While scrolling through my Facebook feed recently, I was saddened to discover that two friends’ marriages of many years were ending. In recent years, I had kept in touch with these friends from high school only through social media. My impressions from their Instagram posts and Facebook statuses were that they both had solid, happy, and fulfilling relationships with their spouses. Either something had changed or I had based my assumptions on appearances rather than reality.
In this era of social media, so many of our relationships are built and maintained through the click of a mouse or finger taps on a tiny little screen. In these virtual settings, we are quick to share our triumphs, our good news, and our best selves—sometimes even fibbing a little to be what we wish we were rather than what we actually are. Being our real selves and truly getting to know others’ real selves can be a challenge.
Certainly this desire to put our best foot forward is a human tendency that predates current social media trends. Most of us are hesitant to openly lay out our faults, failings, and weaknesses for all to see. And airing our dirty laundry in public—whether in person, over the phone, or over the computer—is rarely a welcome or even a good thing.
On the other hand, when we hide our struggles and whitewash our difficulties, we not only present less than an accurate picture of our lives, we also limit our ability to deeply connect with others. We fail to show our own humanity—and it’s precisely that humanity that we all share. We are all so very different—we are the same, however, in one uniting way: we are all imperfect human beings.
Bass David Salsbery Fry, featured in this month’s cover story (p. 22), has spent the last 20 years concealing his own disability—and for good reason. In the beginning of his career, he discovered that when colleagues and directors found out about his condition, they made incorrect assumptions about his abilities, or lack thereof. Rather than face bigotry and fear, Fry decided to hide his disorder from everyone but his immediate family and doctors.
Now in the midst of a major career, Fry has decided to break the silence. As sound as his reasons were for not speaking out, his reasons for now sharing his disorder publicly are even more sagacious. He hopes that others with a similar condition, or any other disability, will find hope and take courage in his success. If and when others tell them—as doctors once told him—that they should not or cannot have a singing career, they can offer proof that it is possible because Fry has done it.
Fry doesn’t separate himself from his disability any longer. Rather, he sees it as something that has helped to shape and mold him into the person and singer he is. As he says, he doesn’t want casting directors to hire him in spite of his disability but hopes, instead, that they will hire him because of it. He feels that he brings so much more to his singing and his characterizations precisely because of all he has learned from his own imperfect humanity.
David Fry, in breaking his silence, is choosing to live an authentic life. As we interact with others, through whatever medium, may we follow Fry’s example and find meaningful and appropriate ways to honestly and authentically share our own humanity with others.
