A dear friend rebukes me for ideas I didn’t know I had. He reads me regularly, we converse occasionally, I’d have sworn we were as close temperamentally and ideologically as two aware beings can hope. Yet on this question, in his view, we are perilously, perhaps fatally opposed. “That’s not me!” I feel like roaring. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else!” But what use roaring?

This missive isn’t about the issue that divides us but about our division. Confidential candor is so hard. Safer not to engage too deeply, to confine one’s conversation to platitudes, steering clear of controversy, but where’s the joy in that? Love longs to nestle but not so close that we offend. We must allow others their “space,” in present parlance, but too much space precludes intimacy. “Dare to be true,” counseled good George Herbert – but how true? George Herbert dared truth – in his poems – yet suppressed his poems until after his death. Is a truth unuttered still true?

Here is the great difference between friendly and family love. My love for Jane and my kids and grandkids is inviolable. Candor must always give way to kindness, to protect our bond. In our twenty-plus years together, Jane and I have almost never quarreled, not because our thoughts are identical, but because our care is to care for one another. In a quarrel both lose, no matter who prevails.

I favor deep attachments. The souls I long to know I long to know better and better still. I take little pleasure in trading pleasantries. If a friend of whom I’m fond starts talking weather or traffic or Netflix I cringe: Is this really the best we can do, the most truth we can muster!

The calculus – how deep is too deep, how far too far – is intricate and complex. I invariably err by overdoing. The more I like you, the likelier I am to offend you with my curiosity. I really want to know what you really think, I really do; I’m restive in the harness of propriety. Candid words are preferable to candied, even if injurious. So I say. Yet I squirm when cross-examined too closely. “Why so nosey? Leave me be!”

Writing for me is lovemaking at a safe remove. I confess more than most, but warily, so far and no farther. I seek your love but selfishly, on my terms. I strain to explain myself precisely, because precision is pleasurable, but more, to prevent misunderstanding. Though I misspeak often I miswrite seldom, I hope.

My friend’s rebuke chafes – should I tell him so? Or change the subject? Or fall silent for a spell? Or pretend this difference never occurred (as if we could fool each other)? Or am I overthinking this? (What does “overthinking” mean, anyway?) Dog-pal Henry, splayed at my feet, would be rolling his eyes at me if he knew how.

Consciousness is both gift and curse. The more one thinks, the less one’s sure. Hamlet brooded himself to the verge of suicide: “To be or not to be” – what a question!

Is my friend awake fussing about this discord? I hope not – I want him to be happy. On the other hand – that ungovernable other hand – I want to be on his mind, as he plots to make amends. If only our contretemps hadn’t happened! Only the past cannot be erased like chalk from a blackboard. What has happened will always have happened – there is no going back.

I don’t know what to do except write – this. Will my friend recognize himself in these paragraphs? I hope so. I hope not.