Nimue Brown's Blog, page 405

Second Chances

I don’t tend to assume that life will deliver second chances. Some opportunities repeat, but many do not. I’m all too aware that sometimes you say goodbye to a person, and you never get to see them again, and you do not know at the time that this will happen. Chances to experience things, to connect with people, to fix problems, to learn… anything that turns up can be a one shot deal. There isn’t time always to follow every lead, but making those choices conscious that there may be no second chances, helps focus the mind rather.

I tend to give second chances where I can. I’m acutely aware that people mess up, and mess up for good and honourable reasons and the best possible intentions. If there’s anything to suggest that might have been the case, I’ll cut a lot of slack. People who mess up in that way are usually keen to fix things and get them right, which makes it well worth having the conversation. However, people who are sure they know better than me how I feel and what I need may have convinced themselves of their noble intentions, but do not get to pull that stunt repeatedly.

The majority of my closest friendships have, at some point been tested to breaking point, through challenges, things I’ve done, things they have done. The determination to come back and fix is key here. The person who says ‘how do we put this right?’ and who takes the time with me to do that, or to listen to my request to do that if I’m the one who messed up… these are the people I keep. The measure of a person is not their capacity for perfection, but what they do when things go wrong. Where we own mistakes, there’s scope to work with it and move forwards. Where there is genuine remorse, there’s every opportunity to sort things out.

However, where the desire is to blame, to score points, to ‘win’ I quit, as fast as I can these days. I’ve tried reconciliation with folks who like to score points, and sooner or later they do it all again. If the appearance of being right is more important than the actuality, I walk away. If the other person’s aim is to blame, or duck responsibility, to never admit to being wrong, I walk away. If I think for a moment that someone enjoys inflicting pain, I am out of there, fast. If there are double standards, and someone excuses in themselves something they find unacceptable in me, that’s another sign to leave. I do not stick around for ego trips, melodrama, scapegoating and people who like having a whipping post. Since I’ve adopted a low tolerance to this kind of behaviour, my life has improved considerably.

Not all of the losses of people and opportunity are about conscious choice, or mistakes made. Sometimes life draws people in different directions, and the slipping away is a slow, accidental process. Sometimes other factors change what’s available. Sometimes we don’t realise the value of the person we lost until there is no way back. Often there are no second chances with these, once contact is lost, there’s no scope for rebuilding it. And yet… the last week or so has raised the possibility of reconnecting with two people who were hugely important to me in my teens.

Second chances are precious things, rare, and worth being wide –eyed with awe and a little bit daunted over. Not something to take for granted.

Boxing Day Paganism

Readers outside of the UK may be perplexed by the British Boxing Day holiday, which follows on from Christmas. Today is a day off in the UK. However, the origins of this festival are widely misunderstood. One school of thought has it that the boxes in question were gifts traditionally given to the poor. Another theory is that sporting activities once dominated this day, and that therefore punching people in the face is a good festive activity. Generally speaking though we neither punch each other nor make charitable donation. Modern Boxing Day is an opportunity to head for the shops, or recover from the previous day’s excesses.

Boxing Day is, in reality an ancient Pagan festival celebrated right across Europe to honour the Great Mother. The box is a later misinterpretation of the womb, which the original containers can be seen to resemble. Or they would be seen to resemble if we had any, which we don’t, but as soon as one shows up it will of course be blindingly obvious.

Ancient Pagans would put things into their womb box as a sacrifice in the hopes of growing fertility in the coming year. A farmer might put grain in the box. A woman hoping to conceive would of course put beans in a box. Someone hoping to grow in wealth would put a coin in their womb-box and someone hoping to attract fairies into their life would insert fairy cakes.

The box would then be set fire to, which neatly explains why archaeologists have never found one.

It is frighteningly easy to create fakelore based loosely on names and tenuous connections. Paganism is full of these, and they breed online in disturbing ways. It is easy to imagine just about anything we fancy into the past, and there are always ways to explain the absence of physical evidence, from conspiracy theories through to supernatural interventions. There is, by way of an example, a school of thought that the creator god planted the dinosaur fossils in order to challenge the faith of believers. The ability of humans to make stuff up, justify it and believe it despite all evidence to the contrary, is truly astounding. All of our religions are peppered with this. Our politics and business practices, too. For some people, climate change is just another silly story that need not be bothered with. They’ll probably hold that thought even as the flood waters wash them away.

