Thursday, August 01, 2013
Ch ch ch ch ch ch changes…
David Bowie’s song came to mind as I
started writing this blog. I was reflecting on the mysteries surrounding what we
call fate. Fate is often a rationalizing of events that have occurred and which
seem to have conspired some change in one’s life. A trauma, a chance meeting
with someone who becomes one’s partner, an act of god, a range of domino-like
incidents that then create a context which enwraps one in its coils. In an
earlier blog I recounted how such a train of events over decades became a
pattern - in hindsight - that led me to live in Ghana.
When I left school in 1962 and went on to a
teachers’ college in Sunderland I took a spur of the moment decision which
completely changed my life. Until I walked into the men’s hostel room which I
had been allocated I was known by family, school and village friends as Eric.
Now Eric was a quiet, retiring, shy boy in glasses, somewhat askance at the
very sight of a pretty girl. Until the last couple of years he had been thin,
bony and gawky. Then he had applied himself with some discipline to body and
mind. He became a good tennis player, cricketer, swimmer. He did weights in his
bedroom. He meditated on a cigarette lighter to levitate it from its resting
position. He read Zen. I suppose Eric was both consciously and unconsciously preparing
himself to be a different person. Like a snake his skin was too tight, too
dull and too unattractive.
In the hostel, a young fellow from a nearby
room wandered in and introduced himself, following this up with the “what’s
your name?” question. “Er…Jack,” I answered, using my middle name for the first
time. Within an hour I had met a dozen or more new compatriots and was known by
my new monicker. I remember my brain turning rapidly on the axis of this newly
discovered ‘Jack’. Who was he? Well, he was the opposite of Eric in many ways.
He was outgoing. He was easy with the girls, he was sporty enough but didn’t
mind being philosophical. He wrote poetry. He acted. He directed plays. He wore
sideburns and a quiff. He played bass. All these things I admitted to within
that first day. All these things became me and were expected of me. Are me.
Although, over the years as I’ve experienced more and reflected more, the two
sides of my character have melded. Introversion and extroversion only dominate
in certain contexts.
There seems to me little doubt that major
changes can be effected at any time in a person’s life despite the obvious
caveat that the later one leaves it the harder it becomes because one’s history
and one’s current circumstance tend to combine to force one’s ‘self’ into the
straitjacket of social expectation. A close friend told me, when dying, that a
sudden revelation in the previous weeks had led this individual to a sense of a
life misplaced, of cards badly played, of an unnecessary subordination to
social forces. Of a sense of loss.
I feel a lot better for being Jack with a
bit of Eric going about his business happily underneath than the other way
round; a timidly unassuming fellow with an increasingly frustrated other self wanting
to burst from its constraints.
Twitter @profjacksanger
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