But they will each sit under their own own vines and fig trees,
and no one will make them afraid again... Micah 4:4
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That day, when I woke up in a drawer surrounded by strangers, something fundamental shifted in my life—though, at three months old, I couldn’t yet grasp it. These four figures, staring down at me with expressions I was too young to understand, would become my family. There was a bustling street below—Govan, in the heart of Glasgow’s shipbuilding industry. The clang of riveters, the sharp percussion of hammers, and the acrid, nervous hiss of welding torches biting into steel all filtered into the room, sounds that were constant companions to my early years.
We lived on the third floor tenement in the late 1950s. The tenement buildings huddled together, creating a skyline of flat, grey facades, heavy with grime. The windows were small, allowing little natural light into rooms that seemed perpetually draped in a twilight haze. I can still picture the narrow streets below, choked with mongrel dogs and littered with rubbish, the kind of setting where rats didn’t need an invitation to scavenge through the nightly detritus. This was Govan—a place where money was always tight, and laughter, though it existed, seemed more a defence mechanism than genuine joy.
For a long time, I thought my character had been shaped by growing up in that hard-scrabble environment, where the shipyards dominated life, and working-class men loitered around corners with the world-worn faces of T.S. Lowry characters. Govan wasn’t just a place of razor gangs, moneylenders, and pubs on every corner; it was a place where survival was woven into the very fabric of existence. But there was something deeper that had begun shaping me even before I could fully understand it.
My new father, the man who took me into that household, was a storyteller like no other. In the evenings, as dusk settled over the shipyard town, he’d step quietly into my room and begin to spin tales from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, or Huckleberry Finn. His voice carried me far beyond the grim streets of Govan, to places and characters that became more than stories—they became reflections of life. I’ve often wondered whether it was his own empathy that pulled him toward these tales of orphans and outsiders, children adrift in the world, much like I must have seemed to him.
Memory has a way of distorting things, and sometimes my recollections of him feel like they’ve been blurred at the edges, caught up in the fluid tides of time. But the stories—those I remember with startling clarity. They were as real to me as the streets of Govan, and just as vivid as the constant stench of the shipyards and the distant hammering echoing through the town.
Through those books, I encountered people like me. Characters who taught me resilience, kindness, and a certain nobility that I wanted to live up to but didn’t always succeed in embodying. They were my first friends, the ones who planted the seeds of values that would shape who I would become, and who I would sometimes fail to be. They opened up a world beyond the hard boundaries of my everyday life and, in their way, they became a part of my personal foundation, something that started long before I knew how to give it a name.
As I grew older, I began to ponder the nature of the stories my father shared with me. Most of them had one thing in common: a happy ending. No matter how dire the circumstances, how bleak the path the characters tread, there was always some resolution that offered redemption, hope, or peace. I found myself deeply affected by this pattern, not just because I longed for the same sense of closure in my own life, but because of what these endings seemed to suggest about life itself.
In books, happy endings often feel inevitable, as though the struggles of the characters, no matter how excruciating, were leading them toward some grand resolution. And while Govan’s grim streets and the hardships of daily life often seemed to offer the opposite message, I began to wonder if the happy endings in those books pointed to a deeper truth. Could it be that, in the grand scheme of things, we are born not for suffering, but for joy? That beyond the daily grind, there exists some larger purpose—something that assures us that all our trials will one day resolve into a peaceful whole?
This idea took root in my mind, as if the happy endings I read about were small, quiet whispers from eternity, suggesting that our lives, too, have a destination far brighter than the one we might imagine from where we stand. It was more than just wishful thinking; it felt like a truth embedded in the very fabric of those stories. If a Dickensian orphan could find love and family, if Huck Finn could break free from the chains of his broken world, perhaps these stories were a reflection of a larger reality—the idea that our struggles, our pain, are not final destinations but stepping stones toward something greater.
Philosophically, it seemed impossible to ignore the idea that these stories, with their inevitable arcs toward happiness, might mirror something we inherently know to be true about the human condition. We crave resolution, peace, and joy because, deep down, we sense that we were made for it. Even in our darkest moments, there is an inexplicable pull towards something better, as if our hearts remember a world we’ve never seen but long for.
In this light, the happy endings in books are not mere fiction; they are echoes of a reality we are destined for. It’s as if the human spirit, despite its many wounds and hardships, carries within it a seed of hope that cannot be extinguished. That perhaps, in the grandest scheme, we were born to experience something far more beautiful than the harsh realities of our everyday lives. And if that’s true—if we are destined for joy—then the painful, broken moments we experience now are not signs of failure, but rather, part of the journey toward a final, unshakable happiness.
Perhaps that is why those stories stayed with me, shaping my thinking more deeply than I ever realized at the time. They told me, in ways that the world around me could not, that there was a reason to hope. And in a place like Govan, where hope sometimes felt in short supply, that belief was nothing short of a lifeline.
But they will each sit under their own own vines and fig trees,
and no one will make them afraid again... Micah 4:4
Scripture taken from The Voice™. Copyright © 2012 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.