My Boxing Day story is of course total bollocks, thrown together in an idle moment for my amusement. Do have a go at your own. Fakelore, deployed for giggles, is endlessly amusing and a pleasant way to pass a chilly winter’s day. The trick is to avoid believing everything you imagine. It’s also worth noting that spending time making up total rubbish will give you a better eye for spotting when you’re reading the total rubbish some other person has cobbled together, and this is a useful skill to hone.

A swan wind

We were up long before dawn, walking out into the darkness. A half-moon sat high in the sky, occasionally shrouded by clouds. For once, the roads were largely empty and the early day peaceful and silent as we set off up the hill. Already the darkness in the east had softened to tones of blue. As we climbed the hill, blue faded slowly into a pale yellow suggestive of coming light.

There were street lamps, we did not walk in darkness, but the surrounding landscape was largely hidden as we started. By the halfway point on the hill, the Severn plain had grown visible, a landscape of greys with the distant hills little more than rumour.

We came off the road, onto the grass, still climbing. In nearby trees, an owl hooted, calling the end to the hunting night just as larks in the grasses began to fly and sing out to the day. We paused to reflect that this would have given Shakespeare a bit of a headache. Larks are so often thought of as summer birds, but they still fly the hill top through the winter, singing their rippling melodies. From nearby a buzzard called and we heard a raven.

There came a point when we suddenly rose high enough to enter the wind. It was an icy blast, coming from the east. At this time of year, the east wind brings us snow, and also migrating swans from Russia. They’ve been slow to arrive at Slimbridge, the wet, southerly winds we’ve been having make their long journey difficult indeed. I thought of them, and wondered if they would be flying in.

By the time we reached the hilltop, light had permeated the vale, bringing greens to the fields, although the hills remained grey and mysterious. We walked to the barrow, but it was too cold in the wind to stay still for long. Turning to face the dawn, we walked back, watching the skyline pink and glow with the coming day.

Coming down the hill, the sound of wings stopped us in our tracks. Not all birds are identifiable in flight, but one kind of wing whistles as it moves, making a distinctive sound that carries far. There, passing over the hill, were two swans, flying from the east towards Slimbridge. From that distance, we could not see their beaks (orange for the resident mute, yellow for the migrating bewicks and whoopers). Given the time of day, the wind direction and the size, I think they were bewicks, with a few miles left to go of their epic journey down from the arctic tundra. It was a remarkable moment, and while I have seen the migratory swans many times before, I have never previously seen them flying in.

It is not quite what we had planned for today, but this morning has been a blessing. We saw a kestrel as we were coming down off the hill. Seagulls were flying up from the Severn to spend the day in the hills, as is their habit. Then, the peal of church bells, no doubt for an early morning service. We walked down to a town no longer lit by streetlights, but waking into action. Cars on the road. Cheery greetings from strangers. The smell of unspeakable things being done to turkeys. It’s not my festival, but it can bring out warmth and conviviality in people, and that’s no bad thing.

Now, to work, and cook, and see what the rest of the day brings.

The Christmas list

I want miracles. My first proposed miracle for tomorrow would be to wake up in the sure and certain knowledge that no one else is waking up hungry or homeless. Far too many people in the UK alone will do both tomorrow. Not because they deserve it. Not because we’ve been hit by war or natural disaster, but because of the wilful incompetence of politicians who see human lives as just numbers on a page. Not very important numbers, at that.

As the second proposed miracle, I would like to wake up tomorrow and find that, during the night everyone has spontaneously noticed that we have just the one planet and that trashing it is suicide. While we are undertaking that miracle, I’d like us to suddenly all realise that there is more to quality of life than material greed and that it is utterly shameful to own wanton excesses of wealth when others are suffering. I would like us all to start feeling a bit more responsible for each other and for the world we live in. I think pretty much everything else could be sorted out with that in place.

