I was listening to the radio, and they were interviewing a person. His name is J. S. Park (no idea what the J is for!) and he is a hospital chaplain in Florida somewhere. He was talking about death and the lessons he’s learned from it. Not all bad lessons either. You see, he is at the bedside of almost every person who passes away at that hospital, and in those moments so many things can happen. The host said something about an Instagram posting, and I hunted it down. This is what he wrote:
I’ve been a hospital chaplain now for about eight years at hundreds of deathbeds. I want to tell you something I’ve witnessed. Most people, at the end, realize they’ve spent a lot of their life hiding. Sometimes by choice, or because they could not safely choose to be themselves. At a deathbed, if my patient can communicate, they show they’re dying two deaths: the one they’re dying and then the death of the life they really wanted to live. But in their dying, some are also free. To tell me who they really are. What they wanted. Who they had to hide. Finally free.
To be honest, it’s obvious (from other entries) that he’s talking about a person’s identity, their gender, their inner interpersonal desires. However, as I thought about this, I saw that it can be true for many things. It can be true for me. So, today I turn the question on myself – what am I hiding? Not only hiding inside … but maybe also hiding from? What is holding me back from living the life I really want to live? And … therein lies something, I know.
Let’s begin –
What might I be hiding?
Let's return to our friend, the Johari Window; I wrote about it already a few entries ago. To review, there are four quadrants, each one identifying either ‘the Blind Self' or ‘the Unknown Self.’ How much you truly know about yourself makes these either larger or smaller, depending on how much is genuinely known to the self and to others. Ideally, the more the self knows, the better and more self-aware a person is. It is used for a few things, but I’m going to use it here specifically for these questions I have posed to myself. I realize that there are things still unknown to me about myself. Maybe this can bring to light a few that have been hidden?
The quadrants are the Open Self (known to both self and others), the Blind Self (known to others but not the self), the Hidden Self (known to self but not the others), and the Unknown Self (known to neither self nor others). I know right now that there are likely things that are definitely unknown to me and to others, dots that I haven’t connected, or even seen yet. But … for now, we’ll leave those there. What I’m interested in is what’s in the Hidden Self Quadrant. Those things that are known to me but to no one else. Things I'm hiding - from self and from others.
Because this is somewhat public, I will likely be vague, for that kind of absolute transparency is probably not the best for here. But, neither will I shy away from it – particularly as it relates to my Ikigai.
I remember when I was young and approaching high school graduation. I remember my mother wanted desperately for me to become a nurse. In retrospect, that was something she wanted, not me. She had no clue how much distress the sight of blood created in me! (How little she knew about me!) But, on the other side, I also didn’t know what I did want. She took me places, I took tests, but nothing ever came forth … from what I remember. (I have found those tests since, and I can see things that I really wish someone would have brought to my attention because hints were there, but this was still a time when only certain girls pursued a higher education, and that was not my family, on either side, nor was it me, I was told!)
Somewhere in Gr. 12, the decision was made for me to go to a Bible school in Alberta. I vaguely remember why – most of my friends were going to university, and I didn’t feel qualified. I was also discouraged by my mother. "Who do you think you are?" and "What makes you think you deserve that?" were common comments. I was also afraid I might choose what they did because I could then be with them. But that is not what I said out loud … I didn’t say anything out loud. I also knew that we did not have the money. I also didn’t understand why a girl would go to university, no one on either side of my family had gone, only the boys … and there was no support or encouragement on my parents’ part for me to go to university. “Why would you go there?” they would say. And I had no answer. I didn’t know why. Bible school was much better from their thinking – grounded in The Word, and an opportunity to meet and marry a Christian man.
But, that’s not how my life went, much to the disappointment and shame of my mother. The July after my high school graduation, my mother attended an organist seminar at an American college and, after introductions and tours and discussion, I decided I wanted to go there. I didn’t know why, but I felt that’s where I was meant to go. (A private American university! If my parents couldn’t afford a Canadian university, there’s no way they could afford a private American one! Can you imagine how this added to my supposed arrogance and conceit??)
