Context Collapse: Dissolving the Dividers

My step mother, Heather Hayward, is one of the top personal coaches in the Los Angeles area. She has come a long way, from overcoming addiction and disfunction to running highly-sought-after, experiential-emersion workshops that fill to over capacity at each offering. She has coached me at several points in my own life, and I have always found her advice to be dead on.

Heather once said something to me that I have never forgotten. She said,"I don't have any secrets from anyone. My life is an open book. Living that way saves me so much time and energy and worry. It frees all my energy up to be as productive as possible. If someone doesn't like me for who I am, then I don't need them in my life."

Her words came back to me as I was reviewing instructional material for the Web 2.0 class I am taking as part of my PhD program. Our instructor, Vanessa Dennen, introduced to us the concept of context collapse--when different domains of a person's life that are typically separate from each other collide temporarily. For me, this most commonly happens when I run into students and their families while I am out shopping or running other errands. The expressions on the faces of the very young students can be particularly humorous, often grimacing or wide-eyed--wondering what in the world I am doing away from the school where they are accustomed to seeing me. Some of them honestly believe that I, and the other teachers and staff of the school, live there!

I wonder about the energy that is expended in keeping our lives compartmentalized in order to present different versions of ourselves to different groupings in our personal networks. I wonder about the constant underlying worry that can come with impending context collapse. Is Heather correct? Would we all be better off to abandon the often fruitless effort to control who knows what about us? To attempt to control how certain groups of people, both online and off, view us?

It seems that in the online world the stakes of context collapse can be even higher. Reputations can be ruined in a matter of seconds. I have counseled students and clients for years to live as authentically as possible as a way of reducing anxiety. This must, of course, be coupled with a constant nurturing of a strong self-concept, one that is independent of the good opinion of others.

On the other hand, we can also realize that no one is entitled to any information about us. Our business is our business. We can choose to share it with others on a need to know basis. If that is upsetting to them, well . . . then we can remember that we are not responsible for the feelings of others. We are only responsible to act with kindness and integrity.

Context collapse is a simple reality of life both on and off-line, but it does not have to be anxiety producing if we are able to accept it as such. Hopefully, we can also realize that others are not always as they appear to us in the specific context in which we know them, and be compassionate and respectful of what aspects of themselves they choose to share with us.