To My Watcher

I've wanted to write to Sjors but I find myself writing to you instead. You: the watcher. The monitor of all my words. What do you think of this situation? I sometimes wonder what its like to be you: looking in on someone else's life. Do you have any opinions about this? Do you feel like a voyeur? Do you feel the irony of responding to my accusations of privacy violation by  violating my privacy further?

I confess there is something interesting about voyeurism.  Actually, there are few places better suited for this than your country. When I first visited the Netherlands, it was Christmastime. I was in Haarlem visiting Hans and I remember enjoying all of the lighted windows with orchids on the sills: nobody closed the curtains. People would be talking or eating or watching TV and I would look in on them as I walked by. Sometimes I think it makes us feel like part of humanity to watch, unobserved, the little things that make other people human: preparing food or patting the dog or playing with the kids.

But my relationship with Sjors is so intensely private and it matters so much to me. Surely you have some sense of this. You must know how deeply I care for him. Do you also have a sense of how the actions of your organization have profoundly affected my life? Sjors made a choice to return to his cage and shut the door behind him. This is a decision that haunts and pains me and separates me forever from him.

Does the ethic of national martialism outweigh the ethics of love? Do you believe it does? He is lost to me in every way that matters. And he matters more to me than he will ever matter to your people. Do you feel like this about someone in your life?

I do not hate you. You are only doing your job. But consider that I am not an abstraction. When your organization chose to treat me as an abstraction and a liability, they took something fundamental of my person-hood from me. When they pressured and coerced Sjors to give me up and re-frame his paradigm to exclude me, they took something fundamental from his humanity.

I remember reading George Orwell's 1984 when I was very young. Have you ever read this? If you haven't, you should. I'm sure you've heard of it. To me, the horror of the book was not merely the totalitarian regieme, or even the re-writing of political history, or the constant surveillance. The horror was the complete invasion of the independent and personal thoughts and ideas and the personal love of Winston and Julia: the fact that the party so alters Winston's paradigm, making him betray and, by so doing, hate Julia. 

During Winston's political "re-education", Winston is told (of the party's assertion of reality): "there are three stages in your reintegration . . . There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance.' But Winston resists. In his prison cell, he awakens, screaming: "Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!"  But, after torture and re-education, he does betray her and "loves" the party instead. When he sees her again, Winston finds that he dislikes Julia. Likely, her presence forces him to suffer the subconscious pangs of his own betrayal. When we experience loss of our individual integrity, we often rewrite our paradigm so that we don't have to confront this truth. Do this enough times and it becomes easier to compartmentalize and entertain two opposing ideas at the same time. Orwell calls this Doublethink. Doublethink requires its true practitioners to hold contradictory and self-nullifying beliefs simultaneously and persistently. Winston practices Doublethink. Sjors practices Doublethink.

I do not believe that the people in your organization wish to be malevolent. From my interaction with members of the Dutch military, I find you to be individualistic and motivated by the desire  to impact the world positively. I'm drawn to your people. Very likely, your organization views itself as good, and performing essential functions. So how do you reconcile this with the tremendous evil you have done to me and to Sjors? Do you have any concept of the wrongness of these acts? You may monitor and remove bad actors from the world stage. I support these actions. But I was never a bad actor. I was never a threat to him - nor to your organization. I never wanted anything but to love him and be with him and support him. I have had so many professional and personal passions in my life - but I would surrender every one of them if I could be with him. Even now, I would give up everything I have if it meant I could make love to him every night, and wake up with him beside me. If I could see him smile and know that I was the one making him smile. Indeed, I have trusted him so deeply and loved him so much that it nearly cost me my life. Have you ever loved someone so much that you would trade anything you have for their wellbeing and happiness? After more than a year of knowing he was lost to me, my heart still involuntarily reaches out for him. When I awaken in the morning, I feel a pain in my chest and it sometimes takes me a few minutes before I can identify it: I feel the lack of Sjors as a physical and psychic pain. His physical and intellectual and emotional and spiritual removal from my life have injured me beyond what I can hope to articulate to anyone else. How can an organization do such great harm and still consider itself to be "good"?

These are my thoughts. How I wish I could have a genuine discussion with you and know what you think! There is this inherent barrier between us. You cannot answer or acknowlege me. But I believe you're a thinking and intelligent person with a strong system of ethics and beliefs. How else would you be selected for the job you perform? I wish that you could talk to me - even if you disagree with my ideas. I  wish that I could convince you to help me somehow. But I don't know how. What would I even ask? Maybe you know what you can do. Maybe you will do something for me.

I think that Orwell's ending to 1984 is likely and believable. But it is not inevitable. I believe in forgiveness, and I have faith in the power of love. I believe that love has the ability to overcome many evils. Orwell depicts the final betrayal of Winston and Julia for one another as an irreversible ending for the both of them: a final termination. But I have been both betrayer and betrayed. I know what it is to long for forgiveness and to also feel such love that it is possible to forgive terrible things. If you have been briefed on my background, maybe you know what these things are.