the wait staff at restaurants. The tip is worked into the meal price and the wait staff will go to great lengths to give you back your change. Restaurants do this to ensure you are a repeat customer rather than just a one-time big spender.

-When using the washroom, bring your own wash-cloth to dry your hands. Most public restrooms will have no toilet paper, a hold-over policy from when people would steal toilet paper in the early days after the war. It’s customary to use kleenex, which is commonly handed out at street corners to advertise pachinko parlors and other such things.

-If you are having trouble communicating with a Japanese person, write down what you want to say. Most Japanese took English in middle school and high school, and are more likely to understand English in written form rather than spoken.

We took a walk through Ueno park to look at some Cherry Blossoms, then took the subway to Asakusa to see the Senso-ji, the oldest temple site in Tokyo. After lunch, we headed to Akihabara and had tea at one of the first maid cafes in Tokyo. We ended off the trip with a hearty dinner of Shabu-Shabu in Shinjuku.

Japan, like any other far off place, is surrounded by so much myth and hearsay in Canada. Some people will tell you that it’s full of nothing but buttoned-down salary-men and office ladies, and others would have you believe that it’s a saucer-eyed mecca of anime-themed insanity. I was glad to finally go there myself and get my own impressions of the country.

The first thing that I noticed about Japan was the signage. Everything and every place seemed to come with its own set of instructions. Trains, bathrooms and snack packaging are all designed to be fairly easy to use without any questions. This might strike people as kind of stuffy, but I look at it as the product of a people that just likes to know where to go in life. I think this attention paid to organization and instruction has created a very high penetration rate for advanced technology like cell phones and televisions. The Japanese can trade up cell phones every three months because NTT DocoMo is willing to hold a customer’s hand and facilitate the change over, rather than throwing a data cable and an Indian call center agent at them and say “get to it”.

On that note, salesmanship is considered real work in Japan. Over here, we have this image of salespeople as Willy Loman from “Death of A Salesman”, pathetic souls with no vocation besides hocking the work of other people. In Tokyo, there are people on megaphones and flashy signs everywhere. Once you’re in the store, you never get the feeling that you should buy something or get out. The salespeople are having fun selling to you and you in turn have fun shopping there.

Japan has a lot of things that we in the West would consider very libertarian in nature. Cigarette and beer vending machines are restricted by legislation here in Canada, but in Japan these things exist because of a strong sense of organization and community. It’s kind of a busy-body philosophy. Many businesses will not serve students during school hours and if a child decided he wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes, passersby would think nothing of interrupting him. It makes you think about the kinds of freedoms we could enjoy if people simply took an active interest in the lives of people around them.

You’d think that after exploring Intramuros, Corregidor Island, and eaten copious amounts of mango fresh from the tree, that we had seen all that we could see of Manila in one week. But no, the last night of our stay had even more surprises in store for us.

One of Don’s Colleagues was holding a birthday party for her granddaughter on Saturday night, so Sara and I were invited. We were a little trepidatious at first because we didn’t know the family, but we were so flattered by the invitation that we accepted it. As we meandered through the highway, Judy mentioned that there would be the kid’s party first, then the adults’ party after dinner. At this point I wondered what exactly Sara and I had gotten ourselves into.

This was our answer.

To say this was the most extravagant birthday party I had ever been to was an understatement. They had a DJ leading the kids through games of finding coloured golf balls and seeing who could say “Happy Birthday” the longest. There was a vintage ice cream cart, a cotton candy machine, Transformers goody bags for the boys, Disney Princess goody bags for the girls, and chair covers. As God as my witness, I have seen chair covers at a child’s birthday party.

But what really floored me about the whole party was the parents. What were they doing while their children were being over-stimulated with toys and sugar and all that nasty stuff? Again, as God as my witness, they were chilling. Just kicking back with their drinks and watching their kids have the time of their lives.

Now this is a scene that is completely foreign to my home country. If this was going on in a Canadian backyard, no matter what income level, you’d have parents in the middle of the games making sure the “bad” kids kept their distance from their precious little snowflake.  Someone would be grilling the caterer over little Jimmy’s gluten allergy, or there might be a small cache of parents gossiping about what a bad influence the DJ is. They would not be catching up with their cousins over fruit cocktail.

