Unguarded Moments

By nature, I think we are all private people - some far more than others - so when I finally work up the courage to confront a guitar player friend and tell him I've had the sense that something was troubling him for the past few months, I know it's a risk. To my surprise and relief, he doesn't wave me off but welcomes me in to his pain. He tells me that like my photographs of him, I've caught him in an unguarded moment and he spills it all, the short term memory loss, the unshakable depression, the anger and the fear, all the past mistakes that have come to haunt him. He asks if I think my photography gives me a special kind of sense about such things.

I tell him no, it's just that I'm a worrier.

I grew up in an alcoholic home and my daddy taught me to worry, I tell him, There are some lessons you just never unlearn.

He smiles - a little sorrowfully - and hugs me.

Little by slow, dear heart, I remind him, as so many friends have so often reminded me, Little by slow.

When I was growing up, I learned to guard my private emotional territory and as a general rule, I don't take kindly to trespassers. I try to extend the same courtesy to others but there's a little bit of a fixer in all of us and sometimes it's more than I can do to rein it in. It's taken me most of my life to learn that there are times when people don't want or need band aids or even sympathy. They just want someone to listen and know they're not alone.

There's a danger in unguarded moments but I suspect we are all at our most genuine in them.