We are all born naked, but soon enough find ourselves wrapped in swaddling secrets. We learn to hide things and obfuscate, if not outright lie, about what we do and what we really want and even who we are. Our hypocrisies, infidelities, and staggering stupidities are woven into silken sails that allow us to effortlessly and comfortably skim above the waves so that we hardly notice that they are weighing us down.

This week my baby sister (she’ll only be 70 years old in August) sent me a song called “Burn the Ships” by a group called For King and Country. It was her not-so-subtle way of nagging me to get on with my life and not look back. To stop worrying, wondering, lamenting, about whatever is past because behind me is only flame and ash from a time now gone and a hope long lost. I’m honestly not sure I’m ready to give up all hope on some past relations and affections, but she may be right after all.

I confess I have always loved the phrase, the idea, that inspired madness to burn the ships, but I never thought of it applying to ordinary people under ordinary circumstances. As a little boy I was transported in a joyous rapture when I first heard the stories. One wonders if all or any of those suspiciously similar stories are true, but true or not each of these similar stories—Alexander, Caesar, Cortes—reminds us of an important truth: we can’t ever really move forward if we keep looking back, relying on the certainties of the past and trying to drag the past forward with us. Burn the ships! You can almost hear Alexander screaming it exultantly, Caesar calmly ordering it, Cortes hissing it desperately: burn the ships and move forward toward the savage unknown. There is no going back. There is no getting home again except by moving relentlessly farther away from home. A counterintuitive notion that seems to gain more validity with age.

But still. Still, it is hard to set that match. To let go, to move on, to cast my fate to the wind as an old favorite tune put it. Now that I have reached 71 years of age, I begin to feel a sense of deep foreboding. Inexplicably, and also unexpectedly, a dread that my overly-long childhood is nearing its end engulfs my spirit. It’s both very disconcerting and exciting, and I need to remind myself over and over that to gracefully embrace the inevitable is the only approach that is both seemly and sensible for any man.

Whatever the pros and cons of setting alight the remnants of a too-long childhood, there is one thing that I am happily getting rid of as I dispose of those “childish things” unsuitable for manhood. Indeed, I wonder now if Paul when he wrote that missive to the Corinthians had in mind what I think is one of childhood’s most enduring, and least endearing, baubles: a secret cache of secrets. At the beginning of the musical video “Burn the Ships” there is a quotation that is not part of the song itself: “In days of old there lived a man who was alone. A ship of secrets and lies was his home.” Moldy, brittle, with a most malodorous odor, these secrets need a good dose of sunlight and a brisk, sharp wind to transport them far from me, and to burn along with those other ships that keep me chained to the past’s hopes and comforts.

We are all born naked, but soon enough find ourselves wrapped in swaddling secrets. We learn to hide things and obfuscate, if not outright lie, about what we do and what we really want and even who we are. Our hypocrisies, infidelities, and staggering stupidities are woven into silken sails that allow us to effortlessly and comfortably skim above the waves so that we hardly notice that they are weighing us down. I think the first time I ever hid something I was ashamed of, I was about 5 or 6 years old. My family had a 20-volume set of Collier’s Encyclopedia. Whenever I got the chance, I would carefully, surreptitiously, grab one of the volumes and leaf through it methodically, page by page. My parents would sometimes wander by and smile. Even though I couldn’t read, they seemed to be reassured that I had a fondness for books and knowledge. I suspect that they were proud to have such a young bibliophile in their midst. They never did suspect that their quasi-innocent, pseudo-erudite, little boy had no interest in the books themselves at all. Rather, I was enthralled with the paintings by Rubens and other artists of unclothed female bodies! Well, from that absurdly inauspicious start the secrets just kept piling up over the years, the worst of them being the ones I deftly kept hidden even from myself. In retrospect it’s frighteningly amazing how easy it has been to hide my self from myself. Whether it was cheating on a test or speaking unkindly of a friend or exaggerating a success or minimizing a failure, those secrets became a horrific, unconscious burden. Now, for the first time in my life I feel unburdened. Indeed, liberated. I can’t think of a single secret to hide, though I don’t feel any weird exhibitionistic impulse to revel in revealing them publicly. Besides, I suspect there are a few still lurking about that I can’t quite detect yet. But maybe it is worth mentioning one of two.

I look back on my long career as a diplomat, and some of my actions that I had been most proud of for decades, I now see in a new light. Long ago, in the mid-Eighties, as a very junior officer I almost single-handedly had a high-level consul general removed from the embassy in Manila. He was certainly guilty of gross misfeasance, but now I wonder if I should not have tried harder to warn him about what he was doing wrong. Perhaps there was a less brutal way to deal with the problem, but I think I was too eager to pull down someone that high up. I can’t shake the image of him storming into my office, his 6-foot, 6-inch frame hovering over my desk and him screaming with tears streaking down his face, more hurt than angry that I had betrayed him. Similarly, there were times I removed officers from various embassies and again, they certainly deserved it, especially in one case involving sexual harassment. But again, was I too eager to wield my authority and demonstrate my power rather than find a less harsh solution? And even if that was the right decision, was it done for the right reason? That Eliotian insight has haunted me much of my life: that the greatest treason is “to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” I suspect my charming, easy-going manner hid—even from me—a more sordid sort of ambition.

And what is true of my professional life is equally true of my personal life. I was so far from being a good husband that my stomach literally aches when people applaud how well I tended Sharon during her suffering through Alzheimer’s. It’s true that I did care exceptionally well for her and loved her dearly that last decade, but what of the three decades before that? And what of my friends? I can think of no one who has better friends, but I have fallen short over and over again.

Reflecting on all these past failings and false “accomplishments” has had a salutary effect on my well-being. It’s a great feeling to be unburdened and liberated, regardless the pain. Burning ships can be empowering. But the hardest ones to burn are the ones that are seemingly the least destructive of all. The person who wrote the song Burn the Ships was inspired by his wife’s struggle with drug addiction and how she successfully overcame it. And having overcome it, she was able to start a new journey unburdened by her addiction. But in a sense that is the easiest of ships to burn because you know that it should be burned, that it is holding you back from moving forward. But the sad irony is that sometimes one cannot embark on a new adventure while still tethered to things and people you love. Even strong, vibrant family ties can begin to strangle as you try to walk farther away from the dock. The agony is that one fervently wants to keep hold of that tether. Burn those ships, too?

A verse from a Bukowski poem reverberates through my head: “your life is your life, don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.” But all those ships laden with guilt and shame and remorse and duty weigh you down and make it almost impossible not to quietly submit to the demands and expectations of others. For I am laden with that most dangerous and deceptive addiction of all: hope. Hope that one can move on to a new journey without burning those ships and cutting those ties.

When I was a little boy and I first read the myth of Pandora, I found it reassuring that Hope was eventually also released with all the evils inside the box in order to give us the stamina to endure evil. It wasn’t until a few years later upon reaching adolescence and the natural cynicism that age engenders that I began to suspect that Hope was actually in that box because it was just another evil. I suppose I should be grateful that Faith and Love were not also inside that box.

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The featured image is “The ‘Luxborough Galley’ on fire, 25 June 1727,” (circa 1727) by John Cleveley the Elder, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.