Now, you might say I’m only making this observation as a non-parent, but believe me, I was nervous too.  Someone was making toy swords with balloons, and Sara’s 10-year-old triplet cousins were having a full scale battle with the other kids. I fully expected to hear a piercing wail coming from a kid who got hit too hard or whose balloon sword had popped. All I heard was laughter. Sara and I were talking with Don’s colleague’s neighbour, who has twin nine-year-old boys, and she asked if Sara had any kids and when she was planning to have any. Her tone was more akin to asking “When are you going to Cancun?” rather than the “When is your life going to be ruined too?” or “Can I have your mat leave?” tone that I usually hear when the question of children comes up. At that very moment, something clicked into place. A solution with clues reaching far back into the trip.

We all may have heard at some point or another on celebrity talk-shows or chick-lit novels that you need to get a Filipino nanny because, you know, they love kids. You might think, well, they come from a developing country and they would appreciate the Canadian/American minimum wages, so they’ll work hard. The party was a big “No, no, no, you don’t understand,” to that statement. They LOVE kids. They are not only our future, but they are one of the pleasures of life. The sound of children playing is considered the background noise to a life well-lived. In the malls, there are all of these playgrounds and rides. I saw no less than 5 places in one mall advertising that they host birthday parties. You could tell that the tour guides were directing their stories at the triplets, and any other kids we taking the tour with. Judy even told us that in Geneva or Canada, people would see her with a triple stroller and give her looks of pity. In the Philippines, people with no more with 5 pesos to their name would go up to her and tell her how blessed she is.

Does this mean that they value children in the Philippines more than we do? Of course not, but the concept of children is approached with less emotional baggage and less fear. Our culture makes it tough to be a parent. “Where are the parents?” is the first question people ask when they hear about kids shoplifting or beating up each other in the news. Then you’ve got the other side of the coin, where parents are pulling their kids from dance school because they were playing “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” at the recital. Parents are basically being judged all the time, which makes them paranoid. Everyone else is paranoid of the paranoid parents. We are all actively trying to avoid each other, so our parks are empty, our kids can’t relate to anyone, and under no circumstances do we have big, fun, birthday parties.

So what am I going to do, knowing what I know now? Again, I’m not a parent yet, but I want to be some day. I’m not going to be leading a one-man revolution against paranoid parenting, that’s just too much for me or my kids. We can’t just socially engineer away all of our problems. I will be looking to them to see what makes them happy, and try to balance that with the knowledge that I have that will keep them that way in the future. And most importantly, I will enjoy myself.  I think we can always choose the way we react to life, and if an entire nation can make their child-rearing years the best years of their life, I think I can too.

It was like seeing the set of a big budget movie, only it really happened. Corregidor was a 90 minute ferry ride from the docks in Manila. Along the way we could see a myriad of tiny fishing boats bobbing up and down in the waves. From there, we loaded into open-air tour buses that reinforced the Universal Studio Tour feel. However, as we passed the distance numbers on the road and the dilapidated pill boxes in the trees, everything became just a little more real. None of this was for show, everything had a purpose of some kind. This was where the fate of the world was decided long ago.

In British Columbia, there are no great battlefields. Aside from the paranoia of the Japanese internment camps, the bases for training soldiers, and perhaps the odd submarine, war was a stranger to my part of the world. All the battles for Canada as a nation were fought on the east coast.  BC’s border disputes were decided in the halls of government rather than through the barrel of a gun. Corregidor is unique among WWII battle zones. While London, Berlin, Pearl Harbor and Tokyo were all rebuilt for the sake of the people living there, Corregidor was home to no one save the birds and monkeys. Its guns were rendered obsolete by the events of the war.  In addition to the museums and monuments, the ruins of the base that once defended Manila bay serve as a reminder to those who died in the war.

There something about all of those ruined structures that can’t be captured with photographs. A step in either direction reveals never-ending caverns of lonely building guts. It reminded me of the last scene in “Slaughterhouse Five” after the fire-bombing of Dresden. There really is such a silence after a massacre. It’s not the kind hear, though. At once you think about the people who made those buildings their home and the mechanical savagery by which they were destroyed. The bullet holes conjure images of a young soldier leaning on a machine gun trigger until his box of ammo was empty, yet the look on his face is the same as if he were working an industrial press.  The craters and pock-marked concrete were only a inkling of the violence that took place here.

