There is a popular Scottish cartoon strip entitled ‘Oor Wullie’ which celebrates its ninetieth anniversary this year.
It has as its tagline, "Oor Wullie! Your Wullie! A'body's Wullie!" (translated into English, as opposed to Scots vernacular, as “Our Willie! Your Willie!
Everybody's Willie!”) while the young boy in question is the self-proclaimed leader of a gang that consists of himself, Fat Bob, Wee Eck and Soapy Soutar who become embroiled in adventures that often consist of unrealistic secret get-rich-quick schemes that lead to mischief, much to the despair of his parents.
There is a more recent, similar and popular cartoon strip entitled ‘Where’s Wally?’ which is a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations, each depicting hundreds of people doing a variety of amusing things at a location, and readers are challenged to find a character named Wally, identified by his red-and-white-striped shirt, bobble hat, and glasses, and his friends hidden throughout the pages.
Many illustrations contain red herrings involving deceptive use of red-and-white striped objects to confuse the observer. Where is Wally? Who is Wullie?
The sad thing is that rather than being Wally or Wullie, many adults are woolly – they are vague, unclear, obscure, secretive, obstructive.
We have to be told not simply to tell the truth (in other words, not hide anything) but also to “Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” – the latter part of that statement is required because, as in ‘Where’s Wally?’ which is full of hundreds of other people to hide him, to confuse the reader, we may like to hide the uncomfortable truth in among much unrelated statements.
In addition, we will only share and admit to such information that we think the other person might know already.
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We are not transparent but tend to lean towards the apparent (based on and limited to what has been heard or seen but not fully proven).
Indeed, many are ‘wally’, as in the informal use of the word which acts as a mild insult meaning a foolish, clumsy, or inept person.
Are they just inept or are they rather inapt? In a previous article we considered the two types of mice, fa-mous-e and anony-mous-e, with the latter being reflected positively in the description of integrity by CS Lewis as “doing the right thing right, even when no-one is watching”.
It is important to remain humble, not drawing attention to ourselves.
However, at the same time we must be able and willing to give an account of ourselves.
We must do the right thing right even when no-one is watching but we must also ensure we do the right thing right especially when people are watching.
We need to be transparent; we need to be accountable in all that we do.
A popular children’s game is ‘Hide and Seek’, at which, let us be very clear, they generally are so inept!
But why do we as adults also play ‘Hide and Seek’, especially when we are so much better at hiding?
Why is it that we hide information from others?
Are we embarrassed or ashamed? Are we guilty and afraid?
Are we corrupt and complicit?
Instead of ‘Where’s Wally?’, we should be asking: where’s the truth?
Barack Obama said on becoming President that, “A democracy requires accountability and accountability requires transparency” and the same applies to a family, a school, any institution, a society, even.
Parents must be trans-parent, not apparent, on this.
As Ken Poirot, the author, is quoted as saying, “Be proactive not reactive, for an apparently insignificant issue ignored today can spawn tomorrow's catastrophe.”
We are not concerned with the apparent but the transparent.
Transparency is required there; integrity is fundamental there to avoid tomorrow's potential catastrophe; accountability is necessary.
There is no “apparently” about it.
Equally, there is no hidden agenda here: rather, let us be very clear that the key things to teach our children are transparency, integrity and accountability.
The second thing to do is to model such transparency, integrity and accountability.
We are not playing ‘Hide and Seek’ with our children; we must not hide but speak.
Our tagline must be ‘Our Transparency! Your Transparency! Everybody’s Transparency’, no matter what language we use.
This is no joke, no comic strip. This is serious.
Mark Twain once said, "Apparently, there is nothing that cannot happen today."
Transparency can happen today, and must happen, right from the top. Do we see that?
