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  Interview with myself

[ 10 minute read ]   2100 words

Interview and sonder

Could do better

'Today we have in the studio Martin Cadwell. Hello Martin'

'Hello'

'Martin is becoming a regular guest on our show. This is the third time now. You will be able to phone in and ask Martin some questions. The phone lines will open shortly. Martin, how has your year been? You have had some ups and downs from a not very good start this year.'

'Straight to the point. I like that. I suppose, generally the year has been disappointing. I mean it was a year; it had all the right number of days in it and night followed day; but I think I could have made more of it. You are right. I was not in a good position at the start.'

'I realise it is a sensitive issue so take your time.'

'Thank you. I had a huge falling out with my family in January which set about a series of bad behaviour episodes. I drank too much during the ironing out of the disagreements and the upshot is that I said more than I should have. I meant it too. As you know, I am uncomfortable with lies and deceit. Basically, I said to my family I had, had enough and I did not want to be part of the back-stabbing loop.'

'This is your wider family.'

'All of them. There is not a single family member I have any contact with now. As I was going through my late teens and early twenties I wondered how my mother could hold, what seemed to me, to be such concrete grudges against family members. It just seemed to me to be really quite mean, and fickle with it. She seemed capricious; one year against my brother, the next against me. I realised that she was being coached on how to think by my siblings according to how they felt about us. I said I was 'out'; not doing this anymore. Later in years I had good cause to make sure I am honest and honourable. As the Americans say, It bit me in the ass.'

'When you say 'out', what do you mean.'

'It is not right to speak ill of people who cannot defend themselves. It is a basic principle in many interviews that are intended for the public to be party to...'

'It is.'

'In my family, I simply refused to countenance gossip about other family members. I came up with the maxim 'Don't talk about me, talk to me'. In trying to stick to my code of honour, things came to a head in January and I effectively ran out of conversation with my family. It was just too hard to keep them from wandering off into the trees and start moaning. I had bound myself to being honourable and only by disavowing myself to honour could I release the binds.'

'How did that manifest in your more public life?'

'I am an undergraduate and although not forced to actively interact with other students, it is useful on some levels. I vented; I attacked; I laid scorn at their doorsteps. I failed in many ways to recognise them as humans with feelings that I am not party to.'

'So, correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that you missed your own family and the back-stabbing, and projected those feelings onto a group that had similar goals to your own.'

'Absolutely. I forget that I have PTSD from familial failings. When you hear the saying, 'Familiarity breeds contempt' you may, like many, many others think that this relates to repetition and banality; experience gained in doing something mundane soon turns to contempt for the task, right? When I hear it, I think that intimacy between humans is an area for contempt; effectively, family members or close friends. We soon recognise each others faults.'

'Jumping forward; you wrote a post on 'Sonder' this Summer. Was this what was missing in you in January?'

'Oh yeah, I did. Yes. I am fairly certain that most of us are so busy with our lives that we fail to recognise that other people are busy with their own lives. Everybody, well, nearly everybody, thinks they are the centre of the universe and everything revolves around them. It doesn't. Of course it doesn't. Everyone is more like a solar system with orbiting friends and family; each of those with their own gravitational pull on each other so they form a cohesion of some kind. Recognising that other people think they are the centre of the universe was a moment of sonder. Everyone has their own ideas and feelings. It seems obvious, but actually holding it to be true was a revelation to me. That is not enough though. It has to be stitched into the very fabric of our individual being.'

'Had you have known this earlier, do you think things would be different now?'

'Indubitably, without question and totally. Had I have realised this earlier this year I would have been a lot happier in the rest of the year. If I had known this when I was in my twenties I would now be complete with a wonderful wife and children and I would recognise that letting off steam by talking about family members is completely normal.'

'We have our first caller, Steve from Kent. Good morning Steve.'

'Good Morning and Happy Christmas. Hello Martin'

'Hello Steve. Happy Christmas.'

'Martin, I think that your message about sonder makes a good but overlong Christmas Card greeting in a much convoluted way, but don't you think you are just trying to create a religion out of respect?'

'Hmm...interesting question. I think that people can respect other people's spaces; I don't sit on your lap on the bus and I don't ask you to give up your seat for me either. That is respect for an individual. If we have a disagreement about an empty seat that both of us are aiming to sit on I might in a moment of sonder listen more closely to what you are saying or listen more keenly to your voice. In that moment of sonder I might do neither; I might only understand that you think you are at the centre of the universe and all things revolve around you. I would understand why you think you should have the seat and not I. I am only a peripheral body to you.'

'Neatly put, Martin but the caller is not asking if you would give up your seat. You would have to, the moment you intellectually withdraw from your involvement in the crisis, right?'

'Yes, I would have to. I rather feel that respect is a blanket attitude that we give to people's inalienable rights and their thoughts and feelings require something else. While we all have a right to think what we like, I do not need to respect any thoughts you may have that I feel are evil. In a moment of sonder we can wrap up those thoughts in toxic-proof wrapping and interact with a person in a polite and conscious way.'

