"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view." - Harper Lee, Atticus Finch

A couple weeks ago I was talking to a friend who's gay.

We were talking about the newsletter and I asked them what they’d like me to write about.

They suggested I write something about courage for Pride Month. 

My first instinct was to profile someone I admire like Tim Cook, who ran Apple while holding a secret for most of his life, or Wanda Sykes, one of my favorite comedians, who came out on a stage in front of strangers.

But then I remembered that’s not why I write this newsletter.

If a topic doesn't challenge me, I'm doing it wrong.

So I decided to do the harder thing and turn the lens on myself.

That's when I remembered a thought-provoking book I’d read several years ago: God's Debris.

It’s one big mental puzzle wrapped in a 130-page novel. It introduced me to the concept of a thought experiment.

I decided to create my own thought experiment based on one question: “What if I were born gay?” 

What struggles would I have faced?
In what ways would it likely have affected me?
How much more different would my life be?

I wanted challenge myself to really think about this in depth, so I gave myself the time and space to really sit with this question and try to answer it as honestly as possible.

During a long walk, I realized the first fight wouldn't have been with other people. It would have been with myself.

I grew up in a devout Christian home. So the earliest thing I'd have wrestled with isn't what the neighbors think. It's whether the thing I felt was even allowed. Whether I was still a good person. Whether who I was and who I was supposed to be could coexist. 

I know a thing or two about hiding from the truth. At 19, I started losing my hair. It was a mildly traumatic experience. I felt anxious, and self-conscious. I started wearing hats everywhere. I didn't want to see it, and didn't want anyone else to either.

It took me years to just say it plainly. I'm bald. I lost my hair. That's it.

And going bald barely registers next to what we're talking about. No church teaches against it. No law ever made it a crime. My parents were never going to be embarrassed at the table over a receding hairline. It's about as low-stakes as a personal truth gets.

If something that small took me years to stop covering up, what would it take to face the thing the world actually punishes you for?

I started to think about being made fun of. I pictured the guys I played ball with, the jokes that fly around during a game. I imagined being the punchline instead of the one laughing.

Then I pictured telling my parents.

The hard part wasn't imagining them yelling. It was imagining the silence. I thought about the embarrassment I'd have put on them. What my dad would have to explain to the men at church, and what my mom would never say to her friends. I don't think they'd have disowned me, but I know it would’ve added tension to our relationship.

Then I started thinking about the energetic and emotional toll it would likely have on me.

Hiding isn't free. It runs in the background like an app you can't close. I thought about the projects I wouldn't start, because I was too busy managing the shame. The quiet belief that the center of you is a defect.

I stayed in that longer than was comfortable.

For the first time, it wasn't an idea in my head. I felt it in my body.

The weight is real.

This prompted me to do some research on how LGBTQ+ young people are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as their straight peers. The Trevor Project's most recent survey found that 39 percent of more than 18,000 kids had seriously considered it in a single year. And the why matters. Kids in accepting homes attempt it at less than half the rate of kids in rejecting ones. The pain isn't being gay. The pain is being pushed out.

That's where the experiment left me. Like God’s Debris, the book that started all this, it didn't give me an answer, it forced me to find my own. And I'm glad it did.

I went in treating it as a writing exercise, and came out with a lot more empathy than I started with. For one afternoon, I felt how heavy it would be to carry. And the numbers showed me what that weight does to people who never get to set it down.

It reminded me of a line from the writer Glennon Doyle, who's gay herself. "Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself."

Too many of us are afraid to disappoint other people, and end up disappointing ourselves instead, which is the number one regret of the dying: “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the one other’s expected of me.”

So here's my thank-you. To everyone who found the courage to be who they really are, and made it a little easier for the next person to do the same. I only borrowed that weight for an afternoon. That earns my deepest respect. Happy Pride!

Here's your reflection for the week:

Reflect on this quote.

Who is ONE person whose life have you never tried to imagine from the inside but be beneficial if you did?

Here's your challenge for the week:

Block 30 quiet minutes, phone off. Pick a life very different from yours and ask, in detail, "What would it be like if this were me?" Stay in it until you feel it, not just think it.

With courage,

Jonathan