Personal Blogs

A Letter to My Younger Self

What advice would I give to my younger self and this younger generation? There’s the French proverb,

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait Meaning that it’s better to have an older head on younger shoulders, but life doesn’t work out that way; we learn wisdom by experience and looking back; I have a key points to offer my younger self and the youth of today:

Wait for the two marshmallows

You probably have heard of the famous psychology experiment were children were offered a marshmallow now, but if they waited, they'd get two marshmallows. Well, in the course of time, the children who postponed self-gratification and waited for the two mallows faired better in life. Postponing pleasure for some greater purpose is advantageous.

I never made it at school. I took the best part of the last year off and when I was there; the class was disruptive and not conducive to learning. 3G at St Gerard in Govan was my high school. Clydeside kids of working-class fathers who, for the most part, would never get their names up on the Dux board in the foyer. We would look at the names and say “Boffins” with a bit of contempt.

However, when I was nineteen, I began attending night school at Cardonald College studying English, Maths and Physics. To be honest, I struggled with maths and physics, but English caught my attention. I loved the books: Animal Farm, Brave new World and other books that were on the curriculum.

The idea of studying English literature got a grip on me. However, with average Standard Grades, the idea was slipping, and I continued with my night shift job at Safeway on Paisley Road West, Glasgow.

It was there that I would watch workmates reading during the lunch break. Jimmy was reading The Moon’s a Ballon and Marty was reading The Lord of the Rings for the third time. I admired their stick-to-itiveness and the pleasure they derived from reading. Additionally, we had some students in on a Friday evening. Some were studying architecture and similar subjects. But there was one workmate who was studying English literature and would often talk about the Thomas Hardy books he was reading. His enthusiasm was contagious; he was getting quite a kick out of this material.

In the course of events, I put any hope of studying at university level on the back burner. I got married and university was dipping over the horizon..

Later, though, I studied English literature, social science and creative writing part time at The Open University and eventually got a BA Creative Writing and English Literature.

When COVID struck, I thought, there’s nothing else for it, I’m not going to waste more time. I did the MA and in 2022; I got a Master of Arts in Creative Writing.

Now why do I mention this? Am I proud of the achievement? No, it only confirmed what I could have achieved in my youth if I had postponed self-gratification and went for the two marshmallows.

Image by Joanna Kosinka (Unsplash)

Image by https://unsplash.com/@jannerboy62

Nostalgia

It’s summer ‘59, Billie Holiday has put her death mask on and she’s now Trav’lin light, and somewhere, near the banks of the River Clyde, an infant peers at mighty iron gates from a safe distance, curious about what lies behind. He hears the rhythmic banging of hammers, the neurotic sizzle of welding torches and the stench of red-hot pop-rivets as the snapping, thundering sounds and reeks ricochet and resonate throughout the town.  Then… then, a deafening horn brings the cacophony to an end. The metal gates ascend, and the concealed society emerge. They push out shoulder-to-shoulder; they splinter into groups down roads, streets, and lanes. Dressed like characters from a Lowry painting, they go thundering along like the snorting bulls of Pamplona. The child scampers up the stairs screaming for his mother and lays in her arms sobbing like it was a bad dream.

             Childhood memories like this visit often, sometimes as welcome guests and occasionally like a nocturnal burglar that enters my vaults and robs me of tranquillity. There’s the thoughtful passage in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities where Sydney Carton in conversation with Mr Lorry poses the following question:

            ‘Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat on your mother’s knee seem days of Long ago?’ 

           ‘Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in a circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be of the kind smoothing of the way.’ Mr Lorry replies.

           Much as I respect Dickens’ insight into human nature, I’m not sure I’m with Dickens on this ‘smoothing of the way.’  Truth be told, nostalgia is spurned by all generations. We have ABBA revivals. In China they have 80’s cafes where Generation Y can moonwalk the decade away to Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean. It’s even been reported that Generation Z are affected by early-onset nostalgia

The Incongruity of Self-Awareness

I was six years old. You had this routine. Every Sunday at 11am you would come round the back of my tenement building and stand on a soapbox. Wearing your bowtie and Donkey Jacket, you looked like a music hall artist. You took a swig of wine and sang Mario Lanza’s Be My Love, a favourite song of my grandfathers. And every week, when you finished, my mother would open her purse, throw out some coins, close her purse and say, ‘why doesn’t that bloody man not sing something new?’ Whilst wiping her eyes.

NASA, the North American Space Administration has rolled out billions of dollars developing technology to detect Extra-Terrestrial life. To what end, I wonder.

