Secrets kept, illusions eroding even today....

 Keeping family secrets, while the pattern is familiar to everyone, and privacy is required in order to cope with one’s situation, and the line between sharing and concealing shifts depending on a myriad of influences, has several side-effects.

One of the more complex spin-offs of keeping secrets is its corollary, deception. Shakespeare borrowed from Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field when he penned the famous line:

Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive

The perils of lying, however, seem to have been buried under the over-weening will to power, that, ironically, comes with a fear of being “found-out”. The Jesuit, John Powell, in a tiny book, “Why I don’t tell you who I am,” answers the question simply, “I do not tell you who I am because that is all I have, and you might reject me.” On the website pubmed.gov, Melody Carter writes, July 2016, in a piece entitled, “Deceit and dishonesty as practice: the comfort of lying:

Lying and deceit are instruments of power, used by social actors in the pursuit of their practices as they seek to maintain social order. All social actors, nurses included, have deceit and dishonesty within their repertoire of practice. Much of this is benign, well intentioned and a function of being sociable and necessary in the pursuit of social order in the healthcare environment. Lying and deceit from a sociological point of view, is a reflections of the different modes of dominating that exist within a social space. French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu theorized about the way that symbolic power works within social order. The social structures and the agency of individual actors moving within it are interrelated and interdependent….lying or acting dishonestly is a powerful act that is intent on retaining stability and social order and could be seen to be a justification of lying and deceit. However, we need to consider, in whose interests are we striving to create social order? Is it in the end about the comfort of patients or for the comfort of professionals?

Dr. George Simon, in a post entitled, “Deceit Can Take Many Forms,” on his website, drgeorgesimon.com, writes this:

Deceit is the hallmark trait of manipulative characters…Deceit and manipulation are…close partners. Covertly aggressive individuals know that to successfully advance their hidden, nefarious agendas, they now only have to conceal their true intentions but also cast themselves in a way that seems benign.

Then adolescent struggle, which in some ways continues, is one that ‘writes’ and then ‘plays out’ conversations in my imagination about the several incidents over the years in which the questions of---

disclosure/discretion

                               safety/exposure

                                                   fear/courage/

                                                                 recrimination/endorsement

                                                                                                 retribution/openness

have oscillated, both consciously and unconsciously as a recurring theme.

At the heart of this intellectual vacillation lies an emotional weed, perhaps toxic virus would be more appropriate:

shame, guilt/acceptance, forgiveness.

And as that latter continuum vibrated, the question of by whom

(self/some other, parent, teacher, principal, clergy, and even deity?)

was the note in play. The indelible imprint of childhood, for many including this scribe, is shame and abandonment at not being “enough” in the eyes, mind and heart of a single parent. (No this is not a pity party, just the facts ma’am!)

Proving oneself as adequate, however, is analogous to a dog chasing his tail:

the motion continues, the tail is never caught. Spinning wheels, as in a snow drift, only digs the hole deeper, while the heat of the tires turns the snow into ice that is even more slippery, deepening the problem, while proving the futility of the rubber siren.

The public life, performance, wardrobe, words, facial gestures, ambition to take on various roles, while on the surface justified (internally and socially) as this version of the ‘Walter Mitty’ fantasy*. Untrained and untried, I sought roles as the co-co-ordinator of the campus formal at university, class president (by acclamation), fraternity vice-president, and then, while teaching in a boarding school, again untrained and untried, eagerly accepted coaching roles in football and basketball, and later, variety show co-ordinator, year-book advisor, and as a part-time worker in men’s clothing sales. When a colleague announced he was going on sabbatical, I casually mentioned that I would appreciate his tossing my name into the hat for his replacement as a free-lance television reporter.

Another of the ‘water-mitty’ fantasies, I had for some time been a spectator of news, public affairs, and the people in provincial and national leadership, from the perspective of a small-town kid whose interest in the wider world exceeded any interest in the issues of the small town itself. In grade thirteen, I recall one moment in history class, when I asked a question about the United Nations, only to be rebutted by the female instructor, with these words: “We do not have time for that question; we have to prepare for a final examination!” “Finals” were the provincial tradition for all Ontario students graduating from high school, and intending to go on to university and the reputations of the teachers were, in part, judged by the performance of their students in those examinations. As a student, however, my  I was unaware of such ‘other’ issues, and focussed only on the topic of geo-politics.

That moment, in retrospect, while glossed over in a heart-beat, seems to have been glued to consciousness. The “no” of the instructor was considered then, and continues today, to have been a form of pedagogical negligence. And yet, it was a seed for other questions for myself, and for others, depending on the situation’s need for questions. Naturally, the Socratic method# of conducting the classrooms and provided decades of opportunity to formulate questions, to imagine and to insert questions spontaneously, as a normal and integrative method of establishing rapport with students. The formal training at OCE Ontario College of Education was enhanced, developed and enriched by decades of practice for many of those who entered the teaching profession when the demand for teachers far exceeded the supply. (Otherwise, I might not have even found work in the field, given my dismal undergraduate background.)

