All Eyes On Me?

Have you ever known a secret, something that no one else knows, and you have to sit in a room full of people and not tell them? It’s an exciting feeling isn’t it? That ‘possession’ of knowledge. The ‘privilege’ of special information. It’s a form of power in itself. It’s power but it is a powerful feeling as well. I’m sure there are many cases of possessing secret knowledge where everybody in the room ‘should’ be told the information but are not. One that springs to mind is political presentations. How often have politicians stood before a room full of people, knowing specifics about a situation or event, but avoiding sharing the information as they know it will not be acceptable to the people before them (or beneficial for the politicians career).  Or how about financial traders? How many times does someone possess knowledge that can affect millions (of people I mean, not the dollars but that will happen) but sharing the knowledge would level the playing field, and that’s not really the idea of financial trading is it? So there can be no argument that it is a form of power. It can be exciting, possessing the knowledge, and you can feel a real ‘buzz’ from holding out on the information. The longer you hold out that information the greater the feeling.

Unfortunately, holding onto information you don’t want people to know about, that will not be a benefit, can have a completely reverse ‘buzz’. It can be extremely stressful and actually make you feel ill (just like some politicians as well I suppose). I sat in the class room after lunch, knowing that I was guilty of stealing ‘E’ and ‘K’s’ money. Yet, ‘E’ and ‘K’ didn’t know I had stolen it. As Mr Walsh had given them the same amount of money I had taken, claiming, it was found in the playground. But ‘I’ knew I was guilty.  I knew something that I thought everyone else knew anyway. I was sure that others were looking at me with disgust, every time I caught the eye of another student in the room. Actually I tried to avoid eye contact with everyone, but, when the teacher is writing something on the blackboard, you do have to look up. In those few moments of looking up, and as students asked questions, other children in front of me would turn around to look at them. Catching my eye as I tried not to look around but kept my focus on the blackboard. Even that must have looked strange. One of those days I wished I sat at the front of the class. I truly didn’t know where to look. I certainly understood the concept that ‘Guilt must have been written on my face’. Or at least I must have gone red every time. I knew this was going to be a very uncomfortable afternoon. I only wanted it to be over so Mr Walsh would finish talking with me and tell me exactly what my punishment would be from the school. Not even wanting to think about what the punishment would be when I got home to my parents.

(Continued tomorrow)