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Is there anything more beautiful than living light?
As Florence Nightingale wrote back in 1859, ‘Unnecessary noise, then, is the most cruel absence of care which can be inflicted either on the sick or well.’
To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds. And, subtle shadows of bamboo on bamboo.
‘Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere.’ Actual life is often incoherent and messy. Actual faces have lumps and bumps and wrinkles. Quite often, actual life really sucks. But then, somehow, it can get better.
As the inordinately wise Eleanor Roosevelt said, no one can make you feel inferior unless you consent to them doing so. She was right — and we need to refuse to give that consent.
Perhaps it is time for all of us to trumpet — or at least not try to mask — our imperfections.
‘You just get on with it.’ After one day, another comes, then another.
WHEN WE WERE GROWING UP, a typical way for men to dismiss — or try to cast as sinister — women’s close friendships was to call them lesbians.
THERE ARE SO MANY things I want to teach my son. To stand like a tree; to be true; to respect women as equal and also as magnificent, flawed, real human beings; to be kind; to understand the depths and
shallows of the seas; to forgive fools; to carefully collect the good-hearted like shells on a beach; to find the part of the natural world that most brings him joy and explore every corner of it.
To file his taxes on time and learn to breathe properly over and under water, to be humble, to fold things the right way because I still get it wrong, to scrub barnacles from friendship when they form, to love his family fiercely and never take them for granted. To find a purpose and honour it, to look for commonality with every person, to laugh at himself often, to hunt awe, to value silence and the discipline of logging off, to find ways to love his enemies, to learn to cook some things that make people happy, to eschew perfection, to seek the divine. To dance whenever possible, to keep
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That, as Aslan revealed in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, behind every earthly law is a deeper magic that defies logic: a forgiveness of the unforgivable, a selfless gesture, a moment of grace. That this grace fuels galaxies, that the sun powers the planet and the moon pulls the tides, but the universe is largely unknown, spinning and vast, and that in itself is an ode to curiosity. That he should study the craft of mathematicians, but also listen to the poets and learn from the bards. That he should respect the 60,000-year history of this country, listen to the lament of
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look forward to something; enjoy it when it occurs; and reminisce about it afterwards.
‘The secret to happiness,’ said psychologist Barry Schwartz, ‘is low expectations.’ Or at least realistic ones, erring on the low side.
We should also regularly doubt ourselves, and question what has shaped our own thinking, what unconscious biases we might harbour, and whether we might be wrong. All of us have limited understanding of most things, most especially of the lived experiences of other people. It seems so obvious to state that men won’t understand sexism the way women do, straight people won’t fathom homophobia the way the LGBTQI people can, and white people are extremely poor judges of what racism is. Much as we might like to fancy ourselves freethinkers, all of us carry our pasts in our
opinions: the parents, suburbs and schools that spawned us; the lessons we were taught that confirmed our conventionality or sparked rebellion. We need to know how much we do not know.
