SCARY CLOSE
I’m drawn to the title because
intimacy-avoidant people have played key roles in my life since young. I’ve
become fiercely independent largely because of our relationships. Being family
at some point or other, they are not people I can write off and close the door
on. So I want to understand their psyche better and to create a place for greater
honesty and responsibility from them in our relationships.
The crux of the book’s message is
to drop the act and to have the courage to reveal our true selves to the people
around us. There's even a chapter titled 'Performance Anxiety in Real Life.' For this exposé of himself, Miller stayed single and avoided
dating for almost a year.
“I’d spent a good bit of my life
as an actor, getting people to clap - but the applause only made me want more
applause. I didn’t act in a theatre or anything. I’m talking about real life.
Can we really trust people to love us just as we are? (I’d add: Not
hidden but known) Nobody steps onto a
stage and gets a standing ovation for being human. You have to sing or dance or
something.
I think that’s the difference between being loved and making people
clap, though. Love can’t be earned it can only be given. And it can only be exchanged
by people who are completely true with each other.”
Miller had good friends:
· Bob, the attorney friend who kept calling to check in on
him for a year when he was emotionally broken after a breakup.
· David Price, who shared an office with him and loved him enough to suggest that he stopped dating for a
season and encouraged him that he was not all bad in relationships. “It might be
good for you to go through withdrawal…to detox from all the drama.” The result
was about a year without dating.
· His pastor, the late David Gentiles, who was like a
father to him. David was a gifted writer and orator who sought little earthly
validation while pursuing the stuff that really mattered. After his passing, Miller wrote, “He had been driven
by what I was only beginning to experience: a deep sense of meaning. It was his
love for me that created the chasm and the ache.”
Miller also has a fantastic
imagination that had negatively affected his relationships. From his dating
sabbatical, he emerged with the reality that fantasy changes nothing and
produces only a bankrupt story. I’ve personally found that optimistic people like
myself tend to have a greater imagination than the more negative types. We
imagine the loving parent while living with an emotionally closed-off one, we
imagine a spouse has deep loving intentions while raising a family alone almost
as a single parent, we believe that people are genuinely concerned and kind even when we go through painful
seasons in extreme loneliness with little contact from them.
A safe person speaks the truth in
grace. I’d also add that a safe person operates in honesty and courage and does
not hold back out of fear of disagreement and offense. A safe person delivers the honesty that's needed and sticks around to help you pick yourself up. Measured against the biblical standard of love in 1 Corinthians 13:7
‘It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always
perseveres’ – I’d say honesty
and courage binds people in love and see each other through the storms of life.
The ‘Author’s Note’ sets a tone of openness and unusual honesty throughout the book that I soon discovered also resides in Miller’s
earlier book, ‘A Million Miles In A Thousand Years’ which I have also reviewed below.
A MILLION MILES IN A THOUSAND YEARS
Miller inspired me to write a
better story to live out. I know my
story is going to be as good as the quality of relationships involved. And
sometimes, that means ending the way I relate with some people so that the
relationship can get better. It hurts like hell but if things have been nowhere near heavenly and the way God intends for people to relate, any change is an improvement.
Here are my favourite Miller bites (my comments in brackets):
- Nobody remembers easy stories. Characters have to face their greatest
fears with courage. That’s what makes a story good. There is probably death
at stake, inner death or actual death, …polar charges of happy and sad things
in life that are like colours God uses to draw the world.
(Consider Isaiah 54 – it juxtaposes so much
promises of God in the place of painful barrenness. It makes a great story and
when lived out, a true testimony).
- The fact of life and the reality of death
give the human story its dramatic tension. If you aren’t telling a good
story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died. But my uncle
died too soon.
(I believe some
people should have just do away with a funeral to save others the agony of
creating fictitious eulogies).
-
The elements that made a story meaningful were
the same that made a life meaningful. Most of our greatest fears are
relational. It’s all that stuff about forgiveness and risking rejection and
learning to love. We think stories are about getting money and security, but
the truth is, it all comes down to relationships. I knew a story was calling
me, I knew I was going to have to see if my father was alive. And once you know what it takes to live a
better story, you don’t have a choice. Not
living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around
numb until you die, and it’s not natural to want to die.
- I believed God was the Writer who was not me and
He could write a better story than I could, but I did not trust Him. I told God
no again, but He came back to me and asked me if I really believed He could
write a better story – and if I did, why didn’t I trust Him?
(Again, we go
back to the standard of love in 1 Corinthians 13:7 ‘It always protects,
always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres’)
-
It’s an odd feeling to be awakened from a life
of fantasy.
(I know that,
but it frees your mind to be in the now.)
-
The truth
about telling stories with your life…you’re not going to want to do it.
It’s like that with writing books, and it’s like that with life. People love to
have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it
happen. But joy costs pain. People fear change, and tend to plant themselves in
what’s comfortable even if they secretly want for something better. But for
every good story, there is a force resisting the beautiful things in the world,
and too many of us are giving in.
(John 10:10 The
thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come
that they may have life, and have it to the full reminds us that God has a
better story for us to live out in full but the Enemy is just as intent to
short-circuit the narrative.)
- The most often repeated commandment in the Bible
is “Do not fear.” But fear isn’t
only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a
manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.
About storytelling
§
Great stories are told in conflict, but we are
unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.
We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.
§
(Just look
at Isaiah 54 and other parables and stories in the four Gospels)
§
An inciting incident is a doorway through which
the protagonist cannot return.
§
In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
wrote, “The must honors the working stiff.” A writer has to sit down every day
and write, regardless of how he feels.
§
Robert McKee’s Story is a manifesto on
all things story.
§
Save the Cat is a how-to book for
screenwriters writing for movies.
From an accomplished author who
also struggled with feeling unlovable and immense pain of that, Miller left
readers with this encouragement: I don’t
ever want to go back to believing life is meaningless. We need to move our
thoughts beyond our own despondency into direct action that affirmed a greater
meaning in life. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the
right answers to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets
before each individual.
When he meets God, he’ll want to
ask if He remembers when he fell apart. But he has a feeling that God will
remind him instead of the parts he forgot, the parts that were His favourites.
(I really like that!)
Without honesty, love is a hollow echo, relationships are devoid of
courage, character development is stunted, and life is meaningless. Of course,
manipulative and controlling people have always called it honesty for all manner of abuse and rudeness. But that’s not what
I’m talking about. And Miller’s book offers a humbling reflection for those
craving honesty that builds up and desiring to take the first step of courage
to change their lives and relationships.