Long story short – my mother hated every minute I was there. And she let me know it. It was too much money, it was not for me, who did I think I was, I wasn’t worthy of this, and on and on … I never asked her why she said those things or questioned what was really going on. Instead, I withdrew and hid inside myself. I took courses I thought she would like. I took a major that I thought would be something worthy of her. And it was good – I did learn much. Upon completion, I became a teacher, which was also not to her approval (You think you’re so smart! she would spit out with venom.) But what I really wanted to do … I’m not sure how much I really did. I did choose my minor for me, and I did love it. But the area I longed to go into (theology/religion and psychology), I never took one course in, other than what I had to for my degree. Besides, my father was adamantly against women in leadership positions in the church. Definitely not where he wanted his daughter! University was bad enough! (Oddly, he was proud of me the day I graduated ... mom, not so much.)
See? There is the place where I hid, where I went into hiding. At that point, I definitely did not feel qualified or able to figure out what I – me – REALLY wanted to do. Especially if it included religion in some way. On the one side, my mother was saying: girls don’t go to university; on the other side, my father was saying girls don’t go into religion. Both my parents came from very poor families, families where people don’t go to university, where girls are made into wives and they do helping jobs, the jobs that care for their parents when they get old. And that is the path I was supposed to go on.
However, in the end, I somehow did manage to become the first female from my generation, on both sides, to get a university degree. I was the youngest female granddaughter on my mother’s side and the oldest on my father’s. I am still the only female of all my cousins (that generation) to achieve that completion.
If I think about it, I remember hearing about a friend who did go into theology. She took psychology, and religion, and courses that my heart wanted. I loved talking to her about what she learned. She took classes about people and faith from amazing professors who inspired her. I wonder where she is now? In retrospect, there is a part of my heart that is saying THAT is where I should have gone. Yes, I learned much that I don’t regret; but there are things I feel I should have learned, that my heart longs for and misses deeply.
I remember at that time, I started to ask questions – of myself and of the world around me. Why are we here? What is our connection? What is LIFE about? I was raised in a Christian family, so faith was always a part of my history. But here’s the thing – the Christianity around me at that time was not what it is today. My roots were of the Lutheran denomination, and of the more liberal Lutheran roots. (We had female pastors, we had gay ministers, calling God “mother” was not a horrible thing.) This means it was not Catholic, but neither was it evangelical or fundamental. This also wasn’t about talking in tongues or hell and fire and brimstone or alter calls. And my college was a Lutheran college, the more liberal Lutherans.
Therein were amazing gifts that I didn’t realize at the time, but I sure do now! What I now believe is so very different than what almost everyone else that claims ‘Christian’ believes! So much for me is about ‘both/and’, not ‘either/or’. For example, I believe in both hell AND universal salvation. I believe in both atonement AND at-one-ment, both Christ the Redeemer AND Christ the Universal. To be honest, there is a lot of talk these days about ‘deconstructing’ … and I think that ever since I entered university in 1981, maybe even since Gr 8 when I began confirmation, I’ve been deconstructing. This isn’t a big thing for me, it’s part of my growing and maturation – it has always been part of my life. I’ve always been questioning and searching and going deeper and deeper. I’ve always been pulling apart theologies and belief systems to see what’s in them, where do they come from, how do they influence and affect us, how does this connect (or not) with our values and behaviours, what they might hold for me, and at the least, help me understand others better.
So, if I was hiding something, it would be this … these beliefs that are not ‘normal’, I don’t fit with either of the “Christian” sides and these dreams that I was forbidden to pursue because I would have shamed my parents, they would not have approved. So, I kept them hidden.
What am I hiding from?
