The fog that hides is the refusal to notice—to attend to—emotions and motivational states as they arise, and the refusal to communicate them both to yourself and to the people who are close to you. A bad mood signifies something. A state of anxiety or sadness signifies something, and not likely something that will please you to discover. The most probable outcome of successfully articulating an emotion that has accrued without expression over time is tears—an admission of vulnerability and pain which are also feelings that people do not like to allow, particularly when they are feeling distrustful and angry. Who wants to dig down into the depths of pain and grief and guilt until the tears emerge? And voluntary refusal to take notice of our emotional states is not the only impediment to dealing with them. If your wife or husband or whomever else you are tangled up with, unhappily, at the moment says something that comes too close to the painful truth, for example, then a sharp and insulting remark will often shut them up—and is therefore very likely to be offered. This is partly a test: does the person being insulted care enough about you and your suffering to dig past a few obstacles and unearth the bitter truth? It is also partly, and more obviously, defensive: if you can chase someone away from something you do not want to discover, that makes your life easier in the present. Sadly, it is also very disappointing if that defense succeeds, and is typically accompanied by a sense of abandonment, loneliness, and self-betrayal. You must nonetheless still live among other people, and they with you. And you have desires, wants, and needs, however unstated and unclear. And you are still motivated to pursue them, not least because it is impossible to live without desire, want, and need.↵
So, what might you do—what should you do—as an alternative to hiding things in the fog? Admit to your feelings. This is a very tricky matter and it does not simply mean give in to them. First, noting, much less communicating, feelings of anger or pain due to lonesomeness, or anxiety about something that might be trivial, or jealousy that is likely unwarranted is embarrassing. The admission of such feelings is a revelation of ignorance, insufficiency, and vulnerability. Second, it is unsettling to allow for the possibility that your feelings, however overwhelming and convincing, might be misplaced and, in your ignorance, pointing you in the wrong direction. It is possible that you have misinterpreted the situation entirely, for reasons of which you remain fundamentally unconscious. It is for such reasons that trust is vital: but trust of the mature and tragic sort. A naive person trusts because he or she believes that people are essentially or even universally trustworthy. But any person who has truly lived has been—or has—betrayed.