Sunrise With Schubert: April 9, 2018

There's this couple I know, nice folks, who became "boyfriend and girlfriend" in the third grade. They married right out of high school and are still together. Who knows how many grand, great-grand, and beyond, offspring they have? I think about them every great once in a while.

Secrets? I don't imagine they have many. If my relatively short marriage (44 and a-half  years, but who's counting), is any indication, old secrets best lay buried. I don't think I would want "her" to know some of the things Mike Dunkum, the boys, and I did back in our college days. Some memories still make me shudder.

I don't think I'd want anyone to know, and I don't think any of that group would tell. We know too much on one another and we've never held ourselves out as being above retribution. I even have a couple of photographs.

And don't even get me started on my naval career.

Maybe secrets are good in that they add some tension to life, and a dependency upon tension seems to be an evolutionary trait, descended to us from earlier species in which the relaxed and oblivious tended to be eaten first.

Perhaps secrets also lurk as instruments of shame should they be unleashed like some subterranean monster roused by nuclear explosions back in the sc-fi films of the 1950s. Shame used to be a powerful behavioral determinant back when I was growing up.

It's not so much anymore. I suppose cell pone obsession makes keeping secrets ever more difficult. Concomitantly, it makes shame a less potent force in our lives. But, on second thought, it can't all be blamed on texting and such, for the greatest collection of shame-challenged individuals in our county these days can be found among those running the government.

It wasn't cell-phone-mania that cleansed those folks from the moderating influence of shame. It must  have been something else. I suspect it was the worship of, the love of, and the burning desire for more of … money, or at least the freedom from shame that riches can buy.

Maybe that's why the Galilean warned us so strongly against the worship of money. His second major gripe seemed to be divorce. Perhaps he saw that it was difficult to keep secrets after the third or fourth marriage. Mothers used to be dispensers of shame par excellence. I suppose that particular gift becomes strained when one is preoccupied with trying to remember which kid belongs to which husband.

As for the couple with whom I began this essay, I don't think they needed secrets to make them good people. They were just raised that way for starters, and love did the rest.

Got to go now, need to put away some photos I was scanning, tourist photos taken on my R and R trip to Bangkok these many centuries ago. Some old shipmates and I are swapping, but don't tell anyone. Those are tour guides in those pics. Nothing more. Trust me. I'd be ashamed if they weren't.

Secrets? I've a few. But don't
tell her. She thinks I'm perfect.
Not.