A few things … I’ll be honest – there are parts of me that I wish weren’t there. Things I’ve done that I wish I had not done. But, at the time, I didn’t know better. I was caught up in my own brokenness and confusion. And these things, I don’t exactly want to bring into the open, even today. However, I do need to do something with them - maybe I can cut them out? Maybe I can set them down and walk away? Maybe I can forgive them? Maybe I can re-frame them? I wish I could erase their memories, but I will admit, time has done a pretty good work with that on its own!
Maybe another thing that I’m hiding from I can embrace and take on, like a cloak. Live out of it instead of hiding from it. I’m thinking here, particularly of my singlehood. For a long time, I’ve thought that there was something wrong with me, that this part of my life never developed like it did for others. And there is still something in there that perhaps should be unearthed. At the same time (see? another both/and!) I have done what I can to find the joy opportunities in being single. I’ve worked hard at facing into it and seeking out the joy that can be found only in being single. That is sometimes hard, as that also means coming from one income and overcoming fears. And that is a challenge. There can be sadness in it, too. And, as one ages, even more difficulty comes swirling in. What I do realize is that this is one thing I can no longer hide from. That is fact.
A final thing – I realize that I might also be hiding from my talent, that gift. That part of me that I am afraid might be truly great. Why? That means that I bought into what my mother said. That, for my life thus far, I also believe that I wasn’t worthy. That I should be quiet and ‘humble’ and not show off. Because, you see, when you’re good at something, you show it off and that is a shameful thing to do. “Good girls don’t do that. Humble girls don’t do that.” And this is not only about appearance but it is also about arrogance or being conceited or full of oneself. Words and accusations that are whispered hauntings fill the recesses of my memory throughout my beginning and formative years.
Many years ago, in the fall of 1986, I found a small-town writing contest. At the time, I was a first-year teacher and I would search for things for my students. I thought it was good for them to enter their writing in things like this. As part of this contest, there was also a competition that was for adults. Poetry and short stories. After much thinking on it, I decided to enter – a short story and a poem. I said to God – if you want me to consider this, please help something come from my submissions. The short story did not place (it was very long and very non-traditional), but the poem did. I wrote the poem on the candlelight Christmas service at my college. Anyone who read it and attended the service would instantly recognize it. And, out of 200 entries for that category, I placed second. And that scared me. To the core. There could not be a clearer answer, and the sickness in the pit of my stomach said – now what? And I ran even more into myself. (The competition was in a small-town local paper at Christmas time. A few years later, to this day unknown to me how, somehow my poem found its way to a national Lutheran magazine. They printed it as part of a seasonal magazine of “common-man entries” for Christmas.) If interested, the poem is here "The Message of the Flame."
Today I am pondering all of this – what am I hiding, what am I hiding from. And my Ikigai and how do these things play off and within each other. What do they mean. So … I wonder – if I stop hiding from my heart’s desires, I wonder if I will also stop hiding from being single? And what else might be? Hmmm …
And finally, what’s holding me back?
Money. Time. Focus. Life. Fear. Insecurity. Maybe something like giving myself to my mother's way of thinking, realizing that I continued what should have stopped with her passing. I've allowed her to define me, allowed her to win. How do I get around that? Is it around, or is it through? But most importantly, I know it must be beyond. See, I don't want to be that person on that deathbed, saying goodbye to two lives. Especially to the one I was meant to live. Especially if I still have time. Right now, I might know better what is holding me back - after those reflections above, there are more dots to connect, of that I am certain. But how to move through or around and because of what I am not yet? ... that is the challenge of the moment. Maybe I have found a bit more of my Ikigai ... just a bit. What do I know, beyond a doubt, is that THIS is the life, the one I have now, that I do NOT want to live. And I still have time. This fight ... what if I set it down and just walked away? No more losing ... but no more winning either. What if? It's done? Now what?
Addendum: What's holding me back? Not putting myself as a value. This needs more reflection, that I know. But for another space, not here.
Great read, thanks for your vulnerability and sharing something that you preferred to "hide"
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