Thoughtfulness as a way to Surmount the Fear of Others

Part XI: Review of Sam Garton's I am Otter by Béatrice Dumiche

There can’t be a better homage to evolution indeed than creating by love for love to be spread around as the best means to be at peace with oneself and others thanks to tolerant humor. It appears the most efficient way to adapt a creative individuality to the challenges of survival in a society based on Manichaeism and simplification as the result of industrialization which aims only at rationalized productivity. It is a strategy which reacts at its global ambition by restoring imagination as the unique faculty which can bear contradictions as part of personal realisation leading necessarily to the refinement of social relationships which will have consequences on the whole organisation of the society where any individual behaviour matters even if it only surprises or disturbs. Assuming one’s difference is an indispensable challenge for his mental flexibility and his capacity to evolve whilst it is a provocation for conformism which is confronted with the strength conscious adaptation gives him as the accurate expression of his inner sovereignty under the existing conditions. That’s why Keeper bets on evolution as the aptitude of life to renew itself and surmount the obstacles which might been opposed to it although it might seem currently inappropriate, or even weird. Otter never appears as a fantasy which would let him look silly because from the very beginning, he believes in her autonomy and treats her like a sensible living being he can communicate with and he is sure will be able to evolve at his contact, how different they might apparently seem to be. That’s why the readers themselves perceive her transgressions as fun and keep her in their hearts as precisely her unpredictability let them look at her like Keeper does - with much love and indulgence because her exceptional vitality gives them again confidence in life and its resources to strike its inner balance on its own. Keeper’s love proves its efficiency and reinforces at the same time his public’s trust in their own as a constructive feeling which will not been disappointed when it is expressed with discernment towards individuals who are able to appreciate it, Otter answers his attentions by evolving and learn to know him and his needs better. So, she recognizes that he needs sleep to spend time with her and she even accepts eventually to let him go to work after she got able to tie symbolic bonds with Teddy whom she begins to love as her personal friend. The way he played with her responding to her desire to express herself while interacting with him, opened her mind to respect his own needs from the moment she got more aware of them and even guessed that the more one grows up, the more diverse become his activities. She slightly develops her own occupations whatever might be their outgoing since she becomes aware that she must share Keeper with others although she doesn’t guess who they might be.

Thus, thoughtfulness reveals the evolutionary integration of love into a culturally responsible behavior which surmounts the fear of being contradicted and hurt by others as it strengthens self-confidence to do what appears to be right at the moment even if it can’t be explained yet: it sums up a feeling which relies on experience to aliment an instinctive trust in the future which will be able to relativize oppositions through better reciprocal knowledge and the constructive energy it will release. So, the disappearance of Teddy after Otter had treated him badly reveals the saving power of the deep link she has with Keeper and which she owes to their common life and the trust in the other’s kindness it developed. From the beginning, he has explained to her their relationship is based on individual actions one is supposed to be responsible for. That’s why she has been taught very early by him the meaning of an emergency. It allows to wake him up as love tolerates transgressions and exceptions so far they are motivated by a reflected appreciation of the situation, even if it refers to subjective standards: thoughtfulness is indeed the faculty to act adequately thanks to an acquired consciousness which also lets one guess his ineptitude to solve a problem autonomously and the necessity to ask for help as something perfectly natural. This enables her to surmount her pride being confident in Keeper’s love who will help her unconditionally and avoid whatever could humiliate her and would let her regret the choice which symbolizes her belief in the best in others. Her cuteness is particularly touching at the moment when she decides to involve Keeper because she tries first all she can to get Teddy back being so ashamed by the way she behaved with him. She would prefer nobody knew of it although it is already evident for the readers that it is too painful a secret for her to keep; when it becomes obvious she can’t sleep, plagued by remorse. Her dilemma underlines that she is most sensible and unable to calculate.  Her decision to wake up Keeper is mostly instinctive since she can no longer bear her guilt and the anxiety she might have lost her most precious companion because of her uncontrolled reaction. Before she does so, she had indeed spent a certain time sadly staring at the photo of them both which she took when they opened their toast restaurant. She had also drawn posters with his portrait asking for help to get him back. So, she had done all she could on her own when she wondered whether Teddy’s loss could be an emergency serious enough to wake up Keeper. This thought is an immediate relief for her as it frees her immediately from a responsibility she can’t take over alone and this is even more important than the object of the emergency since her trust in him is almighty and highlights simultaneously how much she loves him.

