Teaching Through Struggles

I've been thinking about teaching life lessons through your own struggles of the heart or spirit.

There are two schools of thought here:

1. You wear these struggles openly and in public.
2. Or you hide them behind a front of some sort. This doesn't always involve the practice of deception. I can think of times when something like this is absolutely necessary.

The advantage of the first is transparency. The disadvantage of the first is that you are perceived by others as weak.

The advantage of the second is that people count on you because you're strong and don't have "troubles." The disadvantage of the second is that noone knows whether or not you need help.

Which is best? Is there a best?

On Beginning Spiritual Work

From a letter C. S. Lewis sent to Arthur Greeves, 15 June, 1930:

"Another fine thing in The Princess and Curdie [by George MacDonald] is where Curdie, in a dream, keeps on dreaming that he has waked up and then finding that he is still in bed. This means the same as the passage where Adam says to Lilith 'Unless you unclose your hand you will never die and therefore never wake. You may think you have died and even that you have risen again: but both will be a dream.'

"This has a terrible meaning, specially for imaginitive people. We read of spiritual efforts, and imagination makes us believe that, because we enjoy the idea of doing them, we have done them. I am apalled to see how much of the change which I thought I had undergone lately was only imaginary. The real work seems still to be done. It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation with the spiritual life with the life itself--to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed, and then to find yourself still in bed."