Interpreting Meanings

People get tattoos for a lot of reasons, and I'm not going to say there is a good or bad reason to get one, its your skin, your money, your life.

For me, my tattoos all have meaning to me, meanings that were (at least when I got them) deeply significant. What I find interesting is how some people misinterpret the meanings according to their own view of the world.

Recently I had three bees, as in insects, tattooed on three different parts of my body. Each bee was customized to represent a different individual, all of whom happened to be women, and this caused a bit of jealousy in another woman in my life. As she saw it, I'd just had the equivalent of three women's names tattooed on my body, and she wasn't included.

But that isn't how I view it at all. These tattoos represent a nick name I was given at Burning Man last year, one which I felt helped clarify a part of my own identity. Here's the story:

At Burning Man, I met a group of three first time Burners, three women. They were all in their late twenties, had all gone to college together and all shared a house in college. During that time, they called their house "The Honey Pot," for obvious college-girl reasons. Since graduating, they have all taken very different paths in life, but remained close, despite being spread out all over the world.

At Burning Man, I was one of the first to welcome them, and in a very real sense, they adopted me into their little tribe. We spent a lot of time together that week, and had many adventures. There was no romance or sexual interactions between us, but did connect on a deep and intimate level.

One night, while we were out on an adventure, they gathered up, and after a discussion, pulled me close and announced I was "the Bee Keeper"!

At Burning Man, nicknames can take on an important meaning, they allow one to step outside the identity you have in the rest of the world, the one you probably didn't choose, and embrace other aspects of your personality you'd rather showcase. So this new name caused me to think a lot.

As I interpreted it, a bee keeper, in actuality, is a person who provides a safe place for the bees to live, protecting them from harm, while at the same time allowing them to roam free and go about their natural lives, doing what bees do. There is obviously a symbiosis, the keeper gets honey or his plants pollinated, while the bees get protection, but the keeper does not try to shape the bees into anything they aren't already, he nurtures them, without directing them.

Applying that analogy to myself, I felt it was appropriate for how I did a lot of things in life. I find my self mostly surrounded by younger, less experienced people, and I have a paternal nature which leads me to want to guide and protect them. Yet I also do not wish to stop them from seeking and becoming their true selves, regardless of who that is, I just want them to do so in a healthy, safe way. This is how I tend to treat the younger people in my life.

Over the years, I've had many, many people come back to me and let me know how I positively impacted their lives, often by simply being the one person who let them be themselves. That is what being The Bee Keeper means to me.

To commemorate this new realization about myself, I decided to get a tattoo. I thought a lot about how to represent the idea, a bee hive came to mind. Then simply bees, but I would need a few, to show it was about many bees, not just one. Soon I decided on one to represent each of the people who helped me understand myself in this way, and that's what I got.

The tattoos, while representing three people, also represent Burning Man and its impact on my life, and the quality of my character I've come to understand through my experiences there. So while each be represents a person, its less about them, and more about recognizing how they helped me -- The honey I got from the bees, so to speak.

I don't even know if I'll ever see those three again (we are still in contact, but not deeply involved in each other's lives.) I haven't told them about the tattoos, because I don't want them to misinterpret their meaning. Though I will be proud to show them if I meet them again in person.

This experience also helped illustrate to me how people view the same thing differently, and is a constant reminder to take those potential different views into consideration when dealing with other people. My lesson about myself, lead to a lesson about the world! Pretty cool!