There is a time in childhood when the child learns to become what the adults around them need.
The child learns when to be quiet. When to smile. When to say, “It’s okay,” when it isn't. The child learns that certain truths are too uncomfortable, too frightening, or too disappointing for the adults to hear.
So the child becomes a diplomat.
A little lie here. A little omission there. A carefully chosen answer designed to please, mollify, protect, or keep the peace.
But beneath this behaviour is often a very old fear.
The child depends upon the adults for love, safety, approval, and belonging. The child may not consciously think it, but somewhere beneath awareness is the possibility:
If I tell the truth and it threatens the relationship, perhaps I will lose my place in it.
And so the child learns an equation:
If I am agreeable, I belong.
If I keep you happy, I am safe.
If I protect you from disappointment, I will remain loved.
The lie is therefore not always an act of deceit. Sometimes it is an act of attachment.
The child is trying to preserve the relationship.
The child has not yet discovered that two people can disagree and remain connected; that another person's disappointment does not necessarily mean rejection; that saying no does not mean abandoning someone; and that telling the truth does not have to mean losing love.
The child simply knows that belonging matters.
So the child adapts.
But what happens when the child becomes an adult?
At some point, the old strategy begins to fail.
The adult discovers that constantly managing the feelings of others comes at a price. The smile becomes heavy. The pleasing becomes exhausting. The carefully edited version of oneself begins to feel like a kind of imprisonment.
Growing up, then, is not simply becoming more independent.
It is becoming more truthful.
Not brutally truthful. Not truth as a weapon. Rather, a quieter truthfulness:
This is what I feel.
This is what I believe.
This is what I want.
This is what I cannot do.
This is who I am.
Perhaps this is where Michael Novak's Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove offers a beautiful metaphor. Novak's work explores the religious journey as an ascent toward truth and meaning, alongside the mysterious movement represented by the dove.
The mountain suggests the work of becoming conscious.
We climb.
We examine our childhood stories, our loyalties, our fears, our assumptions and the roles we learned to play. We begin to see the ways in which we adapted ourselves to remain connected to those we loved.
The ascent requires effort.
We have to look honestly at the child we were.
What did that child fear?
What did that child believe they had to become in order to belong?
Whose disappointment did they learn to prevent?
Whose feelings did they learn to carry?
And perhaps most importantly:
What truth did they learn they could not safely speak?
These questions allow the adult to look back at the child with compassion rather than judgment.
The child was not weak.
The child was learning how to belong.
But adulthood brings another possibility.
The adult can discover that belonging does not have to require self-abandonment.
The adult can say, “I love you, and I disagree with you.”
“I understand that you are disappointed, but I cannot do what you are asking.”
“I care about your feelings, but I cannot be responsible for making you feel okay.”
And perhaps finally:
“I don't have to make you comfortable in order to be honest with you.”
This is where Novak's second image becomes important: the dove.
The dove does not climb the mountain.
It flies.
In Christian imagination, the dove has long been associated with the Holy Spirit—a symbol of something gentle, living, peaceful and beyond our complete control. Its ascent can be understood as a movement toward grace, freedom and transformation.
The dove becomes an image of another dimension of psychological growth.
The mountain is the work we do.
The dove is what becomes possible when we are no longer entirely governed by the fears that once required that work.
Perhaps adulthood is therefore both an ascent and a flight.
We climb toward understanding.
And then, sometimes unexpectedly, something lets go.
The child who once had to please the adults no longer needs to.
The child who learned to soften every truth can speak plainly.
The child who believed that another person's disappointment meant “I have done something wrong” can discover that disappointment and rejection are not the same thing.
The child who once believed, “If I am not what you need, I may not belong,” can discover something more liberating:
I can be myself and still belong.
This is not a rejection of love.
It may actually be a deeper form of love.
Because genuine relationship requires two people, not one person carefully managing the emotional world of the other.
The ascent is the work of becoming conscious of the story we have inherited.
The flight is what happens when we no longer have to be imprisoned by it.
The child once became what others needed.
The adult begins to become who they are.
And perhaps that is the gentle transformation represented by the ascending dove: not escape from relationship, but freedom within it; not rebellion against the past, but release from its necessity.
We climb toward the truth.
And then, perhaps, we discover that truth has wings.