As with others of my generation I found an uncomfortable tension
growing between myself, my parents, and siblings as I matured and found
my place in the world. It started to build after army basic training
when I was 18. This was the first time I had left home for any
significant time and the first time I had the experience of rubbing
shoulders with people from other religions, cultures and races. The
tension accelerated as I attended college and was exposed to new ideas
and experiences. The expanded horizons offered by college increased the
barrier and it continued to grow through the years of my professional
activity and maturation.
I was recruited upon college
graduation by a large multinational corporation which required residency
in states hundreds of miles from my home town. As part of my
assignments I traveled extensively in the US. My job gave me the
opportunity to work with well educated people from different cultures
and races. This was a very stimulating experience and I found that many
of the prejudicial beliefs I had grown up with were false and unfounded.
As a result of university educations and exposure to the
ideas and beliefs of other cultures forced on my generation by the Cold
War many of us became aliens to our home cultures and in some cases
live in two very different realities side by side.
For
me the result of these monumental life changes continued to grow and
the distance between me and my family became monumental. When visiting
and communicating with family members my efforts to work around this
only made it more obvious and stronger. It was like pruning trees and
shrubs which being cut back grew larger and faster. It seemed as though a
mischievous kachina spirit was present during our conversations working
hard to create more and more misunderstanding almost as if we were
speaking entirely different languages. Notwithstanding our familial
love, we were like strangers when together; there was little we could
look at from the same point of view.
Mother and Dad
lived their entire lives in quite a narrow state of being. They were
ill-educated as were most of their contemporaries. They had just enough
knowledge to render them dogmatic and intolerant. I found through my own
efforts to seek enlightenment that it requires a good deal of study and
searching to discover one’s own intolerance, but my parents never saw
the need to seek knowledge and wisdom for themselves or their children.
It just never occurred to them. They felt they knew as much as was
necessary, and on the most debatable questions were most assured, a kind
of ignorant arrogance. They had the best intentions of doing their
duty, but their duty was dictated by church leaders who they followed
with unequivocal trust. My parents seemed to walk around in a narrow
circle, hemmed in by unreasonable ideals and unsubstantiated prejudices.
The love of God was used as an excuse by the
church for putting
unnecessary obstacles in their members way. It was firmly held that the
church way was the only way. Other paths led to sin and damnation. As a
result folks like my parents never had the opportunity to work out an
idea for themselves, but invariably acted and thought according to the
rule of their religion and culture.
When I went out into
the world, I came to realize that I the things I had been taught were
based primarily on myths that could not survive serious questioning. I
found my informal education; religious and cultural training was often
faulty and unreliable and failed the test of objectivity. However I also
discovered in myself a wonderful curiosity, an eagerness for adventure
and learning which helped me confront perils and learn rewarding things
about other cultures, ideas, and people. I also found that the unknown
lands of the intellect are every bit as fascinating as those of sober
fact. I read omnivorously, saw many and varied things; the universe was
spread out before me like an enthralling play. The knowledge I gained
was like the roots of a tree, attaching me to the life around me. I
found new beautiful things, new interests, and new complexities; and
gained a lighter heart and above all, a sense of freedom. At length I
began to look back with some regret at my past life in which the fetters
of ignorance had weighed so terribly upon me.
On my
visits home during my professional life, I found my people as I had left
them, doing the same things, repeating at every well known juncture,
and the same trite observations. Their naïveté affected me as if I were a
Navajo civilized and educated by white men returning to the
reservation after many years and finding he didn’t belong in the white
mans world or that of his ancestors. I was astounded that my people
ignored matters which I fancied as common knowledge, and at the same
time accepted beliefs that I had thought completely dead. I was willing
to shrug my shoulders and humor their prejudices, but they had made them
a rule of life which governed every action with an iron tyranny. It was
in accordance with all these outworn conventions that they conducted
the daily round. Presently I found that my father, mother, and siblings
were striving to draw me back into their prison. Unconsciously, even
with the greatest tenderness, they sought to place upon my neck again
that irksome yoke which I had worked so hard to cast off.
If
I learned anything, it was at all hazards to think for myself,
accepting nothing on authority, questioning, doubting; it was to look
upon life with a critical eye, trying to understand it, and to receive
no ready-made explanations. Above all, I had learnt that every question
has two sides. This was precisely what my family and culture could never
acknowledge; for them one view was certainly right, and the other was
certainly wrong. There was no middle ground, to doubt that what they
believed could only be ascribed to complete folly or to wickedness. Some
times I was thrown into despair by the complacency with which my father
and mother were dogmatized. No man could have been more unassuming than
my
father and yet on just the points which were most uncertain his attitude was almost inconceivability arrogant.
I
was horrified at the pettiness and prejudice I found in my home town.
Most people read few if any books, (the books they did read were written
by or edited by church leaders). Most thought it a waste of time to
read. Their minds had sunk into such a narrow sluggishness that they
could interest themselves only in trivialities. Their thoughts were
occupied with their neighbors and the humdrum details of life about
them. They flattered themselves on their ideals and their high
principles, while they vegetated into ignorant bliss. Every topic of
conversation above the most commonplace they found dull or
incomprehensible. I learned that I had to talk to them almost as if they
were children, and the tedium of this was intolerable. Occasionally I
became so exasperated that I would not avoid discussions which family
members forced upon me. Some unhappy, baneful power seemed to drive them
to widen the rift, the existence of which caused me exquisite pain; in
particular my fathers’ natural kindness was obscured by his obvious
irritation with me.
At times I have imagined that when
my mother and father were alone they would try to understand why I had
drifted so far away from their little world. They probably believed if
they would trust in God and pray that things would work out and I would
move their way. My father would say, “Sometimes I think he is not our
boy at all”. He doesn’t like to do what we do. Why doesn’t he want to
work for the benefit of the family following in my footsteps?
Idea provided by Works of W. Somerset Maugham, Nook Book Page 270
Somerset, GDF:121213