As the tour went on, we learned about how the Americans and Filipinos had defended the island until their ammunition and water had run out. We walked through Malinta Tunnel, where they had lived while the Japanese bombers deforested the island. When they surrendered, the Japanese marched all 72,000 of them up the Bataan peninsula, which we could see in the distance. 54,000 made the journey alive. When the Allies retook the island in 1945, the Japanese soldiers, honoring their Bushido code, would commit suicide by jumping off of cliffs overlooking the sea. That was where the Japanese government eventually erected their own shrines to the sons they had lost there.

In this day and age, we are so removed from the horror of that time. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan almost seem like small-time thuggery by comparison. Americans, Filipinos, Canadians, and Japanese now visit this place as tourists, whereas 60 years ago they would have been the bitterest of enemies. The fact that there has been peace between those countries for so long raises a few questions. How could we reconcile what happened here with what we have today? What changed? Was it our ability to communicate over television and computers? Do our well-heeled post-war lifestyles prevent us from getting the idea to kill each other? And whatever caused this reconciliation, can we put in a bottle or a book or something so we can send it to places like Afghanistan and Iraq where they really need it?

There was an article on esquire.com recently about how the US Republican Party cannot survive in it’s current form. The author posted this video of RNC chairman Tom Price as evidence.

In that shaky, distorted video, Price derides the Democratic party for making “shady back-room” deals by daring to write their bills behind closed doors like every other political party in the free world. Now, the tone and format of that video sound familiar. Where have I seen it before?

If there is a sign of a party on the run these days, it’s the shaky video confessional. (To be fair, Stephan Dion’s video had higher production value. It just goes to show you what kind of shape the Republican Party is in.) In institutions where the flow of ideas is key, the muddying of communications is a sin of the worst kind. No matter what their stances on the issues are, I hope the Republicans and the Liberals both clean up their act in delivering their ideas to their respective countries. If they fail, their ruling government parties get a mandate to make laws that fit an ideology rather than reality. Debate is the lifeblood of Democracy, and it is just as bad for one side to cede control as it is for the other to dominate the discourse.

Call me a follower, but I love reading these things. Here’s my contribution to the meme beast.

1. I’m pretty sure I saw an e-mail version of this list in the late 90′s.

2. I’ve yet to learn anything really terrible from these “25 Random Things” lists. (Knocks on Wood)

3. My Wife says I make a Chewbacca noise when I get upset.

4. I have had exactly one job after university that had any expectation of permanence. The company folded their office just in time for Christmas.

5. I lament the fact that World of Warcraft has all but killed table-top Role playing games.

6. My first two cars were red ford tempos.

7. I can remember the exact moment when I learned to read on my own. I was 4 years old, the book was “Go Dog Go”, and I was trying to read before bedtime.

8. I rarely drink, and when I do, it’s usually with people I trust and the harder the stuff is, the better. Maintaining a buzz gets expensive when you’re my size.

9. I have worn costumes outside of Halllowe’en.

10. I’ve been told I look like Dwight Schrute from The Office. I wonder if this is affecting my career at all.

11. My so-called “published works” include: 1 play, a webcomic, a newspaper article, this blog, and a letter in “Wired” Magazine.

12. I have delusions of learning how to draw well.

13. My relationship with my wife is proof that you can change your life for the better by just saying “Hello”

14. Actually, I said “Excuse Me”, but the lesson is much the same.

15. My first celebrity meet-up was with Phil Brown, who played Uncle Owen in the original Star Wars. It was at the San Diego Comic-con in 1998.

16. I can live without television, but only because internet technology has gotten so advanced.

17. People have told me about the harmful effects of the aspartame in my Diet Coke. They never mention that it’s also addictive.

18. I suppress my consumerist urges by maintaining a sizable amazon.com wishlist.

19. People who I know have blogs, but I wish would blog more: Theo Hua, Tarra Nakatsu-Hua, Erin Stoody, Sandy Deng, Phuc Tram, Melissa Quinn, and Chris Vance.

20. My collection of Gundam models has an armistice with my wife’s Cherished Teddies figurines

21. My Favorite PC game of all time is Master of Orion II.

22. I’m often tempted to question people when they make cryptic Facebook statuses.

23. I believe that the 1990′s killed the idea of Artistic Integrity.

24. I never wear sweatshirts because I tend to overheat. I don’t know why my body does this. Maybe I need a once-over with a geiger counter to make sure I’m not radioactive or something.