'I still think you are over-egging the pudding, but I respect your thoughts and bid you also a happy new year. Goodbye.'

'Ha ha. That was Steve from Kent with good cheer and amicability. Happy new year Steve! Martin, Tell me about your Summer.'

'Happy new year Steve. As you know, I like gardening. It is the growing and the not so much the nurturing I like. I like the sprouting of the new shoots and the right result, be it flowers or fruit. I discovered that Muntjac deer like to eat anything I grow. My garden is where I relax and the frustration of having all my efforts destroyed affected my Summer quite badly. It is easy for me to become quite jaded if I can't find a way to overcome a problem...'

'Isn't a fence a good idea?'

'Tuh! Yes. I have been exceedingly lazy this year. I cycle less; I have tended the garden less; I shopped closer to home in the local villages instead of going into the city. I have not made good use of my time. This Summer, instead of seeking new connections and maintaining the shreds of old relationships I have spent a great deal of time at home focusing on myself; but not in a good way such as one might hear about from a practitioner of Yoga or Pilates or mindfullness. This Summer I watched the world pass with an indifference that I have never experienced before. This Summer, I complained that it was too hot. I complained that my nearest neighbour is a nincompoop nuisance. I berated both myself and my shadow and lost interest in keeping a working set of three bicycles.'

'You like cycling.'

'I did. I like to feel my legs tired but resilient; like tight elastic. I like getting home tired but able to recover with only a cup of coffee. This Summer, my legs were weak and I overheated too easily. Getting home, a cup of coffee was not enough and I needed to sit for a couple of hours to recover. Things didn't get done. I did no art or crafts. I even gave away a lot of new art material by leaving it outside on the pavement. I am not at all satisfied with how I operated even within my own sphere of influence. In giving away the art material I was obliquely tryig to compensate for my interactive inadequacies'

'You sound quite sad and introrse, whereas last time I sensed insightful.'

'Ever sharp and to the point. Yes. I suppose I am feeling sorry for myself. I know I am better than I have shown myself to be. I am disappointed.'

'We have another call; Aesia in Oxfordshire. Good Morning and Happy Christmas Aesia. What do you have to say?'

'Good morning. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas Martin. I should just like to ask why you are so ruthless with yourself. It sounds to me that you have an urge to psychologically wound yourself.'

'Good morning Aesia. Happy Christmas. That is a great question. I suppose I don't really see myself trying to attack myself on any level. I suppose I see it as self-imposed moral rectitude. Unfortunately, I often don't feel that I don't measure up to being myself at anywhere close to my potential. I was about to say capacity, but of course, capacity ebbs and flows as the seasons pass and the impact that both the environment and ourselves have on us. From January, I probably set myself up for a dwindling relationship with my immediate environment and needed to boost myself a bit, but I didn't. Instead of dealing with things effectively, I just pushed them into the long-standing heap of unfinished business. It has affected me. I know that.'

'Well, I think you are okay. I mean, I think you mean well. I am going to go now. Happy new year.'

'Happy new year.'

'Happy new year Aesia. Martin, finally, do you have any plans for the future? We are a bit short of time.'

'Yes, I do. I need to focus of getting a good sleep pattern and get back into cycling. The only bike I have working is one that is too small for me. I have four others in different states of repair, and when I ride the the little one I am frustrated. I blame it on having a poor memory. I know that poor sleep habits have a significant effect on memory, energy, ambition and motivation, so I shall focus on looking into causality in January 2026. I shall go home and write a new message to myself to pin on my wall; a quote from when I was more connected with the Christian Church, 'In order to be where God wants you to be in five years time, you have to be where God wants you to be now'. For me, it will have a duality about it, in that I shall extrapolate from it a concept of human achievement such as, a long journey starts with a single step.'

'Martin Cadwell, it has been a pleasure. Happy new Year.'

'Thank you. Happy new year.'

 If you would like music to match this post you might try Talking Heads, 'Once in a Lifetime' available on YouTube. Go for the Official Audio not the video; it plays without interruption. Link below (opens in new window):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR0jgT9UX0Q&list=RDfR0jgT9UX0Q&start_radio=1

Blog address for all the posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

[7 minute read]

A moment of sonder

If I ever, one day, want to create characters for stories, I think I would try to remember all the snippets of conversations I had inadvertently overheard while waiting in a queue, or just passing someone, and I would write them down.

In London, England, I overheard a young woman, with a slight, maybe French, accent say, ‘Don’t be mean to me just because I am young!’ I was struck by this because it was something that seemed only possible to enter the head of someone who is not British. Maybe I am closeted by confirmation bias – I had never heard a similar comment in a British accent, yet I can’t help thinking that her upbringing included a reasoning that youth is no bar to intelligence or understanding; not a sense of entitlement, more an understanding that she was not fettered. She seemed to recognise that she lacked experience but that was all that was missing for her to instantly understand something that other people had heuristics for, or for British people in England just grew up knowing.

