Hide & Seek
- 12
- 03
- 09
Last week, we took Toddler to a local playground to meet up with a cute little boy from her Preschool class. The weather was perfect. The kids played well together. They chased each other and shared string cheese. After a while, they started playing hide and seek. I didn’t know that Toddler knew about this game so I watched with great interest. She scurried away, skipped actually, to find a hiding spot. And I smiled as my little girl, my precocious little girl, picked her spot. A vast and conspicuous brick wall. She approached it gingerly, inched up close. And then she splayed her arms against that wall and rested her cheek on it too. Like a squashed bug. Splat. In plain view.
In that moment, a thought lingered behind my cliched maternal grin: She doesn’t know how to hide.
She doesn’t know how to hide. Yet. But she will learn. All too soon. She will become an expert. Like the rest of us. Before I know it, she will be sniffing out all the secret spaces to hunker down and disappear. And then she will wait. She will wait for a friend to find her. She will wait. And wait. And she will be found.
But one day, things will change for her like they did for the rest of us. One day, she will hide herself so well, too well, and the wait will be long, unsettling, uncertain. A time will come when she wonders if someone will find her. If there is a her to find. She will wonder whether anyone is still looking.
But not yet. Thankfully, not yet. For now, hide and seek is still a game.
We all hide. From each other. From our children. From our partners. From ourselves. We hide little things. Wrinkles. Receipts. Chocolate. Gossip magazines. Stretch marks. And bigger things. Tattoos. Fantasies. Fears. Flaws. And bigger things still. Illness. Regret. Boredom. We hide bad things. Affairs. Deceit. Crime. We hide good things. Pregnancies. Christmas presents. Easter eggs. Success. Happiness. Love.
We hide and hide and hide some more. We are constantly scurrying around the playground that is life, sussing out the perfect places to duck into, to disappear, the prime nook to stuff our things.
What are we seeking by hiding so much?
We all seek. We seek with eyes and ears and hearts and minds. We seek with questions, with stories, with dreams, with prayers. We seek with words, artfully or clumsily strung together. We seek through others. We seek through babies and books and blogs. We seek by saying, by revealing, by unloading. We seek solace and safety and security. We seek sunshine. We seek soul. We seek self.
We seek and seek and seek some more. We poke holes in our accumulated armor, we let things out, in hopes that something will be found. But then we remember the wise words of a wise man. “Talking much about oneself may be a way of hiding oneself.” (Nietzsche) And we realize that in saying so much, in seeking so emphatically, we might be hiding even more.
What are we hiding by seeking so much?
Toddler. I want her to grow and learn and develop. And she will. But for now, I want her to play games. I want her to giggle as she runs, to bask in innocence and open horizons, to hide foolishly and fearlessly, and to always be found.
_________________________
What are you hiding? What are you seeking? Do you think hiding/seeking is part of what it means to be human?
This such a marvelous post and a wonderful image of toddler, analogy – the idea that we learn to hide saddens me, though. It’s the same way I feel about my children running around, unabashed, naked: I realize we learn shame. I guess, similarly, we learn to hide things about ourselves.
I think the things I hide are mostly things I have learned (from society? my parents? where?) to be afraid that others will dislike or judge.
I seek many things – love, friendship, approval, conversation – that I think are all in service of the same goal: to be seen, to feel I am not crazy or alone.
Yes, I think hiding and seeking is an integral part of being human!
Gorgeous. Gave me chills.
I think that’s one of the worst feelings in the world…waiting, hoping, that someone will find you…hunkered down, helpless.
I was horribly shy as a child and remember wishing I could disappear, and yet at the same time, wanting someone to notice that I was there. I hated that–not really knowing what I wanted or needed, just knowing that I had something empty that needed filling.
Enjoy that darling girl, while she’s still hiding in the open!
“Talking much about oneself may be a way of hiding oneself.”
While all of this post really interested me, it was the Nietzsche quote above that really stood out. I used that tactic over and over again as a teenager. I think the motivation was two-fold. 1) As the consummate good girl I believed that if there was anything I couldn’t share publicly, then I shouldn’t be doing it. And 2) I figured that if all the secrets were made public by my own admission then they couldn’t hurt me later by being unveiled against my will. I had virtually no skeletons in my closet (a crush here, a fight with my sister there) but still, I was like some adulterous spouse who confesses the affair to foil the blackmailer.
It was later, as I made my way into adulthood, that I finally developed a level of comfort with privacy. And now it is something I’ve grown to cherish. Although, occasionally I still have to remind myself of that.
I love the innocence of your toddler’s hiding place! I was recently assisting with the babysitting of my brother’s premmie twins and his toddler child (along with my mother and sister — it does take a village) and my sister introduced the toddler child to a game of hide and seek. Our toddler child also hid right out in the open. I marveled and could not help but smile at his sweet innocence.
I sometimes unconciously hide my wide open smile because God withheld two of my teeth and the orthodontist didn’t choose the best solution. So, although I don’t have gaping holes, I don’t have a nice neat row which others take for granted. But, I know that even a “less than perfect” smile warms the soul! So, I try not to hide it.
