Just Me and My Monkey

The other day I saw a someone wearing a "crazy English tee shirt" that actually made me laugh out loud，and then made me contemplate it's meaning for longer than is probably appropriate. And the shirt's message:

"Everyone's got something to hide, except for me and my monkey."

Ok, so I laughed because of the first thing that comes to my mind after reading that is a perverted dude whipping "it" out in a public place (side note: the way to say this phenomena in Chinese is 遛鳥 or "taking the bird out for a walk." Actually, carrying bird cages out on a walk, swinging the cages vigorously, one in each each hand, is an old school way Chinese folks like to exercise. It seems kind of abusive to the bird if you ask me, they swing them around like ladies in JC Penny's advertisements satisfyingly swinging their shopping bags on black Friday. I have never seen this bird swinging frenzy myself because hardly anyone does that anymore, most folks tie the cage to the scooter and take the bird out for a spin instead. But my Chinese teacher shared this bird walking concept, WITHOUT mentioning the dick-whipping-out part. So after class, wishing to find out more about this exercise routine, I innocently ask my boyfriend, "So, do you like taking the bird out for a walk." And he was understandably puzzled. And then followed lots of laughter. Thank you, teacher.

All talk of birds, monkeys, and penis aside: Do we all have something to hide? At first glance there is something reassuring in this sentiment: I am not alone, everyone has some kind of secret that they must keep hidden away; and not only am I not alone, EVERYONE, EVERYONE is hiding a part of themselves. Everyone *EXCEPT* this dude and his monkey, only they can be completely transparent, without shame, righteous even.

And then I was siting there, and started like, envying this guy and his monkey. I want to join the club...what am I hiding?

But I would imagine reader, even if you are not person who is hiding some kind of secret-awesome (or not awesome) you have probably hidden the truth...otherwise known as lying.

Yeah, me too.

And then after being monkeyed by Mr. Righteous Honesty, this notion of truth and how it effects my life became intertwined in my daily pondering.

So I am re-reading the my favorite book ever "All About Love: New Visions" And bell hooks brings up an important idea about withholding truth a way of subordinating and otherwise powering over other folks.

It made me think of the recent leak of of 400,000 documents (largest leak of US classified documents in history) regarding the war in Iraq and Afghanistan by WikiLeaks, called the "War Logs." This reveals a lot of new, recently classified information about our not-so-cool (*cough cough* illegal) wars (*cough cough* new-age colonization) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So yeah, the pentagon and other folks in the Federal government were really hiding their monkey here. Then the monkey gets loose---folks on the hill, quickly warn about of the danger of the moneky, she is rabid and will most certainly bite you, every single one of you...the pain, the infection! You want the monkey? You CAN'T handle the monkey!!!!!!!!

Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chief of Staff crys monkey saying, "Mr Assange (founder of WikiLeaks)can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth (emphasis is mine)is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young solider or that of an Afghan family."

*Scratches head* So according to the Admiral man, the TRUTH is that TOO MUCH truth causes blood shed. Gotta perfect the art of "selective truth." Kind of like "selective hearing" only dealing with output vs. input.

But last time I checked: Lies also cause blood shed; the difference is that when we have to search through a web of lies it becomes difficult to hold folks accountable for their deeds.

And a little FYI about the claim that these leaks are dangerous: The Associate Press obtained a letter from the Pentagon saying: NO US INTELLIGENCE OR PRACTICES WERE COMPROMISED BY THE WIKILEAKS

Anyway, politics aside (I CAN put them aside)I think this is one example about how truth (and the withholding of) is used to power over others. And more importantly: How we sometimes withhold truth in the name of "helping" situations.