Tomorrow I mostly get what I have wanted for me. I get to wake up beside the man of my choosing, knowing that my child is safe, well and happy. I get to walk across the hills. I’m doing an epic trek, and very much looking forward to it. There will be time to greet the ancestors along the way, and the hours of quietly walking with Tom and taking in the views will be a joy, whatever the weather gives us. I am hoping for a peaceful and conflict free day. This year, I am passably happy, for which I am deeply grateful. This time last year, I was burned out emotionally, and poised to have a dose of pneumonia. I have a better place to live than I had a year ago, and better prospects. It’s more than enough to be going along with.

What else is there to want? A few days off. The company of people I like. Something fun. I’ve had some beautiful time out with friends and family in the last week or so – The Enchanted Christmas at Westonbirt, with trees lit up in lovely ways. Cold and windswept solstice honouring, with a wild wind, the ancestors, and good friends. Time to be outside, and to be with people. Music in the offing… the good stuff.

Christmas always leads me to thinking about the people who are no longer in my life, too. The dead. The dear ones who live too far away for me to see often. The ones who fell out of my life by various means; deliberate, accidental, wanted and unwanted. As a consequence it is for me a time of nostalgia and a touch of melancholy. Any excuse…

In too many households the next few days will be an excuse, amongst the stress of the festive period, to shout at someone. Family tensions rise to the surface, all too often. The pressures of poverty and advertising combine to create stresses and demands that cannot be met. The children who are taught through commercials that love is measured in the size and number of gifts. The women conditioned to believe that Christmas is a time when you work yourself ragged to provide something ‘perfect’ for a bunch of people, some perhaps more grateful than others. It is a time when far too much food and goods will be sent on to landfill. The season of waste. The season of arguments, the worst time for those who are already alone, vulnerable, in trouble, grieving…

Whatever you do with the next few days, do it gently. Do not let it be an excuse for crap. No amount of expense, alcohol or imperfect cooking justifies violence… be that verbal or physical, but in some homes it will be handled just that way. Look out for the people around you. And if you’d like to make some contributions to proposed miracles one and two, the world is your oyster.

Survival tactics

I’ve been through some rough times, dealing with depression, anxiety, stress and bodily unwellness. It would be fair to say that in terms of managing all of these, I have been a slow learner, not least because I’ve been resistant. Working out how to manage a thing depends on admitting there’s a problem, and that took me a long time. Dealing with a problem depends on treating it as worth bothering with. For reasons I continue to grapple with, treating my own difficulties as something that matter does not come easily to me.

However, I’m aware of friends who are walking the dark places at the moment and suspect there are others, so survival strategies might be useful just now. Those first steps of noticing and bothering are vital. If you are depressed, crippled by anxiety or in pain it can be surprisingly hard to notice that there is something wrong with this, and all too easy to feel like you’re a failure when you need to be recognising that you are a person in trouble. Self-blame is a natural default, almost a symptom of the problem, for some of us.

Trick one is to keep moving. This kind of illness will tell you that all is hopeless and that no matter what you do, you will be ground into the dirt. If you quit and go to bed, it’s very easy to stay there, giving up and spiralling ever lower. Keeping moving allows you to resist the feeling of doom. Getting something – anything – done, gives you something you can but between you and the feelings of helpless worthlessness. How to do this, follows.

Trick two is to get the basics straight. These give you a sturdy platform from which to tackle the rest. Keeping yourself clean, fed and comfortable can seem both monumental and pointless when you’re ill. However, having those things sorted will improve your morale and self-esteem. Not eating only adds to feelings of depletion and misery. Move slowly, but take some time over your appearance. Do something nice. Eat well.  Take care of your space. Get the people around you to encourage and help you in this. If the people around you will not encourage and help you, then you’ve just identified a big part of your problem. Sometimes it turns out not to be depression, but that we are surrounded by arseholes. Prioritise doing the things that make you feel better.

Trick three is dealing with the big stuff. Often depression, anxiety and bodily illness are triggered because some vital thing has gone horribly wrong, and crushed us. Again the feelings of futility will make it hard to get things moving. Not tackling the sources of fear actually feeds the fear. So, draw breath, and then start fixing. Make a list of what needs doing. Break each item down into its smallest component parts, and get the running order right. Take your time, because this is your battle plan and you need it straight. If there is no required running order for it, start with the easiest stuff. Get some wins under your belt. Tick things off as you do them and remind yourself of the progress made.