That’s why she dwells with a sort of jubilation on the importance of her decision which she is sure was well reflected and taken despite her own fears and sensibilities. At last, she found a way out of her torments by soliciting help from Keeper whose authority she respects. The illustrator writes “emergency” in red letters when she notes: “This was an emergency”. Her conclusion sounds like a sigh of relief when she deduces - “Luckily, in an emergency, you are allowed to wake up Otter Keeper.” He gave her the certitude that he would help her every time she needed it making her subjective feeling the only motivation which matters to him since he trusts the self-appreciation she learned while living with him. He foresaw the case when she would have to ask for his help and he gave her the opportunity to decide on her own when she needs it to let her experience her autonomy, so sure he is that she would bother him only for reasons which she believes serious even if they might be incomprehensible for him. He knows her so well that he trusts her thoughtfulness and her discernment according to her own level of consciousness. So, she wasn’t disappointed when she followed her instinct, hoping he would understand her distress even if Teddy has only such importance for her. Although it was quite hard for him to wake up and to search for him almost everywhere in the house, he is fully aware that from her point of view, this is an emergency which can’t be postponed until morning.

Thoughtfulness needs no words as it is based on the intuitive understanding of otherness which Sam Garton favours with his drawings, demonstrating that you need not be at the same level of evolution and maturity to guess what is essential for the other’s well-being. So, they might look not well assorted at all when they try to find Teddy in the middle of the night since Keeper wears his pyjamas while Otter is equipped with her backpack and her gear clothes as if she was going on an exploration. What matters is their inner harmony which lets them work in the same direction since it is essential for both to get well although only one of them is directly implicated. Those who laugh at them, at Keeper because he let a minor incident disturb his sleep and at Otter because of her unappropriated wear appear are unable to figure out symbolic significations which are however essential to notice what’s really getting on in the others mind. Only the ability to appreciate individual situations lets them react adequately even though it doesn’t look like this from an external point of view. Normality is an abstract notion which doesn’t make any sense here as it is based on an average which nobody corresponds to while love is able to consider emotions an objective reality although they can’t be materialized. It kept in touch with instincts throughout evolution and led them to a cultural expression which includes the ability to integrate strangeness as taking part in life and generating curiosity and an adventurer’s spirit.

He comforts her just because he takes her fear seriously and doesn’t use the opportunity for any kind of moral considerations which would increase her distress. His full active support lets her find back to a reasonable and adapted appreciation of the situation. Since she is no longer left alone with her self-minoring feelings, she becomes able again to concentrate on what he shows her really matters: searching systematically for Teddy and whilst she gets involved in this action, she loses her fears and surmounts her inhibition. She notes: “After hunting almost all night, we were running out of places to look. Then all of a sudden I had a clever thought….” while the drawing shows her grabbing the box with the toys and then hugging Teddy in the next picture while shouting his name. She guesses that she found the solution on her own because Keeper didn’t leave her alone when she didn’t feel good: he did exactly what she needed at the right moment since he was there when she feared to be abandoned by Teddy because she did wrong. So, this experience she shared with him, becomes a symbol as it gives her the assurance that love has its own rules and doesn’t judge as it is based on reciprocal tolerance: that’s why it helps put things in the right perspective, even the fact that she was rude to Teddy. That’s why the highly emotional scene when she hugs him is compensated by the humoristic drawing once the acute crisis has been surmounted. With the caption “Now everything is normal again”, it features both, Keeper and Otter, sleeping at the breakfast table. Even she is sleepy and no longer only him since their common adventure they brought to a happy ending let them get closer than they already were so that she got included in Keeper’s tender self-derision, underlined by the artist, who at the same time mocks a normality which he shows doesn’t exist as such in life since it is only due to the temporary exhaustion of the two protagonists.

