I Am Allowed to Know

Were you kept, for a long stretch, from your own information — statements you could not see, numbers you could not ask about, a general sense that wanting to know was somehow a betrayal? You are allowed to know now.

Knowing your own picture is not suspicion. It is not greed. It is not preparing for war. It is the most ordinary self-knowledge there is — what is the shape of your life on paper? What flows in? What flows out? Where do you stand? What do you owe, and to whom? What is yours, free and clear?

Begin gently. There is no rush. Pull together what you already have at hand: the statements that come in the mail, the accounts you can look up. Where there are gaps, make a quiet list of what you would like to find out. Where you do not know how to find something, you are allowed to ask someone you trust.

You may be surprised by what you discover. Pleasant surprises, unpleasant ones, sometimes both. Whatever you find, the knowing itself is a kind of homecoming. Your life is yours. Its numbers belong to you, too.

There was gathering. There is now the looking. There will be the soft sharpening of a picture that is yours to see. You do not have to understand it all in one sitting. You do not have to fix it the day you learn it. You only have to begin.