Pretty much anything, no matter how daunting, can be taken on in this way, and worked through. Speaking as someone who has taken on battles I was told could not be won… and won, I say it can be done. So long as you keep moving, it can be done. There will be some kind of answer, some way of managing it, or making it better, or getting through and if you are moving, you can get to those answers.

Trick four, rest. Give yourself as much time as you can between the big pushes. Read. Walk. Watch a film. Go to bed. Be as possessive of your energy as you can be, and demand the time to do the things you need in order to keep going. Half of what gets people in trouble is not guarding personal resources, often. To get through, you are going to need to protect yourself. “I can’t, I’m ill,” can be a very hard thing to say, but also wholly necessary if you are to avoid being entirely broken. If there are people or situations making you more ill, acknowledge it and get out, even if it hurts. No one should spend more time than they have to places that make them sick. If you can’t get out, mitigate, give yourself more time off, find offsets, seek bargains. Do what you can to make it bearable.

Take yourself seriously and treat yourself like you matter. Take your problems seriously and treat them like they matter, too. You are not making a fuss, and you have the right to an ok life, and no one has the right to work you to death, make you sick with stress, to abuse your body, torment your mind or make existing unbearable. If you need something that is not what you’ve got, seeking those changes can be doubly hard, when you’re also dealing with illness. Take that seriously, too. What keeps us ill is all too often unwillingness to own the illness, name it and tackle its root causes. Most sickness, bodily and of the mind can be alleviated to some degree, but only if we own it, name it, and make the changes it requires. It isn’t easy, but the less easy your circumstances make it, the more you need to acknowledge that your circumstances are a big part of the problem.

And good luck to you.

A magical spell

After some deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that I do indeed have a favourite magical word. It is a charm against abuse, ludicrousness, greed and exhaustion. It has the power to protect the planet from human predation if only we use it properly. As a charm it works in a number of ways, layered with meaning and possibility.

That word, is ‘enough’.

To recognise that we have enough, is a powerful thing. Many people in the world are out there grasping after bigger piles of stuff they cannot use, because they lack the magical insight an ‘enough’ charm will bring. The flip side of the same issue fails to recognise that far too many people in the world do not have enough, do not have food, clean water, shelter or peace. They too need the magic of ‘enough’ to lift them out of misery.

“Enough” is the magic word that enables a person to walk away from bullshit, time wasting, crappiness. It’s taken me a long time to learn how to say it, and not to let people who just enjoy giving me a hard time get their jollies. I have learned to say no, and not to show up. I have taken enough already. I will take no more. It is a final, potent ward when used in this way. It can be said fiercely, and with feeling. Enough! No more time wasters, no more needless dramas, no more pointless misery for no good reason. I will be where I am needed, I will look out for the people who do not have enough in some aspect of their lives, but I will not stand around to be kicked.

Using the word ‘enough’ I will undertake to find out what that means in the context of my own life. I have not had enough peace, but I may have some hard fights to win it, because peace for myself alone would not be enough. I need more rest, and more time off, and more things that make me happy, and I need to learn how to say ‘enough’ to the work and the striving and the trying to make things better. I do not believe that the ends can be assumed to justify the means. Treating myself in ways that I find wholly objectionable when they manifest elsewhere, therefore does not work. I need to learn to say ‘I have done enough for now’. There are things to work on.

Words are power and magic, they are intention given shape and directed into the world. We do not need long and elaborate spells in order to make changes. We need focus. Sometimes one word is enough.

Intimacy and freedom

Depending on how you know me, I’m either quite a standoffish sort of person, or a very physically affectionate sort of person. I’m not keen on making any kind of bodily contact with people I don’t know well. This is partly because I don’t do much casually or lightly, and I don’t make gestures that are not meant.

I’ve commented before that I am uneasy about the culture of physical contact in the Pagan community. Being a fellow Pagan does not mean that I welcome your hands on my body, or your lips on any part of my face. We need to respect each other’s boundaries, not assume we’re all equally loved up and available, and not create a culture in which body contact becomes necessary social currency. There are few things I find more abhorrent around physical contact than people doing it because they feel like they have to, in order to fit in.