I am not arguing here that knowing every fact constitutes truth, that somehow TRUTH is complete transparency, I certainly believe in the right to privacy. But as bell hooks brings up, sometimes we keep secrets in the name of privacy, "in our culture privacy is often confused with secrecy. Open honest, truth-telling individuals value privacy...keeping secrets is usually about power, about hiding and concealing information. Hence many recovery programs stress that 'you are only as sick as your secrets'" (pg.45)

And what happens when because of societal norms or laws we have to keep secrets, when telling the truth could be unsafe? For example, folks smoking Mary: I wouldn't know these types of folks...but I have heard through the grapevine. :-)

Or an even better example, one that is in the news, the Clinton Administration's Don't ask don't tell policy ,(DADT) a policy that ultimately discriminates against openly queer folks in the military. From my understanding, the policy says: you can serve if you are gay but, ya gotta stay in the closet.

And further more, being forced to stay in the closet or being in an unsafe environment to come out (even the fact that there is a closet at all) is not just a problem for queer folks in a military, this is a problem that is pretty dang widespread.

If you are straight identified person you might not imagine how difficult it is to keep your sexuality a secret because your sexuality is considered the norm. Hiding your sexuality can involve anything from "small" lies about what you did over the weekend to being unable to show affection to your partner in public.

This story hit home: a solider who was in a committed gay relationship sharing his fears that when he was deployed in Iraq if something happened to him his partner would NOT be notified (the right straight couples have.) He was not out to his family or many friends. So in order to notify his partner of his death he gave a letter to his friend and told his friend, "if something happens to me, open this." And in the letter notified his friend of his situation(actually coming out to his friend for the first time) and telling his friend where he could find his partner so his partner could be notified. Can you imagine that? If the love of your life would be notified of your death in that manner?

So secrets, especially if you are forced to keep them , really hurt. They hurt more than any truth every could.

DADT must be overthrown. At the moment, after being overthrown by a federal court in California, DADT is not being enforced in the military, but it is still in law, and we are all waiting on Obama to appeal the decision so that it can go to the supreme court and thereafter not law (kind of a complicated and somewhat contradictory way to end DADT, but that's how the Feds roll.)

Our culture often says the truth being hard to handle, "The truth, you can't handle the truth" what was that movie called that I have never seen but still know the quote from anyway because you can't hide from pop culture? I don't really do the American the movie thing, I personally think Hollywood could take a shit, add special effects and a sex scene and it would do well in the box office.

Some questions to ask: Should we keep secrets because we can't handle the possible negative outcomes of the truth? Are their moral grounds for being dishonest?

"When men and women are loyal to ourselves and others, when we love justice, we understand fully the myriad way in which lying diminishes and erodes the possibility of meaningful caring connection, that it stand in the way of love." (pg42) bell hooks says no, not so much.

Dishonesty stands in the way of meaningful connection and love.

And truly, I should re-frame what I have been discussing here. It is not about what hurts you more the truth or the lies; it is actually about what nurtures your well-being, what is life-affirming?

And I will speak from personal experience here: my most meaningful and loving relationships in my life are with people that I feel I can be totally honest with. Within these relationships I can be who I REALLY am, I can live by my truth (this doesn't belong in parenthesis, but rather have its own post: I say *my* truth because as a dear friend reminded me, the truth is subjective) I can speak my truth, and in doing so letting down the defense system of falseness. And when both parties (doesn't just have to be two people) can do this, there is a mutual vulnerability of being known as our true selves. And out of this comes a kind of power--a power that doesn't rely on subordination of others but rather in knowing, without a doubt, that we are capable of a very profound love based on truth.

So I will give a shot out to my mom, the person who always created an atmosphere where I could be honest, and she could be honest with me too.

My relationship with my mom inspires me, because of it I believe in love. I have a very strong conviction that it is possible and not only possible, but worth every effort.

Its some powerful stuff, yo.

So it doesn't matter who it is in your life, lover, mother, brother,sister, friend, teacher, if you have some relationship based on honesty that leads to meaningful connection and love you will know what I am talking about.

So I have thinking about standing up with that righteous monkey. There is nothing to hide from because despite common wisdom, the monkey doesn't always bite.

*Note on links: Super happy I figured out how to make links work in my posts. I am quite foolish when it comes to the workings of this machine, but now that I have linking-power I am going link crazy! Most of the links connect to the sources of my information, and then one movie. The movie is bad ass and if you have 25 minutes please watch the cute cats talk about international law!*