Picture a person getting ready to go out. They choose clothes, fix their hair, and practise a smile in the mirror. None of that is lying. It is a shown self: the version of a person kept for other people to see. People had one long before phones.
Lived self
↓→
The gap
↓→
Shown self
The other one is the lived self: what a person does, wants and feels when nobody is watching. The two are rarely the same, and the distance between them is the gap. A small gap is manners. A large gap is a performance, and a performance has to be kept up.
Hates runninglived
vsvs
Shoes every weekshown
A student who hates running tells friends they love it, and posts a photo of running shoes every week. Which self is doing the posting?
Neither. A photo is just a photo.
Not yet. A photo made for other people is the shown self at work. It is not wrong. It is a thing that now has to be kept up.
The shown self. The photos are kept for other people to see.
Right. Hating the run is the lived self; the weekly photo is the shown one. The distance between them is the gap.
The lived self, because the shoes are real.
Not yet. Real shoes can still be a show. What decides it is who the photo is for, and the student made it for others.
A post→A promise→Must match the others→Must match real life
Here is the cost. Every shown thing is a promise. Posted shoes promise running; a happy caption promises a happy day. Each new promise has to agree with every old one, and with what the lived self actually does. The pile of promises grows with every post, and keeping them straight is work.
Picture a shown self that adds one new thing about itself every week. Move the weeks and watch how many pairs of things have to agree. Four things make six pairs, because each thing is checked against each of the others.
Things shown4 count
Pairs that must agree6 count
Weeks of posting: 4 weeks
Four things shown, six pairs that have to agree. Easy to hold in one head.
Things shown8 count
Pairs that must agree28 count
Weeks of posting: 8 weeks
Eight things, twenty-eight pairs.
Things shown12 count
Pairs that must agree66 count
Weeks of posting: 12 weeks
Twelve things, sixty-six pairs. Each new thing must agree with eleven old ones.
Things shown20 count
Pairs that must agree190 count
Weeks of posting: 20 weeks
Twenty things, a hundred and ninety pairs.
Which grows faster as the weeks go by: the things shown, or the pairs that must agree?
The things. There is a new one every week.
Not yet. One a week is steady. The pairs add as many as there were things already, so they pull ahead from the first month.
They grow together, one for one.
Not yet. Four things make six pairs and twenty make a hundred and ninety. They were never one for one, because each thing must match every other.
The pairs. Each new thing must agree with every thing already there.
Right. One new thing a week is steady. The pairs grow by as many as there were things before, so twenty things make a hundred and ninety pairs, and the pile runs away.
Move the control.
To seema pile to keep
vsvs
To benothing to keep
A line from a Greek play, Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus, written in 467 BC, praises a man who does not wish to seem the best, but to be it. Read with this lesson, it is a sentence about the gap. A person with no shown self to keep up has no pile of promises to check.
Each card is something a person does. Is it the shown self, kept for others, or the lived self?
One card at a time. Tap the pile it belongs to.
Card 1 of 6
Tidying the flat an hour before guests arrive
Tidying the flat on a Tuesday night with nobody coming
Reading a long book in bed, alone
Photographing the long book's cover for a story, then not reading it
Laughing at a joke nobody else heard
Rewriting a caption three times before posting
Tidying the flat an hour before guests arrive → Shown self
Not yet. Shown. It is done for the guests' eyes, and the timing, an hour before, says so.
Tidying the flat on a Tuesday night with nobody coming → Lived self
Not yet. Lived. Nobody will see it. It is simply what the person wants the flat to be.
Reading a long book in bed, alone → Lived self
Not yet. Lived. There is no audience in the room and no record being made.
Photographing the long book's cover for a story, then not reading it → Shown self
Not yet. Shown. The photo is for the readers of the story, and the book was a prop.
Laughing at a joke nobody else heard → Lived self
Not yet. Lived. A laugh with no witness is for no one, which is the mark of the lived self.
Rewriting a caption three times before posting → Shown self
Not yet. Shown. The rewriting is for the people who will read it.
3Shown
vsvs
3Lived
Right. Three shown, three lived. The same act, tidying, lands on either side. What decides it is who the act is for, and whether anyone will see it.
A doorwaysix people, gone
vsvs
A posthundreds, kept
The gap is not new. People have dressed for church and kept a brave face for centuries. What a phone changed is the size of the audience and the length of the record. A smile in a doorway is seen by six people and gone. A posted smile is seen by hundreds and kept.
The bakerysome bad days
vsvs
The photosno bad days
A small bakery posts photos of perfect loaves every morning. Some days the loaves are not perfect, and those days get no photo. Using this lesson, what is the bakery keeping up?
A shown self: a pile of promises about perfect bread, each new photo having to match the last.
Right. The missing days are the gap. The lived bakery has bad days; the shown one cannot, so the shown one needs work that the bread does not.
Its lived self, because the loaves in the photos are real.
Not yet. Real loaves, chosen for the audience. The choosing is what makes it shown. The lived bakery includes the loaves that were not photographed.
Nothing. A business showing its best side is just advertising.
Not yet. Advertising is a shown self with a name. The lesson is not that it is wrong. It is that the promises pile up and have to agree, and the skipped days are the cost.
Lesson complete
A shown self is a pile of promises that must agree; the bigger it grows, the more it costs.