From my perspective, the opportunity to report on local city hall news, on a repeater television station, for $10/report, and $5/interview, seemed like the ideal ‘fit’ for my curiosity, and my need to escape the tedium of sixteen-year-olds. Monday nights, for a dozen years, were given over to attending council meetings, interviewing various political and civil servant actors, writing and recording a three-minute report, on average. While there were moments of anxious timing, the experience was one of the most gratifying, as well as most enriching and disciplining of my life. There was a thermometer of language choice operating in each moment of those reports, as well as in each video-interview. How to express what happened, obviously from a single perspective, and yet retain a level of integrity for the moment being reported as well as for those actors who, undoubtedly, would refuse to continue to provide information and opinion, should the words ‘cross their line,’ was a question that lingered over each report. A single caveat, from a summer job while in university, from a trainer at Canada Packers, a man by the name of Harry Semple, has served me well: “Remember that, when there is a customer compliant, for example with a product that does not meet our standard, you must be fair both to the customer and to Canada Packers. Veering too far in either direction will not bode well for your and our business.”

A teacher colleague, entering the cloak-room area of the staffroom, on a Tuesday morning following my Monday night report commented, “There is nothing of your personality coming across on television.” Whether or not the comment was intended as a compliment or sarcastic tweek, I took it as a positive, given that my personality was not the issue nor was the ‘reporting’ about me. If I were somehow making it possible for viewers to imagine a debate over an issue like restoring the hard services to the Main Street, something no council had attempted for a century, for example, and help them to become engaged in that discussion, then I considered my job done.

On reflection, however, whether or not my reports and interviews were ‘good’ or less so, seems to pale in the light of the ‘walter-mitty’ aspect of the unconscious importance of living out a fantasy or dream.  Call it idealism, optimism, or sheer “puer” archetype. “The Latin phrase, puer aeternus (eternal boy) in mythology is a child-god, who is forever young. In Jung’s conception, the puer typically leads a ‘provisional life’ due to fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. He..covets independence and freedom, opposes boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable.” The ‘positive’ side of puer appears as the Divine Child who symbolizes newness, potential for growth, hope for the future. He also foreshadows the hero that he sometimes becomes. The ‘negative’ side is the child-man who refuses to grow up and meet the challenges of life face on, waiting instead for his ship to come in and solve all his problems…The phrase puer aeternus comes from Metamorphoses, an epic work by the Roman Poet Ovid, dealing with Greek and Roman myths. In the poem, Ovid addresses the child-god Iacchus as ‘puer aeternus’ and praises him for his role in the Eleusinian mysteries. Iacchus is later identified with the gods Dionysus and Eros. The ‘puer’ is a god of vegetation and resurrection; the god of divine youth such as Tammuz, Attis, and Adonis. The shadow of the puer is the senex, (Latin for old man), associated with  the god Cronus-disciplined, controlled, responsible rational ordered. Conversely, the shadow of the senex is the puer, related to Hermes or Dionysus—unbounded instinct, disorder intoxication, whimsy.” (wikipedia.org)

How can one read, write and reflect on this combined archetype, without having that ‘hitler-chamberlain’ phrase from my father ringing in my head. His phrase referred to how he perceived I was being raised, by two parents, one he labelled the Fuhrer, the other Chamberlain (he saw himself as the latter). The phrase, the ‘acorn doesn’t fall from the tree,’ seems to have some resonance in this story. And the tension between the puer and senex has been the archetypal energy, unconscious, undiscovered, unmonitored and unmetered, for all these decades.

In the classroom, I was considered by some critical peers as “far too close to the students” and thereby less than professional, while from the students’ perspective, I was humbled by their ‘friendship’ and their dedication to their respective tasks and their own growth. Rarely, did I neither envision nor articulate a vision of limits for their lives. Indeed, with one specific student, a male dyslexic, who had extreme difficulty in reading and writing, and yet whose intellect soared in each of his in-class reposts, passed in my grade eleven class, only to be told, by his grade twelve English teacher, “You need to go back to Atkins’ class where there are no standards; you will fail in my class!” Similarly, when the grade thirteen math teacher, teaching in a classroom immediately adjacent to mine, told me, while we were monitoring class movements between classes, “Pam cheated on her last math test!” I instantly remarked, “Pam did not cheat on her math test!” This retort provoked the “too-close to the students” rejoinder. When I determined to seek out “Pam” as soon as I could, and report the ‘charge’ to her, who confirmed my assessment and thanked me for the information, I knew there would be repercussions. She brought her two parents to the parent-teacher meeting that very evening, to confront the math teacher who never mentioned the incident again in my presence.

Attempting to discern whether a person, statement, situation, is authentic on a scale running from high to low, is a lens and an attitude, and a discipline fraught with peril. A similar gordion knot applies to the situation in which one tries to live-out one’s own authenticity, including the well-known and infamous capacity we all have for self-delusion. And the energy, tension and reverberations of that continuum seem to be central to at least this scribe’s attempt to confront whatever reality/appearance that cropped up in my path.

                                                ---more to come---

*In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, an employee of Life magazine spends monotonous days developing photos for publication. To escape and to overcome the tedium, he ‘moves into’ a world of exciting daydreams permitting him to play the hero.

# a form of collaborative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on the process of asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thought and elicit new ideas and assumptions.