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I’ve been Out&About all over the region this week. I don’t know if it is February malaise, the grey skies, or the feeling of winter lingering but there seemed to be a lot of droopiness in the air. And I kept hearing the rumbles of the elephants in the room.

You know, those large creatures that bumble around and that we complain about but never really speak about directly?

Now, I know some of you will probably throw tomatoes at me for talking about this – but that’s OK. You see, I think that the best way to deal with an elephant is to shine a light on it, look it in the eye, and see if it is really just a mouse in disguise. And, if it is indeed an elephant, to understand it and deal with it explicitly.

Elephant Number One wears the clothes of the second homeowner. “Everyone” says we have a second homeowner economy– but what does that really mean?

I got inkling when I was at the fuel oil company dealing with a heating issue for a property I take care of. Beside me was another person doing the same. And as I stood there, the person at the counter and the person next to me had the conversation I’ve heard many times this week – there’s a little joke about taking care of someone else’s house followed by the commentary that this is the only way to survive on the Cape.

Sometimes this conversation is light and features a rolling of eyes ... but sometimes this conversation has an edge that really chills me. It’s an edge of ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ – of the people who can afford a second home and the people who can’t afford to live unless they caretake those homes. It is about a socio-economic divide that we rarely speak aloud here. But maybe we should.

It’s also the conversation that leads to the statement that the only businesses that have a future here are those that serve the well-off second homeowner: house maintenance, landscaping, building. Which layers an implied divide of educational attainment into the mix as well.

Elephant Number Two is a close cousin. A few months back I was in a pottery gallery and struck up a conversation with a woman who was also browsing there. Well, OK, she was seriously buying and I was just taking in the scenery, but we did admire some of the same work.

She started telling me about how she and her husband now had a home here on the Cape and how they were running their software consulting business from it. My ears perked up and I started into my CCTC pitch.

She was not interested.

Why? They were not creating a business, they had no interest in ever hiring anyone here or in working with companies here, they had no interest in contributing to or participating in the business economy. This was a lifestyle business: their lifestyle. In fact, she confessed that they’re really prefer if there were no business on the Cape at all.

I’ve heard variations on this elephant dance since. People move here from elsewhere. The boomers, for example, are cited over and over again as folks who don’t want to retire but want to do something different. However, that ‘something different’ doesn’t involve actually being part of the business community or part of driving the economic health of the region, aside from, say buying pottery and hiring a landscaper. There appears to be a short-term understanding of what makes a region function.

Which leads almost directly to Elephant Number Three: professional jobs. Back at the oil counter, one of the men began talking about his son, the biologist. Wanted to come home to the Cape. Works in Woods Hole, commutes there from the mid-Cape because of a lack of housing options. And, is starting up a light carpentry/handyman company because it makes more “sense” to do that than being a biologist.

I’ve heard this elephant song more times than I can count – where are the jobs for our college educated sons and daughters who want to live here, who have roots here, who come back and find that serving the second homeowner is the most profitable option available? And either give up their education and sense of aspiration or give up and leave altogether.

The Counter-Elephant to this jobs issue is one that is not comfortable to say aloud, but it certainly impacts thinking and planning for business growth here. That’s the elephant that says our region has a culture of, well, slackers. People don’t want to work hard here. No one will show up/put in extra time/make the commitment. They are stoned/drunk/lazy/uneducated/unwilling.

Not surprisingly, fingers point to our tourism economy as part of the issue. One theory I’ve heard is that kids grow up here seeing adults on vacation, not adults working and so get a skewed idea of the work ethic. A related theory says that kids grow up seeing people with all these nice second homes but don’t see the effort put into earning the money for them, and hence develop an odd sense of entitlement. An elephant? Or a mouse?

How do we explain the local retailer who complains there’s no business or that everyone goes to a chain store -- but who won’t open on a Sunday or after 5 pm to accommodate the schedules of customers? Or who won’t look at the ways any successful retailer uses the web to reach out to customers and provide the type of 24/7 experience our world asks for today?

Maybe I’m being affected by the gray skies too, but I think that the elephants are issues that need to be pulled out into the light. We need to look at them, talk about them, and see them as more than the five blind men describing the legs, trunk, and tail, each wringing their hands in woe.

I don’t think any of them are insurmountable beasts. I suspect that there are ways to bring out the mouse more strongly than the elephant. Or, there might be some real benefits to harnessing the pachyderm’s power.

But we won’t know that as long as we keep them in the dark. So let’s get the lights on and meet these elephants eye-to-eye, trunk-to-trunk and perception to reality. If little Dumbo could learn to fly and become the star of the show, so can we.