Founded in England in the 18th Century, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows is a fraternal order made up of individuals of good character, loyal to their country, and who believe in a Supreme Being. The IOOF is one of the world’s largest fraternal orders, with over 10,000 lodges and roughly 600,000 members in 26 countries.
A non-sectarian, non-political organization open to people of all races, genders, nationalities, and social statuses, the IOOF’s origins can be traced back to the Old English Trade Guilds, representing fellow craftsmen from various trades.
The IOOF was established in the United States in 1819.
The core teachings of the IOFF are symbolized by three arrows (representing friendship, truth, and love), a bundle of sticks (representing concerted effort), and three linked chains, reminding the members they are bound together in friendship, love, and truth.
I was recently in Northern CA and was invited by a friend to meet him at a nondescript address in downtown Petaluma. He told me he wanted to give me a tour of something, being a history buff, that I would appreciate. On arrival, I found myself standing in front of a large building, clearly more than 100 years old. After being granted access, I made my way up the tall staircase to enter an Odd Fellows Lodge.
As I got the grand tour of this multi-story complex, I was fascinated by the history all around me. Photographs, documents, costumes, and a meeting hall that looked like something you’d see in a Laura Croft Tomb Raider movie. Thoughts of the Illuminati ran through my head as I looked at these ornately carved chairs (think Thrones) sitting in a specific order on a raised dais at the front of the Hall.
Of the many rituals of the Odd Fellows Society is the presence of at least one human skull in every lodge. This lodge was no different, with a skeleton lying in a coffin, neatly tucked away in a closet. My friend shared that, according to tradition, this skeleton was an Odd Fellows member who donated his body to the Society at death, to preserve the ritual for their Lodge.
Some believe this tradition was adopted from a practice by doctors in 18th Century Britain. Prior to an Act of Parliament in 1832, doctors in Britain could only dissect the bodies of executed criminals, making skeletons rate and valuable for study.
Physicians were not permitted to retain or display human skeletons from dissected bodies, so they would store them in a closet, hidden from public view. So, having a “skeleton in a closet” was a way for doctors to secretly study human anatomy, all while avoiding unwanted public scrutiny or displeasure.
Over time, the phrase, “skeleton in the closet”, evolved to represent any concealed, embarrassing fact about someone. It’s those uncomfortable moments in our lives we want to keep to ourselves to avoid public scrutiny, embarrassment, or humiliation.
But, if we don’t address the skeletons in our closet, we remain shackled to yesterday, imprisoned by the past, and unable to move forward.
In the Old Testament, we read the story of Nimrod, the grandson of Noah. According to Jewish tradition, Nimrod commissioned the building of the Tower of Babel as a place of refuge in the event of a global flood. He grew up listening to the stories of his parents and grandparents, who survived in Flood on the Ark. This, according to tradition, instilled such fear, it became Nimrod’s “skeleton in the closet.”
Between 1933 and 1945, the Jewish people living in Europe experienced unspeakable horrors during the Holocaust. The survivors of these atrocities saw their fears and anxieties passed down to their children and grandchildren. Known as “intergenerational trauma”, the psychological effects of a traumatic experience can be passed across generations, even through epigenetic changes in genes, making their descendants more susceptible to anxiety and heightened stress responses.
The past can be passed down.
Some skeletons in the closet are generational.
Others are skeletons of our own making we store in the closet ourselves.
We all experience setbacks at various times in our lives. We all have regrets, disappointments, and past hurts we carry with us. We’ve all made bad choices, and there are times when we have failed. There will also be times when we experience neglect, abuse, abandonment, and broken relationships.
If we don’t deal with these setbacks, they nestle into our psyche as embarrassment, shame, insecurity, humiliation, or limiting beliefs.
Our self-esteem and confidence suffer as a result, diminishing our self-worth and the value we see in ourselves. Unchecked, they become a skeleton in our closet we want to hide from others…and more importantly from ourselves.
The skeleton is there, hiding in the closet, even if we close the door and pretend it isn’t there.
Words create wounds. Unchecked, feelings of inferiority, anger, resentment, or revenge can take root in our lives, imprisoning our thoughts in the past. We continue to replay what other people said or did to us, experiencing those same negative thoughts and emotions over and over again.
