Views, Values & Tattoos

Notes from Beyond the Pale

I was born in Pasadena. Not only that, fellow New Englanders, but I have two birth certificates. They are exactly alike except for my first name. These certificates are stapled together with staples like those used for big operations. Not removable except by a surgeon or a backhoe. My parents, who had nine months to think about it, changed my first name from Mary to Norah. Whenever it’s been the case that I have needed to produce my birth certificate, there’s been consternation on the part of the officials involved. Especially when I’ve needed to get a new passport or a REAL ID. There is nothing written, printed or stapled on the second birth certificate indicating that a change was made legally by the Pasadena Registrar of Vital Statistics. No explanation for two birth certificates stapled together. “Who are you, exactly?” the officials want to know: “Are you Mary or Norah? Is Norah deceased? Are Mary and Norah twins? Are you some kind of undercover agent? Are you in possession of any other birth certificates? Do you even know who you are?” Officials, they like to get officious. 

The question which popped up in my Pasadena head the other day was: If I had stayed Mary all my life, would I have been a different person? “Mary” always seems to me to be a name for a quiet girl. Maybe even shy. Definitely gentle, kind and sweet. Norah makes me think of (besides Norah Jones) someone not so gentle, sorta kind when the spirit moves her, and hardly sweet. A rather Rabelaisian woman— opinionated, outspoken, lusty, sometimes funny and usually fearless (originating from stupidity). Since I’ve never known another Norah, I guess those adjectives come from observing my own rather vain self. 

And that got me to thinking about identity. Who are we, really? Kahlil Gibran has written:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, 

not even in your dreams.

Yet isn’t that what we parents try to do? Give our children our thoughts, our values, our political party, our religion? We even give them our fears. In the mid-1930’s, American parents belonging to the political party “The German American Bund” sent their children to camp so they could learn German, how to salute the swastika, how to become little Nazis. Because their parents believed in the Nazi ideology. In the 1940’s I was sent to Catholic schools where I learned what my parents believed —that there is only one true church and God is the Catholic’s God. A far, far better choice of guiding principles, but no less indoctrinary.

But there’s lesser stuff, like my not allowing my teenage son to get a tattoo because to me a tattoo was suggestive of a rebellious mindset. And I insisted that my kids take piano lessons when they don’t want to (but I always did). And we all know a parent or two who steered, albeit with a velvet pitchfork, their kids towards a degree in law or stockbroking, when what they really wanted to be a was dog walker. As a kid, I was given elocution lessons—which I hated. (Under my breath, I always called them electrocution lessons.) And they were of no purpose to me, except that now I talk funny. This is all because parents want to give their children their thoughts and values, or to help them be what they, the parents, did not manage to become. Our own parents probably did the same to us. 

So how do we become our own person? It’s not so much “We are what we eat,” (I would, then, be a cinnamon bun at this moment) as, “We are what we think.” Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” What he’s saying is, if you don’t take a good look at yourself —and daily—you won’t know who you really are, and you’ll never be truly alive. You won’t have an identity. Or it won’t be your identity, but one your parents handed down to you. Or maybe you were influenced by some movie star you admire, or by that famous person who’s in vogue right now whose affect you impersonate. (Bless your heart, Kim Kardashian.) Continue along that line and you will be—ah God!—a Wannabe instead of your own true self. 

I am not at all advocating rebelling against everything your parents or others in authority taught you or exposed you to. I am just saying: examine, analyze, and assess what you think you believe. I am asking, do you know who you really are? 

How does one examine his life? I asked my daughter, who said, “Don’t lie to yourself.” I asked my son. He said (he delights in mocking me), “O.K., you gotta start by singing, ‘Who are you? Who, who, who, who?’ (“The Who” song), then lie down in tall grass and count the ants.”  The third person I asked, an old friend and retired English teacher, said, “No, no! It’s the examined life that isn’t worth living,”  believing that in this current scary age it is best to be fat, dumb and happy.

Seriously though (there’s that phrase comedians love), I would suggest you look into that soul of yours and ask yourself if your values are your own, and what are they anyway. Do you have an open mind? Do you work at edifying yourself on a daily basis? I would urge you to explore your motivations. Identify your fears, and think on how to address them. Are your goals your own goals, or your parents’, wife’s, husband’s? Are there toxic relationships in your life? Think on how to manage them, or rid yourself of them. Are you achieving at least some of your desires? Are you exercising your talents? Do you know your limits? Are you a quality person? Do you like what you see? Are you satisfied with who you’ve become? Would you marry yourself?

So, whether you are a Dweezil or Zooey or Frodo or Ludwig or Norah,  

Know Yourself. 

Because if you don’t, who will?   

Note: The tattoo threat was always addressed to my son. The threat being that, if he ever came home with a tattoo, he would be in the hospital within 30 minutes having it scraped off by a surgeon. My son would have liked to have been a rock star—he played at various venues including New Haven’s “Toad’s Place.” Had I allowed him to cover himself with tattoos, he might be playing his guitar with the E-Street Band right now.  

Another note: It never occurred to me to warn my daughter not to get herself tattooed. She was into facial beauty, body beauty, all kinds of beauty. But when my daughter turned 23 and lived away…you guessed it. She had a tattoo inked on her ankle. Unless you get real close, like down on your knees, to identify it as the yin and yang (symbol for balance and harmony), it looks like some species of the larger bugs. 

What can you do?