Once Upon A Time

VIDEO

Once upon a time, son,

they used to laugh with their hearts

and laugh with their eyes:

but now they only laugh with their teeth,

while their ice-block-cold eyes

search behind my shadow.

There was a time indeed

they used to shake hands with their hearts:

but that’s gone, son.

Now they shake hands without hearts

while their left hands search

my empty pockets.

‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’:

they say, and when I come

again and feel

at home, once, twice,

there will be no thrice-

for then I find doors shut on me.

So I have learned many things, son.

I have learned to wear many faces

like dresses – homeface,

officeface, streetface, hostface,

cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles

like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too

to laugh with only my teeth

and shake hands without my heart.

I have also learned to say, ’Goodbye’,

when I mean ‘Good-riddance’:

to say ‘Glad to meet you’,

without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been

nice talking to you’, after being bored.

But believe me, son.

I want to be what I used to be

when I was like you. I want

to unlearn all these muting things.

Most of all, I want to relearn

how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror

shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

So show me, son,

how to laugh; show me how

I used to laugh and smile

once upon a time when I was like you.

(Once Upon a Time by Gabriel Okara)

In a moment I am going to tell you whose poem this is.

For the time being, I would like to stay with some of these powerful images.

It is a poem about whether truthfulness to ourselves and to others still is possible.

The poet laments that he had to learn “to wear many faces like dresses”, “laugh with only [his] teeth and shake hands without [his] heart”.

What prompts this realization in the poem is the arrival of a newborn son, a new life, a new smile, a new heart, still unspoiled, full of promises, full of “grace and truth”, as John says about Jesus at the end of today’s Gospel.

I find that this poem mirrors John’s Prologue.

Just as the poem, John tells us about a father and a son, bewails what the world has become, and wonders whether this son, and us with him, still have a chance at truthfulness, honesty, sincerity, both to ourselves and to others.

The poet remembers that there was a time when this was the case

Once upon a time, son,

they used to laugh with their hearts

and laugh with their eyes

And he ends the poem with a yearning:

So show me, son,

how to laugh; show me how

I used to laugh and smile

once upon a time when I was like you.

What drew my attention in this poem is the sentence that opens and closes it: “once upon a time”. We are all familiar with the evocative power of this expression. When we hear “once upon a time” we are authorised to imagine and to hope, are transported into a place where innocence and moral clarity still feel possible.

John opens his Gospel in the same way: instead of saying “Once upon a time”, he says “In the beginning”, that is in a time before time. He points to the world as it was meant to be, where the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.

Like the poem, John too tells us how far we have departed from that beginning: the light keeps coming into the world, but we have become complicit of darkness, conduct our business in the shadows, “wear many faces” and “shake hands without our heart”.

Both John and the poem though promise that we can recover the spontaneity and the truthfulness that were meant for us “in the beginning” or “once upon a time – we can rediscover the freedom and the joy of “laughing with our hearts and laughing with our eyes”.

A reason for believing in this promise can be found in the life of the author of this poem.

It was written by the Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara who died in 2019 at almost 100-years-old. Okara put commitment to truthfulness at the core of his life and work and paid a price for this. During the Nigerian Civil War in the late sixties his home in Port Harcourt was raided, and many unpublished manuscripts and years of creative work were destroyed by those who could not tolerate the moral power of his voice. In an interview he gave on his nineteenth birthday, asked about what life had taught him, he gave this reply:

Only one thing has always guided me: truth. Never tell lies. Truth is like a ball. […] You can press it for a while, but, immediately you lift your hand, it pops up. That’s how truth is. If you are going to suppress it, you will be tired of it. So, that has been my experience, and I think it has been a worthwhile experience.

Truth is like a ball. You can squeeze it as much as you want, but as soon as you release the pressure, it regains its original shape. I like this image.

We live at a time when the pressure on truth feels overwhelming. We are coerced into believing that extreme partisanship is the only option. We are witnessing the triumph of cynicism: what matters is not to be truthful, but how effectively we can impose our version of reality through naked use and abuse of power and relentless disinformation. And however tempting it might be to point fingers at others, a bit of self-examination would soon reveal that we are all complicit in this collective squeezing of the ball. We might resist cynicism, but it is hard not to fall into resignation and sacrifice truthfulness to preserve our comfort. All we have to do is retreat in our private corner and learn how to “laugh with only our teeth and shake hands without our heart”.

The father in the poem though is not resigned. He longs for recovering the truthfulness and freedom he has lost:

But believe me, son.

I want to be what I used to be

when I was like you.

In John’s Gospel we hear the reply of this son! He tells us that this is the very reason why he came among us: “to give us power to become children of God”, “full of grace and truth”.

Think about the magnitude of this promise: Jesus gives us “power” to resist cynicism and resignation - he “empowers” us to own our real faces, to be true to ourselves, and recover the freedom to see each other not as threats, competitors, enemies, but as brothers and sisters, as “children of God”.

You might think this is a utopia, a world that can only be dreamed of, that existed “once upon a time”. We cannot even imagine what such a world would look like.

Unless, that is, we learn to see everything anew through the eyes of this Son.

Maybe this is the reason why we are so powerfully drawn to the child who is born for us. Despite our many faces we sense that in him truthfulness, honesty, sincerity can indeed be restored.

Let us dare to believe in this new “power to become children of God” announced by John.

Let us discover this power in the images of Okara’s poem, starting with the simplest: shake hands with your heart. This daily gesture can become an exercise in truthfulness if we try to really mean what it is supposed to signal: I acknowledge and recognize you, I want to trust you and be trustful to you, I respect our differences and am committed to work them out, you are welcome in my life.

The grace and truth John announces in his Gospel are much more that “shaking hands with your heart”, I agree. But even just this simple gesture done with honesty and sincerity can fill us with joy, give us a sense of freedom and fullness, of feeling that, yes, this is what I am meant to be! From there, who knows, this quiet and unwavering commitment to be true to ourselves and to others might grow on us.

The child who is born for us, like the son of the poem, is not going anywhere. He came once, and keeps coming now so that we can turn to him for inspiration, and guidance, and grace:

So show me, son,

how to laugh; show me how

I used to laugh and smile

once upon a time when I was like you.