Defining my terms: Openness

[mdlbear]

It occurs to me that, in a series of posts about mental states and relationships, I probably ought to define my terms. It's only fair, especially in an area where peoples' personal definitions are both vitally important to them and in some cases appear to have very little overlap.

Since this is an exercise in information sharing, it seems only right to start off with my definition for openness.

Openness:

Openness is, fundamentally, willingness to share information. In both directions. One might call the receiving direction "open-mindedness", though that's probably only part of it; I can't think of a good word for the sending direction. Anyone?

So let's take the sending direction first. Openness, in that direction, is a willingness to share information about yourself with others. There are degrees, of course, both in who one shares with and how -- and exactly what -- much one is willing to share. Some people share their most intimate feelings only with their closes friends; others (like me) "publish and be damned" almost everything on the open web.

In the other direction, openness is most of all a willingness to listen. It implies both interest in what the other person is saying, and (where applicable) a willingness to consider new information and possibly change one's own mind.

There's a lot of similarity between openness in relationships and in software; a good open-source software project not only shares its code freely, but accepts bug reports and patches for that code. It's not exact; there is, unfortunately, no revision-control system for relationships.

Most of the time I'm pretty far out on the openness side of the scale, by my own measure. There's very little about my own emotional life that I wouldn't publish here in my LJ, or put into a song. There have been a couple of times when I've suddenly thought "did I just say that to the entire damned Internet?" and friends-locked a post, but it feels wrong when I do it. As if there was something I needed to hide.

Sometimes I do need to hide things, though. I won't share anything I understand to have been told to me in confidence, and I won't share anything I understand will hurt someone else or reveal information they don't regard as private. The key word here is understand -- I'm all too likely to default to my own standards of openness; feel free to whap me with a cluestick if I blunder and cross one of your boundaries.

I've run across other peoples' boundaries enough lately that I'm setting up a private journal that's just for myself, finally. I haven't had a private journal in nearly four decades, but I have to write about things if I expect to understand them, and I need to be open with myself even if I can't necessarily share those particular thoughts with anyone else. It still feels wrong.

So, just as a reminder: this is my definition. You can tell me how it differs from your definition -- I really hope you do, in fact, since one of the motivations for this is to find out how my use of language differs from everyone else's -- and I'll be glad if you point out obvious inconsistencies or mistakes, or places where I could be more precise. You don't get to tell me that my definition is wrong. (edit 5/4) You can tell me why it doesn't really appear to be the definition I'm actually using. And you can tell me why you think I should be using a different one.

Similarly, you can tell me where you are on the scale, but you don't get to tell me I'm in the wrong place.

Comments

[kyrielle]

*grins* I mostly don't have trouble with my job, as I like it a lot. The problem is that a lot of the fun or exciting stories I otherwise would wish to share, I'm never sure if I should. I mean, obviously you don't want to post anything that violates company confidentiality (like some great new project or whatever that's not publically announced), but even beyond that, we write software for public safety agencies. So a lot of what I might otherwise share either is confidential, or I'm not sure if it is. I'm just not comfortable saying a whole lot in that area, probably well beyond what really needs to be confidential. I'd rather err on the side of too much than too little, in that case.

[mdlbear]

Yeah, confidentiality can be a problem. Fortunately we're a research group, so I can be sure that anything that's been published or has a patent issued is fair game. Other than that I stick to blogging about the people and the process, which are fascinating enough. Occasionally new products or other announcements.