If there was extra-terrestrial life, what would they think of us? Consider: we have a planet producing food in abundance, and yet, we see images of emaciated figures in other continents malnourished with flies around their eyes. 19,000 children a year in sub-Saharan Africa are born with cataracts. Many dying before they become five years old. People are dying for the want of antibiotics. Our streets are filled with homeless people despite an abundance of land for building. Drugs are destroying societies. Poverty is rising in developed countries whilst the top ten per-cent amas more wealth. An unprecedented number of resources go towards arms and war. Resources that could be channelled towards mankind’s good. We see families crossing mighty seas in small crafts to find peace and security. What a helluva race we call mankind.

And what would we think of the Extra Terrestrials? What if they asked us to love our neighbours as ourselves? To be loyal; not looking at another with desire? To be honest in word and deed? To consider the poor, the window, the aged and the fatherless boy?  What if they asked us to respect life, to treat animals humanely? To lend without interest and not exploit the hired hand. To resist the temptation to be jealous, greedy, gossip, slander or bear false testimony. Would we buy into that? Apparently not.

What if these Extra Terrestrials were observing us now and assessing us?

“For the eyes of God is watching all the earth, and gives strength to those who with a pure heart and trust in him” 2 Chronicles 6:9

“God’s will is that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, although He is not far from each one of us.” Acts 17: 27

https://unsplash.com/@valerieblanchett

Primo Levi in his book The Drowned and the Saved wrote of the “grey zone” in Auschwitz. It would seem that the prison camp life could easily be divided into two blocs: the persecuted and the enemy.

But not so. He wrote, “At least for the solidarity of one’s companions in misfortune” would offer some relief. But no, the camp was divided by multiple divisions and the enemy was everywhere. “The enemy were all around but inside as well,” he wrote. 

Isn't it disturbing that in the street, school, workplace, prison camps or anywhere for that matter, that humans have the inclination to divide, create hatred and divisions? Yet, we all share the same DNA. Where does such evil come from I wonder?

To combat man's inhumanity to man, we build walls around us. Walls that create loneliness, insecurity and apathy. And yet, there are many trustworthy people out there if you look.

Psalm 15:2 reads "The one who walks faultlessly, who does what is right, who utters truth from his heart."

I was talking to a stranger while hill walking. He was complaining about how stressful his job was and how it was impinging on his health.

“Can’t you find a less stressful job?” I asked.

“Too many bills, “he replied.

He also mentioned a recent trip to Disneyland that cost him and his family £6000 in all.

“What makes you happy?” this stranger asked me.

What I’m doing now; walking in nature, stopping with my lunchbox in some isolated place and communicating with the Divine. Being grateful that I can be here. Grateful I have the health to do so. Grateful that I will return home tired, but feeling I have accomplished something.

He looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles.

Conspicuous consumerism is as old as the Silk Road itself. The idea of purchasing of goods or services for the sole purpose of displaying one’s wealth is losing ground as minimalism gains power in the West. Happiness is not achieved through materialism. We only need to look at the West to see that depression, and other emotional and mental illnesses caused by debt and reaching out beyond our means, is robbing society of happiness. Happiness comes from the simple things in life that cost nothing.

© 2023 Writer's Notebook: On Being Human

Image by https://unsplash.com/@lacarta

It happened one day that I woke up in a drawer with four strangers staring down. The sounds of a bustling street below, riveters, angry hammers, and the burning neurotic sizzle of welding torches marrying metal together to form mighty vessels wafted in from the nearby industries. I was three-months old, and these folks, two older girls and a middle-aged couple, were to be my new family for reasons that are not clear to this day.

My new home was a third-story tenement in the shipyard town of Govan, Glasgow. It was the late fifties. The landscape was subdued by oppressive tenements that blocked natural light and created avenues as dull as Victorian photographs. It was a place where ungroomed dogs festered the streets and infestations of vermin surfaced into the nocturnal crescents and corners of our homes in search of food. It was a place where people knew the value of the pound and the price of poverty. A place where working-class men stood around corners dressed like characters from a T.S. Lowry print. A place where razor gangs, money lenders and bars operated from every corner. A place where it always seemed there were better places to be brought up. For a long time, I thought growing up in this environment was the beginning; where my character was shaped, but something had already begun that process.

My new father was an incredible storyteller. In the evening, he would enter my room and relate abridged versions of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, or Huckleberry Finn.

I have often wondered if it was empathy for the characters that drew him to the stories he read. My few recollections of him are lost in the fluidity of memory.