I’m not offended by physical contact, if it is meant. By this, I mean contact inspired by care, affection or desire. There is something very real and human about reaching out to someone from that sort of emotion. We don’t always judge perfectly how the other person will take it. I don’t measure people at all by the mistakes they make. I measure people by what they do when they find out they’ve got it wrong. The person who genuinely likes me, cares for me or finds me attractive, will respect my boundaries if I need to gently assert them. I’ve had rounds of that along the way. There may be some awkwardness, some embarrassment, but desire, affection and attraction are all underpinned by care, and that always wins through. I’m an odd and damaged person, the people who care about me care enough to work around that and to find out what I need.

Then there’s that other thing. People who put hands and lips on, not out of love or desire, but for some other reason. For power and control. To assert themselves over my body, space and mind. To demonstrate that they are flamboyant, exuberant types. Because they think the culture requires it of them. I am unsure, but these are my best guesses. That contact isn’t meant, and it feels very different.

A while ago, there was someone in my life in the habit of pouncing on me and kissing my cheeks. I don’t kiss unless I mean it and very few people kiss me, and I prefer it that way. I found this habit of cheek kissing unsettling, and I eventually found the confidence to say so. The response was to be told that it meant nothing, and said person kisses everyone. That was actually worse. Not just an invasion into my space, but a misuse of an intimacy. The person in question could not understand what was so unsettling to me, and I have come to realise what an impoverished emotional experience that represents.

Kissing is an intimacy. When you turn it into common currency, you devalue it. Like anything else, if you do it carelessly, meaninglessly, you make it that bit harder to have the depth when it is intended. If you say ‘I love’ over the slightest trivia that amuses you, what do you have left when you find your soul-mate?

Boundaries are not just about keeping people out. They are also about what you hold on the inside. The line between intimacy and casual acquaintance holds so much inside of it. Within the boundary, there is trust and openness, emotional honesty, there is meaningful affection. Your body, your kisses, your embraces are far more meaningful gifts if they are only given carefully and deliberately. That which is not given with care tends not to elicit care, either. The better I get at asserting my boundaries, the more able I am to see the treasures that can be kept on the inside of those lines. There is incredible power in deliberate limitation, in the consciousness that goes with choosing a limit. All too often we mistake freedom for being without boundaries, but I think increasingly that freedom is more readily found on the inside of the most carefully drawn lines.

Rescued by beauty

I burned out this week. It’s not an unusual experience for me, although I’m managing it better and it’s a good deal less frequent than it was. I tend to work up the edges of what I can sustain and then stay there until I fall over. Repeat. I’ve got better at pacing myself, and I’m reliably allowed to sleep, which makes me more viable, but there’s always more that needs doing than there is time and energy to achieve, and I’ve never been good at saying ‘no’ to things that looked important.

In the last few days, other things have happened, cutting through the exhaustion and the attendant low spirits. On Wednesday, the beauty of cranes and swans. On Thursday, the remarkable fiction of Professor Elemental, the gorgeous, sublime poetry of Jay Ramsay, and some online things funny enough to elicit tears of laughter.

I use landscape like a drug. It’s easy round here because there are so many places with epic views, big skies, dramatic hills. I’ve always done this, seeking out beauty and places where the horizon is large. Stargazing works, too. Finding those places where I am lost in the enormity of a landscape. Just a small and irrelevant little blot, able as a consequence to be unaware of myself for just a little while.

I get lost in other people’s creations, in the beauty and wonder of things made. I get lost in work; at the moment that involves a lot of heavy duty factual research, and keeping up with politics could be a full time job in itself. Busy, doing and overwhelmed.

Much of why I seek passion and emotional intensity in others may be based on this, too. It is a loss of self, an abandonment, when what is felt in the moment is so much bigger than anything carried with me, so much more important than any sense of should, or must, that I am just alive and present and being.

The funny thing is that I’ve always been highly resistant to Buddhist ideas about the surrender of self as religious journey. When I’m not lost and overwhelmed, that loss of self seems like a cheat. Non-existence has always been a tempting cheat, the ultimate get out clause. Still being alive but having some kind of non-existence, would work in a number of ways, but I’ve never deliberately sought it. I’ve hung onto this self-awareness, this personhood that does not ever allow me to stay comfortable for long, or feel good enough or shrug and say ‘not my problem’.