We’ve shackled ourselves to yesterday, stuffing yet another skeleton in the closet.
Think about it this way.
You’re about to go on a trip and you’ve got to pack. When you open the closet, there staring back at you are all the skeletons you’ve chosen to hold on to. You can’t get to your clothes, shoes, and coats until you pull all the skeletons out of the closet so you can get to what you truly need to go where you want to go.
It takes time, energy, and effort to drag those skeletons out of the closet, stack them on the floor, and then stuff them back in the closet after you’ve gotten what you need for your trip.
You may find yourself so exhausted by the ordeal, that you are too tired to travel.
Or worse, you open the door, see all the skeletons staring back at you, and don’t even make the effort to move them aside to get to what you truly want or need.
Hello?
How much time, energy, and effort are we wasting dealing again and again with the skeletons in the closet, revisiting past hurts, disappointments, or failures in our lives?
A better choice of action might be to clean out the closet, removing those skeletons in the closet once and for all.
We hold on to what we value.
So why then do we hold on to the things that hold us back?
When we hold on to past hurts, fears, and anxiety, we invite the past to relentlessly pursue us, giving us more of the same in the process. Where we focus our thoughts, we also focus our energy and our effort. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Job, a man who suffered immeasurable tragedy in his life, said it well, “The thing I greatly feared has come upon me. And what I dreaded has happened to me.” (Job 3:25) His words serve as a cautionary warning to each of us. If we shackle ourselves to yesterday’s hurts, fears, and disappointments, we invite them to revisit us again and again.
Let me share a real-life example of what I mean.
In junior high, I was training for the long jump competition in the upcoming District meet. As I stretched my hands forward in the air, I stepped on my hand as I landed in the sand pit. A spike from my cleats pierced my hand and as I threw my hands forward, I ripped a two-inch gash in my hand, severing muscle and nerves in the process. It was a bloody mess.
My coach drove me to the emergency room, where I met my Mom and Dr. King, who was the ER physician that day. Dr. King was quite entertaining as he put my hand back together and bandaged it so I could return to school and track practice.
But I shackled myself to that injury, refusing to wear my cleats as I jumped. The additional weight of my tennis shoes was taking precious inches off of my jump, and as the meet got closer, my confidence continued to slide.
I had three attempts to make the finals. My first attempt, in my tennis shoes, was way short of the qualifying mark. My second attempt wasn’t much better. With only one jump remaining, and the opportunity to advance fading, I had to make a decision. Do I leave the skeleton in the closet, allowing fear to hold me back from what I was capable of doing, or do I face my fear and do what I had been training to do?
I changed from my tennis shoes to my cleats, even as I was fighting thoughts of mangling my hand once again. I stepped off my starting point, took a deep breath, and sprinted down the runway toward the jump point. My foot hit the board and I threw myself in the air. As I hit the ground, I heard to judge yell out, “That’s more like it!”
They measured my landing. It was a personal best that year. I came up two inches short of making the Championship round, but that day I kicked my skeleton out of the closet, choosing not to remain a prisoner of my past, but to become a pursuer of my future.
I was free of my past, unshackled from yesterday’s hurt and failure.
Here’s a lesson I learned from my parents many years ago:
How you view life is how you do life.
Mom and Dad reminded me often that my perspective on life, my mindset, and my outlook, directly shape my actions and how I live life. If I see life as positive and full of opportunities, I’m more likely to pursue and achieve them. If, on the other hand, my outlook is negative, I’ll focus on all the reasons I can’t do something rather than all the reasons I can.
The same is true for you.
Your perspective on life, your mindset, and your outlook, directly shape your actions and how you live life. If you see life as positive and full of opportunities, you are more likely to pursue and achieve them. If, on the other hand, your outlook is negative, you will focus on all the reasons you can’t do something rather than all the reasons you can.
The Odd Fellows chose to keep their skeletons locked away in their closets.
You can choose to do the same, or you can choose to pitch the skeletons out of your closet and bury them in the graveyard of the past where they belong, unshackling yourself from yesterday in the process.
These skeletons represent the fears that are holding you hostage, preventing you from experiencing all that life has for you right now, and pursuing the amazing future that awaits.
You get to choose whether you will be defined by your past, or prepared by it.
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