We have yet to find our way in sexual things. The revealing knowledge
that Freud and his followers have given to the world shows us something
of our groping darkness; there is much we have to relearn, to accept
many things in ourselves and others that we have denied. We must give
up our cherished pretense of the sexual life being easy and innocent, we
must open doors into the secret defenses we have set around ourselves.
None of us know much, but at least we must begin to tell the truth about
the little we do know.
Now, this self-honesty may sound a simple thing. It is not. Few of us
even know how hard it will be. It will call for the greatest possible
courage to tear away the new, as well as the old, bandages with which we
have blinkered our eyes, walking in shadow so complete that some of us
have lost the very power of sight, like the strange fishes that live in
the gloom of the Kentucky caves. Honesty will demand a real conversion,
a change in our attitude to ourselves and to one another. We shall have,
indeed, to reassure ourselves of the sincerity of our intentions, to
begin as the first necessary step to accept ourselves as we are and to
give up what we desire to pretend we are, to learn to be truthful to
ourselves about ourselves.
Better to know ourselves as sinners, than to be virtuous in falsehood.
We must grow up emotionally; want things to seem what they are, not
what we want them to be. Afterwards we can perhaps go on to help others.