Openness in my mother tongue has a poor reputation. In German, an openhearted person is quickly seen as naïve. An open society is a political nightmare, and an open network is deemed to be unsafe – and you can’t charge for it!
If someone starts by saying that they will be totally frank and open with you, you can be sure that they will tell you a lot, but certainly not the truth. If they do, in fact, tell the truth, this is usually seen as rude and impolite.
The disclosure of data or even salaries must be ordered by a court of law. An open house is a hippy relic, luckily a thing of the past. No-one likes open bills, and an open relationship doesn’t work anyway.
After all, openness can be a thing of beauty, something clear and delightful: only places which are open will serve food, will allow you to swim, or quite simply to enter. The English language knows people who are open-minded – they also exist in German-speaking countries where people prefer to call them ‘receptive’.
Language and idioms in German have always been rather revealing and treacherous. To be open in this part of the world means that you are open at sacrosanct and strict opening hours or on Open Days. Even then everything not meant to be seen by the public will be neatly locked away. Of course, everything will be cleaned.
This is a shame, a real shame, because – like everywhere – there is a large group of people who are open, frank and honest,on principle and in the best sense of the word: children.
Even in German children talk openly about death, sex and other taboos. This is necessary, wonderful and often hilarious.
My son Tom, for instance, recently saw a monk with a tonsure and said: “Look dad, the man’s head is growing through his hair!” It is roughly about the age of six when children are trained to discard openness. Maybe it’s because they must pay admission charges everywhere?
“Now listen,” said Auntie Gertrude to Tom the other day when we queued for tickets at the zoo. “When the man behind the counter asks you how old you are, you say that you’re five, alright?”
Auntie Gertrude paid for the tickets. The man behind the counter did not ask for Tom’s age, which meant that Tom did not have to answer. A stroke of luck, I thought, because I was sure Tom would have said ‘six’ – because he is really proud to be six. And because children cannot tell lies. That is something they have to learn first.
At any rate, Auntie Gertrude was pleased about having landed the coup and decided to reward Tom with an ice cream. That’s how it goes. And the nice saying “children and fools tell the truth” started to crumble, wavered – but did not fall.
You know, Auntie Gertrude had made the fatal mistake of asking Tom to sit on her frocked lap while sitting on a bench near the lion’s den, pressing him against her formidable bosom and asking the fate- ful question: “Do you love your auntie?”
Tom’s reply was open, frank and honest: “No.” Auntie Gertrude gave him a second chance and pretended to be hard of hearing: “What did you say?” So Tom spoke up. “NO!”
“But Tom,” said Auntie Gertrude with a touch of a smile, “you don’t say things like that”. But she definitely thought: “Spoiled brat, see if you inherit a single cent from me!”
Putting on a straight face, I chimed in: “Really Tom, you don’t say things like that!” I was really thinking: “Yeah! That’s my son! Blow the inheritance!”
Near the monkey cages I felt that I had to have a word with him, considering that I am not entirely free of the hang-ups of upbringing: “Tom, you really can’t be that rude to people.”
“But it’s true.”
“Yes,” I squirmed, “but Tom, you don’t say this … well not so openly and directly.”
At the exit gate of the zoo, Tom went straight to the ticket counter where I heard him say: “I just wanted to say that I am, not so openly and directly, five.”
The man at the counter laughed and praised my son. Auntie Gertrude left the same day. And I was full of pride.
I know that Tom will drop his openness at some point in favor of decency, tactics and job advancement. That’s inevitable, but I hope it will last. My hope for him is that he will meet many people in his life who can face openness, for whom openness and frankness is not necessarily a negative notion. Because this is the crunch: openness always needs two, if not several, people.
And so, dear readers, I call on you (even if it sounds pathetic) totally openly and frankly in the words of Tom’s namesake Tom Petty: Up! Up into the open! Into the great wide open!

© 2008 jess jochimsen

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