Ever since I’ve been intrigued with two questions: how we know what we know, and how we share what we know. By the age of thirteen or fourteen, I experienced an adult giving himself away. I was at my first school dance, and a young music teacher was trying so hard to belong to a group of older teachers that he was saying almost anything, changing his demeanor and his views in an effort to be accepted. I only caught glimpses of conversations about subjects I didn’t understand, but somehow it seemed very clear what was going on.

It seems, at times, we’re so impressionable in our personality that our bane is how we turn chameleon, offering up our vision for an ounce of love. At other times, we’re so impressionable in our being that our blessing is how we transcend the yoke of selfness, dispersing for the moment into a confluence of grace. And so by the age of fifteen I had learned that some great ongoing struggle awaited. Only years later could I give it words. It seems to me now a constant polarity of yearning: the fending off of influence so that unencumbered reality can reach us with its truth and the abating of loneliness at having a mouth full of light and no one to kiss.

In Japanese, the word sumu means both “to live” and “to be clear.” And part of the mystery of being human stems from the inexplicable fact that clarity arises most often in solitude. Much to our short-lived ecstasy and long-term frustration, some of our deepest, most alive moments occur when alone, when pruning away the thoughts of others like weeds that block our path to light.

But being alone with either clarity or confusion compels us to voice our sense of abundance or emptiness, as if keeping either to ourselves for too long will turn the stuff poisonous. This is why confession works. Though the church has diluted its meaning, the urge to confess—to share secrets and truths, to voice in the presence of another what we’ve found or what we haven’t—is empowering. Sadly, this is all that’s left to the homeless who often publicly confess their deepest emptiness to their collective other walking by.