I’ve tried removing bits of self and personality. I’ve tried subduing all the bits other people have problems with – the being too serious, too intense, too emotional. The net result has, invariably, left me feeling that it would be better just to die, rather than living the grey half-life that gets me. If I took away the obsession, the drives, the sense of must and should and ought to that kicks me along on a daily basis, what would I be? Who would I be? I suspect the answer, is that without those spurs, it would be so easy to quit. To decide that my body is too sore to get up today. To accept that it’s too hard and to recognise that I probably wouldn’t make much odds anyway, and to let it go. To be ok with all of that. Would that be better? It’s one of those things I cannot have both ways. Either I am mad and driven, or I am not. I’ve never known how to be measured.

There is another side of me, alive in response to beauty and landscape, and the creativity of others. There are parts of me that exist only when there is someone else’s passion to ignite them. If there’s enough of that, if it’s part of my daily life, not an occasional add-in, then the drivenness starts to take a different shape. It feels less like masochism, and more like an aspect of something bigger, more potent, more worth having. It feels like possibility. However, life in practice is littered with banality, with people who tell me off for being too serious, and the people who inspire me most have other things to be doing, and cannot forever be propping me up. Somewhere out there, is a possibility of turning this into something, of taking the fragments of my dysfunction and re-weaving them into something else. It is, I think, worth trying for, at least.

Interpreting the cranes

Poke about online and you’ll find a lot of references to the ancient Druids using ogham for divination, and as a consequence being described as having ‘Crane knowledge’. There is much to be cautious about here. Firstly the ogham itself, which might well not be ancient, and the relationship between Druids and cranes. The idea of the crane bag – a tiny bag of wisdom items carried by Druids, may be something derived wholly from Robert Graves’ The White Goddess. The idea of ogham as ancient, sacred, mystical language of the Druids, and as method for divination, probably comes from there too.

I’ve read The White Goddess. I’ve also read a Peter Beresford Ellis essay on the subject of Graves’ ogham fabrications, and I’ve read Mark Carter’s Stalking the Goddess, which flags up many issues around Graves’ work, including the ancientness of ogham. The trouble with Graves is that his influence is widespread, and his ideas are touted around the Pagan community as ancient truth in ways that are bloody difficult to unpick.

It is therefore entirely possible that Druids did not spend any time at all reading mystical ogham messages in the flight of cranes.

However, of all the birds a person might look to for mystical signs in flight, cranes strike me as the most interesting. I’ve spent a lot of time sat in hides and windows watching birds. The thing about most birds, is that once you get to know them, there’s plenty of logic to what they do. They have methods for flying that suit their purposes. Little birds, vulnerable to predation, fall like leaves out of branches. Large winged buzzards soar on the thermals, because they can. Crows attack falcons, not to proclaim coming revolution, but to defend nests and territory. Fishing birds get active when the fish do. They have patterns that repeat over days, habits, preferences, tastes. Spend enough time watching, and the mysterious behaviour of birds resolves into something wholly intelligible.

Except for the flight of cranes, that is. I’ve seen cranes in flight a few times now. They have huge wingspans, long, delicate legs, long necks, and are capable of making a lot of shapes in the sky. Most birds tuck their feet in when in flight, but crane legs seem to get all over the place. The shapes they make are many. They also like posing when on the ground and court with a crane dance that offers all kinds of interesting moves. I would bet that what cranes do makes perfect sense to cranes, but for the observer it’s not too easy to match the shapes they make with obvious intentions. The bigger a flock of cranes, the more complex things they may seem to write across the sky. With their otherworldly calls, and their rather glamorous presence, they really do stand out as birds that might be embodying messages from the divine.

A scatter of wings and legs across a wintery sky. A flash and arc of cranes in flight as they move between feeding places. The human temptation to see a message, written in bird form. What did it say? What did it mean? To the cranes, it meant they were shifting field, for whatever reason. Did the universe pick the moment of their flight to have a little conversation with itself?

Then there were the great flocks of lapwings, weaving across the sky – an act of alarm at the possible presence of a predator, but those swirling bird forms paint the sky in ways that suggest meaning. Crows and lapwings flying across each other in the high wind, a tapestry of bird forms. Does it mean something?

