There’s something sweet and innocent about a toddler, a puppy, or a kitten. They are so fresh, so new, so unstained by the world. One of the most heinous of crimes is to harm one of these young innocents. One of the worst things that can happen to young children is to lose their innocence.
But many children do lose their innocence because of abusive and neglectful caregivers who do not know how to parent, are mentally ill, abuse substances, or are maladjusted to life. None of us want this. Many of us believe that if a child loses his innocence at an early age, the damage is for life. But we have also seen those cases in which lost innocence becomes heroic, in the sense that the child grows up to save his own life, to save his own soul, and to bring light and healing to others.
There is, then, a very sensitive area of exploration needed here. Is it really loss of innocence that is the problem, or is it loss of authenticity? You see, we tend to think that innocence is relative to morality. He who is innocent is good; he who is not is guilty. Goodness is relative to innocence in that good people are innocent of bad deeds. This definition of innocence leads us all down the wrong path in regard to how we are meant to live in this world.
It is the wrong path because the path is thought to be one in which we never do anything “bad.” It is the wrong path because it denies the possibility that the curves and twists in our road are meant to facilitate our awakening. It is the wrong path because there are cultural, familial, and societal agendas about what is good and what is bad that simply are not real.
Good guys have bought the cultural mythology about innocence, defined as a pure goodness, and they are killing themselves to accomplish it. What if that innocence in which we so delight in a child, puppy, or kitten is just a lot of cuteness mixed in with authenticity? What if the only real innocence is authenticity? What if being real is as close as we get to innocence?
The So-Called Good Fight
Much of our mythology teaches us that evil lives within us, and if we do not fight it at every turn, we will be taken alive by it and become the evil people, that down under it all, we actually are. We are taught this fight with one’s feelings and thoughts is “the good fight.” This battle between good and evil takes on monumental proportions in the subconscious of the good guy. But how does one do battle with one’s own emotions and thoughts and come out a winner? It is impossible! Rather, this battle is actually just another form of repression.
It takes a great deal of energy to continuously tamp down feelings and thoughts that want to rise to the surface on a daily basis. So the good guy is likely to become drained emotionally and physically—even depressed. Add that depletion to the depletion of energy that comes from doing a whole lot of things for other people—things one does not truly desire to do—and it is no wonder that when the good guy finally makes it to therapy, one of the first statements she makes is that she is exhausted. Indeed, she is.
Not only that, but when we repress one feeling, several others go with it. It is hard to repress anger, for example, and still feel joy. It is impossible to repress only one emotion—with no impact on the rest of the psyche. Not only does the psyche tend to get used to repression, but when we repress, we cannot be certain how much we are repressing. We can be sure, however, that if we get used to repressing, we are carving a path to exhaustion and depression. The good fight is not really so good after all.
The Innocent Good Guy
For the good-guy identity in its most extreme form, there is a deep desire for the kind of innocence that is represented by the cultural mythology of absolute purity. This kind of innocence would guarantee that the good guy would never ever have to consider himself unworthy. Such innocence would ensure that sense of belonging for which he longs. IF he could just achieve that kind of purity, THEN no one would ever reject him again. He would never have to fear abandonment, and he would be assured of his own sense of worthiness forever. Of course, this bargain is largely unconscious, since he also knows that no one is perfect. But when we start really connecting the dots, this bargain is often at the base of all others.
When we have this definition of innocence, we make absolutely no room for the winding path that is life itself. That winding path includes every single mistake we have ever made. And many of those mistakes have been great teachers. They teach us where the limits are, how to balance ourselves, where we are skilled or talented, and where we are not; they even teach us to love. But for the good guy, every mistake is a travesty of time and energy and takes that much more time away from getting it right. The goal is always to get it right, rather than to surrender to a learning experience. This definition of innocence then only serves to further wound us, keeping us stuck in guilt and its poor leadership.
Changing the Definition of Innocence
The definition of innocence as absolute purity comes from a paradigm of good and bad, which, as we’ve seen, cannot be authenticated. On top of that, it assumes a degree of goodness that none of us truly believe. Such innocence is both impossible to accomplish and also becomes a motivation for the kind of thinking that is self-negating, and even self-abusive.
Rather, if we could see innocence as the kind of authenticity with which we were born, then it would be sacred, for it would motivate us to be authentic and respect the authenticity of our children as sacred. Then we might begin to parent our children according to their authenticity, rather than according to an impossible-to-define mental construct of goodness. As a collective, we would be able to move out of the good and bad paradigm and into the true-false paradigm, and then we can live from the truth of genuineness.