Life – Page 26 – Achilles & Aristotle

My left foot

Nearly a year ago I was preparing myself for a big change: a change of job, role, sector and working context.

About the same time, I decided to change foot. For over 15 years of cycling to work, pretty much every day, I’d always rested and hopped about on my right foot – at the many traffic lights and junctions to and from work; the left leg never used, bent double, toe strapped in toe clip.

Result – a dodgy left hip and a chronically sore tendon at the back of my right knee.

If you’re going to change some things; why not change everything, was my reasoning: job, route and standing leg. And so I was wobbly, uncertain, off balance and uncomfortable on my bike – just as I was in the new job. Great idea!

But in a way, learning to stop, stand and push off on my left leg has been a metaphor for my life and the year at work.

Many was the time in a long cold winter and an endless wet spring, I yearned for the certainty and sure footedness of old. But the other day on a summer cycle in, I noticed I am unconsciously surer now, left-footed on the bike – more confident in my balance and stronger kicking-off.

A year of trying something new, and it has become something I can more or less do. Much like my job. Practice makes perfect; we’re never too old to adapt and learn.

Children, Life

Movin’ on up

I had my first cup of proper filter coffee made for me by my daughter this morning; and enjoyed two sophisticated and very funny gags at each end of the day from my son.

Me and my girl went on fairground rides and shopped for and cooked chicken, mushrooms, spinach and cream linguine; even my food-fastidious boy agreed it was pretty good.

Yesterday I left work in good order: with plans, roles and actions in place. Now I have my feet up in our very own Georgian seaside cottage; with a fortnight in Italy ahead to look forward to.

Albeit I’m getting older, life in many ways is getting easier. From today’s perspective, the second half of my middle years are looking better by the day…

Achilles, Ethics, Life, Odysseus, Philosophy, Politics

Stations on the road to Freedom

I shared Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Stations on the road to freedom” with an old friend this week.

I bought a copy of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, when I was searching for a famous quotation – which is actually by Martin Niemöller. Niemöller was arrested in 1937 by the Nazi authorities and survived first Sachsenhausen and then Dachau concentration camps.

Niemöller’s famous statement, reminds us that sometimes if you don’t take a stand, there may be no-one left to stand up for you:

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Bonhoeffer didn’t survive the war. His ‘Stations on the road to freedom’ were written in Tegel prison before his death at the hands of the Nazis.

His words really speak to me. But they have a few bits where God intervenes as the ultimate answer. Those bits aren’t for me. So with a gentle edit, here is my secular version of Bonhoeffer’s four stations.

Secular “Stations on the Road to Freedom” after Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Discipline

If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses, for fear that your passions and longing may lead you away from the path you should follow. Only through discipline may a man learn to be free.

Action

Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you, valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting – freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing. Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action, trusting in those commandment you faithfully follow; freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy.

Suffering

A change has come indeed. Your hands, so strong and active, are bound; in helplessness now you see your action is ended; you sigh in relief; so now you may rest contented.

Death

Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal; death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded. Freedom, how long we have sought thee in discipline, action, and suffering; dying, we now may behold thee revealed.

As I said in an email to my good friend:

“I’m doing ok on 1) Discipline and 2) Action, haven’t a huge amount to complain about on 3) Suffering by global standards, and I’m still in the prime of life – albeit number four will get us all in the end.”

“That and the greater number of protons which have cascaded across membranes in my body than there are stars in the observable universe in the time it has taken to write you this, are my thoughts for the day.”

I’m somewhere between half and two thirds down the ‘road to freedom’. Important, amid all the ‘action’ to remember that; and enjoy the ride.

Life

We want our EU back

Because, in the words of Public Enemy: “if you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything.”

Because our nice black neighbour now fears more racism; and places she can’t safely go.

Because I lived in France for five years; and promoted sharing languages and culture for eight more.

And fundamentally because we’re better than this; I say:

“We want our EU back.”

So I did the only thing I could think of and made a site to promote it:

www.WeWantOurEUback.org

Life

Days After

As the reality of the UK’s vote to leave the EU sinks in, I’m left comparing my feelings on four very different ‘days after’…

Obama’s first victory in the US Presidentials: I walked a full foot taller. Proud of America. Looking at passers-by: smiling and feeling we all felt a foot taller because America had done this. For all its racism and inequality America had elected the most amazing man – who was also an amazing black man – as its president; and in so doing took the world to a new place. Everything is possible and we all have a say. PROUD

The riots of 2011: blazing buses and rioters at the end of my street; on one hot sticky evening it felt like we were all barrelling out of control. A ‘towering inferno’ that was just one blazing furniture shop, dominated the world news. Hardly Mogadishu, but a day when our society wobbled, people became frightened and frightening and entropy reigned over order. ASHAMED.

London 2012 Paralympics: a month on from the amazing 2012 Olympic opening ceremony our family day at the most amazing venues; beautifully, proudly and brilliantly British in design and execution. Exceeding anything I’d ever hoped or believed my country could do. Smiling volunteers, the kindly helpful lads of the British Army, fast transport, high spirits, even a McDonalds which hit a standard of service friendliness, warmth, welcome, inclusivity and diversity beyond our dreams. And then the ‘Superhumans’… Paralympians: recast as supremely able not disabled, all brought to life by our second great ‘for profit’ public service broadcaster: Channel 4. PROUD

Brexit: what have we done. How do I explain this to my children. How do I explain it to to people overseas I’ve lived among, cared for and kept in touch with; people who were yesterday fellow EU citizens and today feel we have made them foreigners. We used to share ‘Ode to joy’. Now I feel we on this island don’t deserve to feel a part of it. This ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ is a small minded place; divided among ourselves and no more a part of a great unifying European enlightenment ideal. I believed in the EU’s motto that we could be ‘united in diversity’; and we all should be. We are now where we were in the 1700s: a backward, self-absorbed and ruddy faced caricature of ourselves. ASHAMED.