Philosophy for life
Life
The changing seasons
of my children’s lives
Throwing and catching,
she improves before my eyes
Then rubbing together gingerbread,
her application a surprise
He seeks out phonics
and connects them into words
Three letters, four letters,
decoding as he learns.
Today is bright and colder
with leaves starting to turn
Our seasons steadily passing
It gets easier all the time
Their tiny years are over,
But, one day, I will yearn.
Memory lane
Commuter train
This one is composed of four coaches
Set of jokers
Odysseus’ suffered all the trials and tribulations of life at the hands of the gods. And he came through a better man. So I’ve opened a new poetics category in his honour. A packed commuter train is a small inconvenience compared to his quest for Ithaca, but if he were around today that’d be his lot too. The small indignities are the worst. Still the sun is shining.
P.S: The train should’ve been eight coaches. When I used to catch them, Monday morning was always dogged by me being late, trains being randomly cancelled and then the critical one arriving with four carriages instead of eight causing commuter carnage. As it was, so it still is.
The experience of rapidly tapping out some words (‘School Run’ below), to manage my stress and frustration at my son not getting out of the car this Thursday morning, was an interesting one.
There’s something about tapping an iPhone screen and conjuring a few words of rhyme which both soothes and fulfils. So I did another on ‘spelling’ on Friday morning:
Spelling test
Practice quest
Raised tempers
Points incentives
Distraction reigns
Grumps
Everyone’s cross
What have we lernd
Very little
‘Awayday’ (below) tumbled out last night and I find myself unexpectedly enjoying churning out poetry instead of prose for a change. Perhaps it’s the influence of Twitter. Saying more in less distills your words. Overnight I got a cheerful ‘like’ and a nice comment to encourage me along.
As so often in recent times I have Aristotle to thank. He says the job of the poet is to say something transcendent and universal about the human condition, in no more or less words than are needed. I find this strangely liberating. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfect, scans or rhymes. The job is done if it says something which chimes.
Banal is meaningful if it triggers a memory or a moment of empathy. I read in the New Scientist this week that life passes more quickly as we get older because our senses are no longer constantly alight with new experiences – we’ve seen it all before. The challenge then is to keep finding ways to bring life to life. So I’ve recorded my morning for my own pleasure and future recollection. Aristotle gives us all poetic licence, which is good for the mind and the soul.
Post office sorting
A Saturday routine
Too large for your letterbox
Sorry you weren’t in
Stand in line
For modern life’s Aladdin’s cave
Got any ID for that
Then
Cardboard boxes and sealed bags
Reveal
New household treasure
To carry off
In triumph
Home
Bacon sandwich
Warm baguette
Irish rasher
Ketchup lash
Then
Focused eating
Greasy plate
The only trace
Sun’s rays
Happy days
In the park
The children lark
Throwing and catching
Tearing around
Shouts of delight
Ball goes to hand
Ball goes to ground
Swings, bumps and bikes
Life is easy
Sometimes
School run
Is no fun
Crying child
Try to be mild
In the car
Getting later
So many people
Do nothing to cater
Me first
You wait
Milling around at the gate
Daughter searching
For her pals
Sees them
Runs
Little wave
Safely done
Then my son
‘I don’t want to!’
Take a moment
Out he comes
In the playground
Climbing frame
Changes the game
A kiss on the run
From my bun
His smiling face
Saving grace
Hard slog
Right old flog
It gone done
Not much fun
Ho hum
Tomorrow is another one
At the core of Aristotle’s account of ethics and virtue is ‘Prohairesis’ – the central moral character.
I increasingly think of it like a copper sulphate crystal growing on a piece of thread. When you do the classic school experiment, knotted threads provide the core around which a copper sulphate crystal can form, from a saturated solution. But you often get several smaller crystals and imperfections in the main one.
In my thesis, the central moral character forms – like a copper sulphate crystal – when choice and actions start to cohere around a central narrative of who we are and what we stand for. The sub-crystals are alternate versions of ourselves and the imperfections are just that – out of character behaviours, foibles and failings.
Last week I gave a talk where I owned up to once having ‘presentational positions’ on most aspects of work. They were largely free floating from any common ethical foundation. I had ethics ‘in the mix’, but no core crystal.
Expedience, presentational benefit and plausible deniability were as likely to inform my public utterances as beliefs, values or virtue. Not these days. I have Prohairesis – a central moral character which, on my better days, informs and guides my choices.
But to meet Aquinas’s test of virtue I have one major challenge left – slowing down. Talking to a friend at the weekend it transpires that one of the strengths of ‘clever’ people is they are quick. This means they can quickly weigh options and decide on the best action. But the challenge to ‘capable’ people as they progress in life, and into more complicated situations, is to use this processing capability to judge more wisely – not more quickly.
Aquinas has it that a man can make ‘good’ or ‘bad’ moral choices without any guiding core moral character, but they cannot be truly ‘virtuous’ without ‘Prudentia’ – practical wisdom – as the unifying prism. As Herbert McCabe says deliberation should be long and considered, action sharp and decisive. Sometimes I am too quick to decide.
I have Prohairesis forming in a nice crystal on the thread of my life. I’m not bad on Prudentia these days either. But like copper sulphate crystals these things take time to grow, so I should take my time too.
Achilles & Aristotle 