I of course purposefully hide other things, but I’m not ready to out those
Your brilliant post sparked something I wrote a very long time ago: “The eyes of a child seek the magic and beauty in all things around them; ’til the older and wiser stop the flow of color and imagination that lurks and fill those young eyes with love.”
May toddler continue to hide in plain sight.
Beautiful post. Between you and Debra I have a new outlook in life – Hiding in plain sight. Sounds like a marvelous way to look at life. (Hugs)Indigo
found your blog from the happiness project. WOW. I love it…I can sit here all day and read all your entries.
so thought-provoking, profound, and…..scary.
Like some of the other commenters, I immediately thought of my own toddler hiding in plain sight when I read your post. We have a priceless picture of him “hiding” in the pantry. The doors are open, but he is covering his eyes – hiding himself by sheltering what *he* can see.
I love your questions here and the connection to the idea of object permanence. Up until a certain point, children believe that things disappear when they can’t be seen. I wonder if we adults believe the same thing to an extent. For instance, maybe if I cover that age spot, I can convince myself I am not really aging.
Not that I have age spots, mind you. I’m just speaking hypothetically, of course…
Oh yes. So much a part of being human. It makes me sad. I think we learn to hide and then it just becomes normal to not tell our truths. Most of the time, no one else is either. The big ones anyway. I often think about how much we could gain if we could just all go ahead and tell it all.
It’s what we’re seeking, I think. A whole lot of truth-telling.
OK, I may be making no sense. Deliriously sick. Off to bed
I also recall my 4yo’s “hiding”. She’d squat down with her arms wrapped around her legs in a little ball thinking that the “smaller” she was the more hidden she was! And now, she hides for real. When she’s sad, she finds a real hiding place, under the table, in a closet, behind the couch. And that makes me so sad. So sad to realize that she’s shouting, “I’m hiding, but please find me and help me.”. She’s hiding SO THAT she can be found.
And I definitely do a lot of hiding. I hide behind sarcasm. I hide behind my kids. I hide behind a plastered on smile. I hide behind my blog. And I don’t try to be found until I’ve figured out what I’m seeking from hiding.
Ok – I’ve hijacked your post, sorry. It’s not supposed to be about me is it? This was one of my favorites from you… I loved it.
I love your commentary at the end but I adore how you set up the story. Simply beautiful. And so poignant. Hiding in plain sight is such a common occurance for toddlers and adults alike. Let’s just pray our children don’t hide so well that they can’t find themselves – that’s my greatest fear.
I find I hide less now than I used to when I was in my twenties. Then, I was paranoid that I didn’t measure up to the people around me and I worked hard to maintain the facade that I knew what I was doing, in my job, in my relationships etc. Now, as a lawyer, as a parent, I am the first to admit when I don’t understand something, and I am “seeking” help. And contrary to what I always thought, it is not embarrassing because often what I don’t get is hard to understand. Above all, as a 30 something “grown up” I am “seeking” less BS in my life, in the people I spend time with personally and professionally and the things I focus on in my life. It is a reciprocal thing for me, while I am seeking, I am trying to be less caught up with the BS myself. I can’t say I always succeed but I’m trying. For me hide and seek is less a game and more a continuum of my maturity and my development as a person.
Thanks so much for stopping over, you got a huge prop from Gretchin over at the Happiness-Project dot com.
And rightfully so…
i read – i fall – i am incompetent…
keep doing what you are doing – lovely things here
Wonderful, wonderful post! When my grandson was a toddler he would hide his eyes in his arm if was doing something he was not supposed to be doing. Of course it did not stop him, he kept right on doing whatever it was – blindly, eyes hidden!! It was if he thought “If I can’t see you, then you can’t see me doing this”. It was the cutest thing ever!
Thanks for a great, thought-provoking post and blog. I will be back! I’m glad The Happiness Project led me your way!
Lovely post. It reminded me of my younger child seeing his literal reflection in my wife’s eyes and saying, “I see me in your eyes.”
Perhaps we seek the sacred in the other, relating spirit-to-spirit, free in those rare moments from all desire, what Martin Buber calls “the essential deed.”
Namaste (meaning “the light in me recognizes the light in you”), Bruce
Hiding in plain sight is one of my favorite parts of watching toddler’s play.
The things I hide should often not be hidden. Struggles. Fears. Pains. Things I feel should be bundled up and sent to the North Pole, when in reality I should say them out loud. Let the words work for my benefit.
But hiding seems so much easier. Less painful. Less difficult. The more we divulge, the more we are giving of ourselves. How much are we willing to give?
P.S. If this post has mistakes or something doesn’t make sense, I blame it on the lateness of the hour.
P.P.S. I know I should be in bed.
P.P.P.S. One word. Colic.
Sometimes children hide to survive. Sometimes adults do exactly the same.
I just discovered your blog (I’m not sure how… from somewhere else on the internet, anyway), and you have a truly wonderful way of writing. I’m three posts in and I’m 1) really looking forward to your book, and 2) ready to read through however many hundreds of posts you’ve made before I came across page 1. As I am also chock-full of Ivy League insecurities, I hope maybe by reading through yours I can see how it can work out.