But the stories are as vivid as the stench and sounds of that town. In these books were characters who shaped my thinking, expanded my view of the world, and became my friends. I saw within books characters like myself, who taught me the noble qualities that would bear directly in my future years and who I became and at times, failed to become.

Note:

Note: Parents in the west would often tell children that a stork brought them when the child asked, "Where did I come from?"

stork | Etymology, origin and meaning of stork by etymonline

I had a dream in the night. I saw a herd of scientists, bankers, philosophers and the wise of the age moving over the plains like buffalo. Each following the other.

I tapped the young man on the shoulder and asked, “My brother, where art thou going?”

“I am following the enlightened; they have all the answers.”

“Pray tell, reveal these answers to me. Will the grieving mother see her child one day? Will the blind man see? Will the crying, beat- up souls who walk this homeless land find shelter? Will the armless, legless victims of war run like the Highland stag. Will the victims of  poverty, and hardship smile, like the morning sun?”

But he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “You will never understand.”

A Letter from Norway

It was 1971. I wasn’t in the mood for two periods of music.

You glanced around the class. I could see you summing up this new class. This wasn’t the career choice you envisioned. Teaching sacred classical music to Clydeside kids who were only interested in the Beatles and the Stones was not why you spent those years at university.

But here you were with your flannels with turnups and a Harris Tweed jacket thinking you better make the best of it. I’m sorry, Sir, I don’t recall your name.

You went over to the record player and removed a ’78 from its sheath.

            “Let’s go on a journey, boys,’ you said.

            “Journey?” I wondered.

“Allegretto pastoral is what this music symbolises. Absorb the sound of the countryside; the sound of the flutes as they liaise and resonate with clarinets in fluid harmony saluting the rising sun. Listen as the flute and the oboe sing like two morning birds; the bassoon as it brings morning to a close and a new day begins.

You stood there whilst Morning was playing and observed each one of us being caught in the moment. It was spiritual. Apart from the gentle music rising in a lazy, sustained crescendo, it was the first time I heard such silence in a classroom.  After school that day, I scampered to the library to find books on, Norway, trolls, Peer Gynt, The Hall of the Mountain King, and Edvard Greig. You made me believe I was born in the wrong place. I’m still convinced I was.

            You, the unknown teacher with the tweed jacket, you changed my life in ways you never dreamed.

 Tusen takk from Norge 1999.

I was thinking of yesterday’s post and wondered if the theme of death is worth a blog.

A friend, who was a charity worker that looked after the needs of refugees had a Chinese man walk into his office one day. The man never spoke English, so, with a video link to a professional translator they were able to answer the man’s query.

“Can you tell me, what happens when we die?” was his question.

The Chinese man is not unique. We all ask that question and believe me; the thought becomes more frequent as you get older.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is this lump of matter and electrical charge we call the brain aware of itself? Why are we so unique that we can explore these matters? This is the boundary of science. These are questions that will never be answered by science. Despite the grandiose claims, we are nowhere near answering these questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF54xqYhIGA&list=WL&index=17&t=29s

There cannot be a God, there’s too much evil. However, why is there so much good? And think of the statement, “There’s too much evil.” Where do we get that moral absolute? Where does this invisible standard of right and wrong come from? If we are products of blind chance, then why is there the demand for justice? Justice has no place in a blind universe.

I will return to this question tomorrow.

Ah! Robert Louis Stevenson, a man after my own heart. I go everywhere with my notebook and my current reading material. Chance favours the prepared mind. A random thought emerges. The thought is pursued and drafted into the notebook. Less I forget.

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”

― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

And current reading, if you're enquiring. The Penguin Book of Prose Poems

‘Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.’― Frank Turek 

Hello World. Did I miss the meeting?  The London bus, I mean. The one that read ‘There is probably no God. So stop worrying. Enjoy your life.’ Oh dear! The telling word is ‘probably’. It doesn’t inspire conviction, does it? The adverb sticks out like a scaled down version of Pascal’s Wager. Like ‘There’s probably no God, but if there is, he might just let me off the hook for my lack of complete denial and reverence.

And then there’s the ‘enjoy yourself’ part. It is so refreshing to see that the atheists are the only ones on the planet that are enjoying themselves. I guess the drug addicts, alcoholics and escapists must be believers. How strange, I never noticed. Someone must inform our secular neighbours who are swiping down the antidepressants at record levels that it isn’t allowed. They shouldn’t be enjoying themselves that much.