Behind Blue Eyes

In GCSE year (I think) we were compelled once a week to attend a lesson called Personal and Social Education. It was run by the self-styled cool, laid-back, take-no-notice-of-authority female geography teacher. She was so cool that her classroom was tucked away from the rest of the school. She had film noir posters on the walls and everything. Actually she did have this rather good poster which I have not seen since. It had four brains, three of equal size and one significantly smaller. Under the three were written, respectively, European, Asian, African. Under the fourth was written Racist.

In these lessons, which didn’t count towards any grades and therefore were not taken terribly seriously by teacher or pupils, we discussed “issues” relating to our new-found maturity and things we were likely to encounter as adults. We were reminded not to get girls pregnant at seedy house parties (chance would have been a very fine thing given my social circle at that age – there was a very unoriginal joke about the girls at our sister school…), not to do drugs and all the kind of stuff which teenagers are wont to do irrespective of what their cool teacher recommends. I was more interested in my electronics project to be perfectly honest.

One day she drew a “window” on the board and divided it into four shuttered panes. She was telling us about a way of thinking about ourselves which is probably well-known to my highly educated readers but the name escapes me and I’m not in the mood to Google. One pane represents what we tell people about ourselves, another what people perceive about us, the third how we see ourselves and the fourth things which we keep private.

Obviously, all four shutters interact with each other and are not completely under our control. For example how other people see us isn’t necessarily influenced by what we tell people about ourselves. Sometimes our outward appearance or actions give better clues than what we say or don’t say or what we say is construed differently than intended.

The opening and closing of each shutter is not always controllable. Every now and again the panes can get a bit confused. For example the “private” shutter might be open a little bit for artistic effect when a sudden gust grabs it hard and throws it wide open allowing the casual observer a brief glimpse into the heart of our soul before it bangs shut again. One shutter is usually closed so that we are the only person who can’t see through it. We can’t often know what other people genuinely think about us.

When the private shutter gets involuntarily thrown open what lies beneath might well be rancid and unpleasant. Those private thoughts which aren’t supposed to see the light of day can be smelly and ugly. They have probably been festering and multiplying like poisonous mushrooms. Those who are in the right line-of-sight to see into the pit when the shutter opens might have a shock. But equally the gust might also scoop out some of the sludge and release it, allowing the wind to take it away and leave the pit that bit cleaner and tidier. And the reaction of those who do see inside gives us a pretty good view of the usually invisible pane. If we are judged by the company we keep then I can be incredibly proud of myself, because I am kept company by some bloody amazing people.