Transparency

I am currently blogging on the best night of the year in which to do anything. Parties are the best when on this night. You can read a book in record time. Some years, sleep is just a luxury indulged this night.

For those of you in Arizona, you experience neither the benefit of the extra hour of sleep (or activity) once a year nor the inconvenience of changing your clocks twice a year and losing an hour of sleep in the spring. I envy you.

Make the most of the life you have, I say. So I'm blogging on the night Daylight Savings Time has gifted with an extra hour. I do have more to say. First, let me recognize that I have two friends who captitalized on the opportunity of the occasion and hosted a party tonight, which was wonderful. (We set a pumpkin on fire in the darkness, and watched it burn! I hope that's legal.)

A lot of different friends (and strangers, too, I suspect) read my blog. Ok, not a lot. But whoever you are, you are a varied audience. Since being the person with whom I think each of you would agree is impossible as I cannot maintain a blog to impress each of you, I am left with the rather honest position of simply being myself.

Tonight at the party, the hostess's father was talking about his daughter. With different friends, she would mold herself slightly to what suited them, what interests they had. When the father met the husband-to-be, he noted that his daughter was completely herself. The future husband was (and is) unmatchably unique. She was left with no choice but to respond as herself. Maybe we all do a little chameleon act.

I struggle with transparency like that. Real life has different circles of friends just as varied as my readers. There's no point in running around offending everyone. What is the point, though, if you run around pretending the person you are doesn't exist? that the opinions, interests, even convictions you have are not there?

Blogging, then, is therapy. Either I don't write at all because I'm afraid some one or all of you will be offended or disagree; or I write the truth, and let any of you who are willing deal with the result.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for changing your opinions and behaviors because to do so is better for others. So if I usually speak too quietly, rather than merely posting that I'm a quiet person, I can seek to raise my voice to be sure my friends can hear me. At first the effort might seem like pretending to be a loud person. Eventually the practice will have paid off, and I will have grown.

Which reminds me, I posted about learning to be a smiling person once. A tactic I use is to celebrate my birthday whenever I see it appear on the clock (which occurs for everyone, even leap-day babies, twice a day). I would like to inform you that I have a record, set this week, of seeing my birthday four times in a row. Also it occurred to me that I might as well celebrate Christmas, too, when I see the time 12:25. Sing a Christmas Carol or recite Luke 2:11 or something. And smile.

To God be all glory.