Drapes

Being truthful doesn’t mean sharing every detail. And it takes skill to know what to share and when.

Consider a surgical drape. In procedures where the patient is awake, a drape is often used so that the surgical site is not visible to the patient.

The drape is a generous abstraction. (We don’t always want to know all the details.)

And outside the operating room, we can think of drapes as a metaphor. A useful way to soften harsh or disturbing realities. Drapes don’t encourage us to live in denial; at times they help us — on both sides — to focus on what’s helpful.