25. The Hershey Sidekick was the greatest candy bar ever.

One of the ways people like to prove that they are deep and trendy is by disparaging holidays like Valentine’s Day. It’s gotten to such a point that on Friday one of my wife’s students walked up to her and said, “Happy Greedy Corporate Conspiracy Day!” Now, when even the 13-year-olds have taken it up, I think it’s high time we adults get over ourselves and officially call the hating of Valentine’s Day a cliché. Take it down from the Pedestal of Holiday Irony and place it on the shelf next to the Christmas Fruit Cake and the Green Beer on St. Patrick’s Day.

But what about those Greedy Corporations out to cover the Earth in a layer of candies and greeting cards? First of all, Valentine merchandise wouldn’t exist if no one bought it. While I admit the price of roses skyrockets this time of year, there is no “Hallmark tax” that everyone must pay every February 14th. And what if some of us do want to spend some money on Valentine’s Day? Am I cheapening my relationship just because I want my wife to eat food better than what I can cook? People seem to think that it’s hypocritical that we choose to express an immaterial emotion through material goods. Well, I say that a gift is only hypocritical if it symbolizes love that isn’t there. If the love exists, there is no need to limit our expression to make it authentic. Cards, candies, flowers and jewelry aren’t obligations, they’re options!

Now some of you might say, James, who are you to talk? Why do you need a day out of the year to express your love to that beautiful wife of yours when you can tell her you love her everyday? And why do we need a holiday to remind us that w-w-we’re s-s-single? As a former member of the perpetually single, I sympathize. Really, I do. But if the many number of Valentine’s days I’ve spent alone have taught me anything, it’s that the only thing scarier than being single is attempting to make yourself not single. Expressing romantic love, or expressing any interest in another person at all takes bravery and daring. No one wants to be told they are unworthy of love. When you send that card or those roses you risk being told exactly that. The response could change your life for better or worse, and there is no in between. Fortunately, there is one day out of the year that you can use as a kick in the pants and say what you have to say. It doesn’t matter if you took help from a florist that gave you a discount, or from the simple passage of time. Once you’ve taken that step, you’ve proven to yourself and the world that you are worthy.

No one has to tell you that it’s the information age. Most of our money is tied up in securities buried deep in our bank’s web servers. Our worth to society is tied up in a series of numbers, cards and passwords. When we talk about protecting that information, we call that privacy. But as we all know, we are more than our bank cards and social insurance numbers. We have likes, dislikes, experiences, and relationships. We can reveal those things on the internet to make new connections, justify our opinions, and even help ourselves professionally. But how much information is too much?

I want to introduce you to the Brazen Careerist, run by Penelope Trunk. She runs a consulting business instructing companies on how to attract and keep young workers. Her advice is counter-intuitive and controversial. For instance, she advised that new grads should involve their parents in their salary negotiations. After reading the site for a while it occurred to me that the blog wasn’t so much about her career as it was a pulpit for the drama in her personal life. I learned about her autistic son, her divorce and about how she stabbed herself in the head while she was undergoing post-partum depression. She writes less about her personal life these days, but you can bet she does so only under strict orders from her divorce lawyer. Penelope Trunk gained a lot of readers by revealing intimate details of her life. The only problem with that is I remember almost nothing about the advice she gives, and almost everything about the sordid details of her family life. It’s disconcerting, and it’s the reason I don’t read her blog anymore.

Am I alone in feeling a little sleazy when I hear intimate details of a person I don’t even know? Why can’t I get to know people on the basis of a well-crafted first impression? It’s not about decency. That term is so loaded and it is often hijacked by the stupid. I’m not against people having skeletons in their closet, but how would you feel if someone you introduced yourself to at a cocktail party started telling you about how they have inner-child issues?

Some people might say it’s a sign of the times. With all this technology to record our every move, why not put something up there worth watching? In an age of millions of competing voices, we have to do anything we can to maintain people’s attention. It’s Days of Our Lives, only it’s starring me, me, MEEEE! When we start airing our dirty laundry over the internet, we’re not only putting our shame on public display. We are essentially saying to the world, “there is nothing interesting about me besides the personal tragedy beneath this thin veneer of blandness.” Aren’t we better than this?

Now, I am under the belief that all of us have something to offer by blogging. We all have specific experiences that can benefit others. Keeping records of how we live is important in any society. We should, however, have things that we just keep away from the public eye. Our secrets make us unique, and revealing them is an important symbol of trust in friendship. If we do make them public, it’s so that people can learn from the mistakes of our past, not so we can temporarily soothe the emotional wounds of the present.