Through this example, Sam Garton stimulates again the dialogue between adults and children as he stresses that moral is an obstacle to their understanding because it uses guilt to educate and inhibit feelings instead of giving them an opportunity to evolve through an adapted action as the result of a better self-appreciation. It’s because Otter can’t cope with the consciousness of her own responsibility for Teddy’s disappearance that she lost her clear mind and Keeper only readjusted her to reality by reassuring her that she was lovable.  This was enough to give her back the self-confidence she needed to find him on her own while a sense of morality wouldn’t give her an opportunity to get over a mistake she made in a careless moment when she was in trouble herself. It always supposes the other to be an abstract authority instead of a living being who will be able to interpret an individual behaviour and give it again a social orientation. The humorous and ironic touch is that Teddy is “just a toy” personalized in Otter’s mind, which lightens the drama for the readers who are in Keeper’s position and know he will turn up. Yet it stresses how naturally sensible she is as she reveals much empathy with him as well because she has been educated by Keeper’s love which let her feel related with any creature who has a soul. This stresses the inappropriateness of moral considerations in children’s education as they transform their innate consciousness of what is right or wrong, which love must only encourage, into the fear of an irrevocable sanction by an abstract pitiless otherness which might catch them up wherever they might be. Keeper does exactly the contrary with Otter according to his personal experience of evolution which he owes his faith in the self-surmounting power of life and to the wisdom it leads.

While moral judgements remove children’s innocence letting them believe there is a causality between what they do and what affects them as if there was an immanent justice, Keeper helps Otter activate her own survival resources since she has guessed she couldn’t do without Teddy. He gives her self-confidence at the same time he lets her feel that love is what relates every creature who has a soul for someone. Casting this way a very original symbolical bridge between reality and fiction inside the book itself, he teaches her that love is unconditional as it is able to liberate all the instinctive power of imagination which activates unconscious links with others and helps assume even the most improbable relationships. Otter gets Teddy back from the moment when thanks to Keeper’s support she loses the fear provoked by her guilt and has no other purpose than to find him because she is sure now that her love is stronger than her pride and she believes that it will be the same with him. There is no obstacle left from the moment the faith in it has been restored as it is unconditional and grows with the generosity to forgive and not dwell on the other’s mistakes.

Sam Garton underlines that children need to be sure adults will not leave them alone with emotions they can’t cope with whatever might have provoked them. He makes clear that they have no right to use them to serve their own purpose and add their natural superiority they already have as grown-ups an abstract moral authority they have no chance to understand since they can’t experience it. This usurpation will only make them doubt the confidence they had naturally in their disinterested care. It will make them become hesitant and ready to adapt to their expectations even if this means to them a self-denial which they might not get conscious of because their natural instinctive qualities have been abused by a narrow-minded conception of love which doesn’t trust nature. At the opposite of that, Keeper’s unconditional love doesn’t need any justification as he recognizes that everyone has the right to have his own secrets so far he is an autonomous person who instinctively learned to protect his own weak points in the interest of his survival;  what is of higher value is his preservation for what he represents to another one whom experience taught that it can be worth surmounting self-protective instincts for the enrichment of life and one’s own pleasure.

Hence, the search for Teddy turns almost imperceptibly into a game from the moment Keeper helps Otter, entering her world to solve a problem he knew it was motivated by a fantasy although he had no idea which one. This sympathy which lets her appreciation appear wronged by her emotions changes the meaning of their common search and transforms her excessive affective implication into adapted activity through a trick relating her with what he is sure she can - playing.  Thanks to his participation, her gear wear, which signified how seriously she was taking her task, makes readers smile as the foreseeable happy ending lets it appear as a disguise suggesting that at her stage of evolution most of life is still a game and has to be it. Any projection of adult values on her behavior is just inappropriate and those who try to do so aren’t part of her life so long as Keeper is watching over her.