The human mind is predisposed to look for patterns and meanings. That’s one of the features that has turned us into what we now are. We see meaning in randomness – as the Rorschach ink blots have taught us. We find it reassuring to have meanings, and we have a collective obsession with the idea that patterns can be interpreted to give us some control over the future. Be that patterns in currency markets, education outcomes, political policies or the flight of cranes. We really don’t want to believe that the world is a random place that has nothing to say to us. However, in our desire to impose a meaning, I wonder if we miss the subtle things that might be actually there. A lack of meaning would sometimes do a lot more to comfortably explain life, and even more critically, death, than this desire to interpret.

The purpose of life

I went to a Church of England Primary school, a very long time ago. It’s the main reason I have some knowledge of Biblical stories and the like. I knew I wasn’t Christian, but I also knew it was advisable to let people assume that I was. My parents had told me as much. That was back in the bad old days when Pagan people really did worry that social workers would take their children away.

I can remember sitting in religious assemblies, thinking how comforting it must be to believe in all this stuff about Jesus. There was nothing within me that enabled me to experience it as anything other than stories. My other early religious thinking had a curious flavour. I listened to all the stories, and I got the message about how we are supposed to be noble, self-sacrificing, heroic, brave, and do the right things. I noticed that in stories for children, this opportunity to shine depends entirely on the presence of a bad guy to triumph over. The Christians had Satan. I came to the conclusion that if there is a God and he wants you to be a hero, his creations will be all the evil things, all the dragons and monsters, so that you have something to be heroic over. Thieves, I reasoned, were closer to God, and the rest of us had a lot of hoops to jump through.

I’d picked up on the Christian idea of the reformed sinner, and I thought that was wholly unfair. The Prodigal Sons who go out there, mess up big time, come back and are loved and adored. Having been the sort of child who tried, and mostly didn’t do much that was naughty, much less wicked, it was clear to me I could not get any mileage out of this one. Reformed sinners were always going to be more loveable.

Then there was the whole thing about the purpose of life being to help others. I remember thinking ‘who are the others supposed to help?’ and realising this is a system wholly dependent on there being impoverished, diseased victims of misfortune, so that we who were not ‘others’ had a purpose to our lives. That made me deeply uncomfortable.

Around me, the eighties rolled on with enthusiasm, most of my peers more concerned about the music charts and their florescent socks. I did not fit, and no one wanted to talk about what life was for. They were all too busy doing it, and I felt curiously like an outsider, watching from the side-lines, unable to figure out the rules of the game. I missed out, somewhere early, on any notion at all that my life might be mine. My opportunity to live, feel and experience. My chance for joy and love. I can’t remember a time when I did not have a keen sense that my job was to please and appease and be of service to others. I never learned how to play, as a child, only how to pretend to play when required to look the part. Doing fun things just for me and because I want to has never come naturally or easily, and because of that legacy, always comes with a side order of guilt. How can I be reading a non-improving sort of book when there are still wars, still famines…? How can I spend money going to the cinema when that could buy food for a hungry person? How can I say ‘no’ to the friends who want me to go to the cinema with them?

On the flip side, as a parent with a child to care for, providing some kind of normal and sane experiences has seemed important. That’s given me a useful sort of counterpoint. Of course he needs to go to the cinema, and he needs trips out. I can show up if I feel like I’m supporting someone else, and not feel too guilty over the time off.

But here’s the stupid thing. I do not aspire to a world of puritan martyrs. I do not think the point of life is to work yourself to death for hopeless causes. The things I was taught to believe and feel, from as far back as I can remember I just would not apply to anyone else. This is not a case either of having singled myself out for sainthood (I’ve been accused of that, though). It’s not about imagining I am superior to everyone else and therefore must live to more exacting standards. It’s a basic failure to be able to feel entitled to my own life, on my own terms and for my own sake. It’s less a call to service, more of a life sentence. It is enough for other people to be here, to do what they do. No one else needs to explain, or justify anything. Breath by breath, I have to offer some proof that my taking up of carbon, space and energy is justified in some way. There are days when I find that really difficult.

I am a product of stories about what life is supposed to be for. I have been weighed down by those stories. Sometimes I have been crushed by them. “What do I want?” remains the most difficult, transgressive, problematic, dangerous sort of question for me. It took me a long time to learn how to ask it. Trying to answer it still scares me. We give our children casually thrown together life philosophies, and most of the time, I do not think we know what those stories do to them.