I had a French female friend who told me that while she was still learning English, she had put too much powder on her face, and so asked her new English boyfriend to ‘blow off’ on her face. (Blow off is English slang for farting). She said he looked really shocked, because he didn’t know her very well. As an invite to me to freely visit, she once told me to ‘just come in and pop’. I think she was attempting a euphemism though; sort of a ‘double entendre’. Let’s face it, the French know what a ‘double entendre’ is. I really liked her then, but just smiled, not really knowing that she liked me back; she told me later, just before she moved away from the area.

I was on the same bus as a young mother with a baby that incessantly cried. I didn’t mind; I just felt really sorry for her. Her look of concern and helplessness was so pitiful. I couldn’t help though because I had just had eye surgery and was blind in one eye on a moving bus. She didn’t know that the bus engine noise would be extremely loud for a new baby, and she didn’t know how to comfort her new baby. When I passed her to get off the bus, I noticed her melting face filled with gratitude for the three elderly women attending to her and her baby. To this day, she might think how wonderful the ladies were in quietening her child, but I suspect she should thank the driver for delivering us all to the bus station safely, and naturally switching the engine off.

Surrounded by people, I overheard a man of perhaps 30 years, say to himself, ‘I just want someone to talk to.’

As I passed someone queuing to get into a music gig, I overheard him say to his friend, ‘I wish I didn’t know so much.’ I think he had a high IQ and didn’t know what to do with it.

I overheard a woman in a supermarket in the summer of 2020 almost shout to a shop assistant that she has a breathing condition. She wasn’t wearing a mask (Covid 19 lockdown in the UK). I suspect her boyfriend was one of those people who think it is cool to have maximum agency over their lives despite how negatively it affects everyone else. I imagine that he knows he annoys people and that is his signal to himself that he is in control over his life.

I overheard two people about twenty feet apart in a residential road:

Exasperated, one said, ‘Why don’t you just come to me if there is a problem?’

The other called over his shoulder, ‘Because you have no respect for other people, and so you can’t understand a single word I say to you!’

I used to play a game with my children in the car. Later, I played the same game with some of my employees while we were travelling abroad. ‘What do you think that person there is thinking?’ I would point out, or earmark someone in our view, across the street at traffic lights or in a park we were passing. Usually, the answers were quite mundane. But, I would always offer something like, ‘At last it is raining so I can test this umbrella I bought from a trader in the Sahara desert’; or ‘This is the fifth time this month that someone has stolen my car!’ when someone was walking or cycling; or ‘If I sit on this bench long enough perhaps the Council will put a plaque on it as a memorial to me.’ If I saw someone dancing and looking down, I might say something like, ‘Oh no! I know where my son’s stick-insects are now!’ My children and employees never seemed to understand that there is much more going on in other people’s lives than is evident to onlookers. They had never experienced a moment of sonder, or ‘the feeling one has on realising that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles’. (Dictionary.com)

I would have been delighted if the people we were observing were playing the same game and had targeted us, pointing their fingers and laughing.

‘Sonder’ is also Africaans for ‘without’ from the Dutch word ‘zonder’.

In searching for the word ’sonder’ in a thesaurus, I came across the word ’spissitude’ which I think means ‘density’. I would definitely have a drunk character in a play say ‘spissitude’ rather than ‘density’.

My 1962 Roget’s Thesaurus does not have ‘sonder’ in the index.

My 1982 ‘Concise Oxford Dictionary’ does not have ‘sonder’.

The best definition I can get for ‘sonder’ is from the OED www.oed.com under ‘sonder-cloud’. I used my library card to log in, under ‘Institutional Access’.

‘Now historical and rare.

A cirrocumulus cloud.

1816 Cirrocumulus, or Sondercloud, i.e. cloud consisting of an aggregate of clouds asunder (from A.S. sond, Old Eng. a-sonder and sonder): the distinguishing marks of this cloud being that of separate orbs aggregated together, and the change to this cloud from others is a separation of continuity into particules.

(OED 2025, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/sonder-cloud_n?tab=meaning_and_use )

So, if we apply this wonderful definition of cirrocumulus sonder-cloud to people, we can have a ‘cloud’ of people casting a mottled shadow on the world. Shadows are not necessarily bad though, they provide shade from the searing sun, and contrast in an otherwise too brightly lit environment. Alternatively, we might like the idea of a lesser chance of sunburn. Because cirrocumulus clouds are so high up, we on Earth only detect a dimming of light and not distinct shadows. So, a ‘cloud’ of people are probably more portentous, than distinctly instrumental in changing an environment – more of a feeling at the back of one’s mind of a lesser quality of life in the present yet the reason is not immediately evident.

https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?user=852553&tag=sixth+sense (my blog on sixth sense and shadows)

Cirrocumulus clouds are those ones that look like lambs tails, or when there is about to be a change in weather, they might be seen when a sky is described as a ‘mackerel sky’.