Man on a Bike
Why do some people get better with age whilst others seem to get worse? It's a tough call, to try to figure this one!
In my home town of Newport, there is a man cycling his way along the road that runs beside the river. His shop is in the town, just beside the main bus stop. Here he gets off and ties up his bike ready for the day’s work. No matter the weather, he will greet you and tell you that it’s a wonderful day. He always has time for a chat and is always upbeat.
The man lives in a big house and his business is thriving, so you might conclude that the man on the bicycle has good reason to be optimistic about life. However, it was not always so. Forty years previous and that same man – or so it seems to me – had a completely different character. I might have just been blind to his true nature, but back then it would have appeared highly unlikely that he would become the relaxed, friendly and positive person that he subsequently became. What happened to allow this to be?
Well, despite his business success there had been struggles in the man’s life. Perhaps this was part of the story. But I think the seeds of success were always there, despite the ups and downs of life. And wisdom seems to grow for some folk – they take on a broader perspective, they learn to relax, they learn to let go, they learn to be open and welcoming to other people. Perhaps it’s the happiness level that tips us towards this, or some leaning towards optimism, or some combination of all these factors.
Whatever it is, one thing’s for sure. If I could ask for anything for myself for the future it would be to gain that kind of quiet and settled soul the man on the bicycle seems to possess.
Some people just seem to change for the better over time! And some people, it has to be said, change for the worse. If we’re going to get a handle on what brings about good change then it will help to first take a look at what stops us changing or makes us worse.
Most of us inherit the way we respond to the world through our parents and to some extent via the society into which we are born. That response may – to put it mildly – be a position that lacks trust. The world, we think, is a harsh place so you need to be tough. You need to be on the defensive against people who may screw you over. And the list of who that might be can include family, teachers, bosses, the police, the government, big business, other nationalities, other genders – in fact, just about anyone. So such a person starts to form a shell around them to protect them from the world, and as they get older the shell just gets harder. Fear therefore could be said to be the root cause of all this, but it might as easily be grief for the kind of family and home they have never had in their lives or have somehow lost. Or it may be despair over the circumstances in which they grew up and which are now repeating in their lives. The fear, grief or despair may express itself as anger.
So how instead might things go well, or how might they be put back on track? Well, as we said with the man on the bicycle, someone might just be lucky and be born into good circumstances. Or they may inherit a very positive personality, such that no amount of trouble can put them down. But for most of us, if we have trouble from our past, any breakthrough can take decades. The problem is that we don’t decide for ourselves the kind of outlook we have on life – we just grow into it. As such, it is so much part of ourselves that we are not aware that there are any alternatives. Anyone suggesting alternatives to us is likely to be treated with anger and suspicion, because our protective shell wants to keep out thoughts about things being different. Such a thought would be too frightening.
All this is not to say that such people – I mean people who might struggle to change – are bad people. This is not a matter of goodness and badness. It’s about how we view the world. And if we view the world as threatening then inevitably we will be defensive and possibly depressed and angry into the bargain.
But we could certainly say that if these problems could be overcome then we’d have better people and happier people. So how is it done?
The problem is that for most of us, a lot of the time, our true feelings are hidden from ourselves. So the process must be to identify in ourselves all those things that we fear or that make us grieve or that depress us or make us angry. If possible, we have to start very young. If parents have failed, or if a child has no parents then it is in the education systems that the work must be done. We need to teach compassion for self and compassion for self starts with recognising and trying to understand what’s going on inside our heads. And then it’s about finding self-worth and knowing that we can grow up having some control over our lives. And finally it’s to know that we have specific gifts within our characters and we can use those gifts to serve our family and friends and the wider community.
Well, you may be thinking, the school system is already stretched to breaking point! It doesn’t have time for all this touchy-feely stuff! But I urge you to consider that producing pupils who are emotionally aware and have got some way towards knowing who they are, may, in the long-term, be a lot more valuable than just trying to get kids to pass exams. Someone who has got it together as a person will choose to learn and develop their skills. Someone who hasn’t got it together will not flourish, no matter how much knowledge you try to cram into them.
Utopian? Yes, it certainly is utopian! Let’s take a moment to consider some of the features of utopias so we can see where this compassion for self fits in.
An abundance of stuff is the first rung on the utopian ladder. Food, clothes, amazing houses and public buildings, incredible technology. Some utopian writers (usually male) think that if we could only provide ourselves with this type of cornucopian abundance then everything else would sort itself out.
We can probably appreciate that just providing people with sufficient goods and services is never going to be enough. So the next rung on the utopian ladder is some kind of governance system so things can be properly organised.
Then I’d add a third thing. We need some kind of wow-factor – what I’d like to call enchantment. Nature is always able to provide this, but nature is being systematically destroyed right now. We need to bring her back so she can carry on that work of enchantment. We need to re-enchant. And so too with the human environments that we build, the clothes we wear, the work we do, the tools we use, the food we eat. Having sufficiency of all those things would be good, yes, but that is not a utopia. Instead we need to know our pleasures and create enchantment in all that we do.
This is where we have our first glimpse of the notion that people need to change a bit before we can see the works of our imagination and creativity realised in the world. For it’s one thing (and difficult enough) to create enchantment. It’s quite another for people to be open to receiving it. That might sound elitist, and I certainly don’t intend it to be, because I think there is sufficient range of pleasures and enchantments – wow-factors – to suit all tastes and all types of people. It is the enchantment that the man on the bike is able to receive that makes the real difference in his life! And I know this sounds obscure – I know there may be more obvious ways to improve peoples’ lives and to make society safer, happier and more prosperous. But I think this ability to be open to enchantment is the real key! We need to slow down and really know our pleasures – and that’s a lot more difficult than it sounds. But I hope the benefits are obvious.
Finally then, a fourth utopian ingredient – the subject of this piece of writing – and what we might call compassion for self. Again, the need for people to change, and unfortunately for would-be utopians, a very difficult work. But yes, compassion for self is part of the care that undergirds all societies and needs to be brought to the fore, as a major ingredient in how society works. We need to raise people with a bit of self-awareness, a bit of wisdom, a bit of soul.
You may feel this is all too much to ask. But I point out that most societies try to do many of the things I’ve mentioned in one way or another. It’s not want of trying that’s the problem, it’s lack of a joined-up vision. So let’s not give up. Let’s dare to dream big! Let’s aim for utopia!
