Interestingly there was a large spread in the newspaper today saying how a degree is really needed for an entry level position these days. On seeing that, my wife commented that the receptionist in her office has a degree. There was also a full page article on why its a good thing for society that people need degrees to get entry level jobs.
My blood boiled. On leaving school at 18 you have to go into debt to pay into a system for 4 years and make no money for 4 years, just so that you have a chance of getting a slightly above minimum wage starter job which doesn't pay you enough to pay back the debt, or set up a modest home for yourself in overpriced rented accomodation, let alone plan for any sort of a future.
This is a criminal conspiracy!
You'd do better at the age of 18 to go steal something, go to jail for 4 years where your accomodation and living costs will be met, where you will be encouraged to better yourself and where your tuition will be paid , then graduate with your diploma and criminal record (frame them both and display with pride) and go out and join all the rest of the criminals out there. Any employer should be happy to have you. You have shown early initiative and you obviously think just like them!
Wake up people!!!!!
I definitely have more to say.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
A start on education
In a sense, this could be the beginning of a major treatise. The subject has been a source of fascination and deep thought for several decades. Its not been something easy to write about because these feelings have grown and clarified and matured over time, based on thought, experience and listening to others on the same subject.
I think that "education" is in trouble. We have stopped thinking about education and we have settled into a state of what has become "normalcy" in our consideration of education. One of the biggest problems with our consideration of education has been that it has come to be considered a democratic right, which in turn stumbled into it being a standardised, homogenised package which should be universally delivered, to being a means by which we evaluate and categorise futures. This is all wrong, all wrong.
The moral imperative to make education universally available is in a sense admirable, but the thought behind it must necessarily go way beyond that simple notion. Education has to be about something and it must be useful to those being educated in it. Somehow we have come to believe that all kids should be taught a basic syllabus covering everything. The reasoning is obvious I suppose, if you choose to buy into it.
First, when you are dealing with a blank slate with an unknown capacity, you sling mud at it and see what sticks. You have to throw samples of a little bit of everything until you see what really sticks and by the time a child has undergone post graduate studies and a possible total of 20+ years of education, they are equipped to start into their life, when their real education begins. I choose to see this differently and yes, I want to be provactive.
Step back, take a look at that recent post-graduate degree earning individual. Look back at the 20 years of their life they have given up to get to where they are today. Look at all the courses they have taken and elected to forget all about because of boredom, lack of interest, bad teachers and a greater desire to having had some memorable experiences and a childhood. Take a look at the resources wasted putting them through this, and realise that this system prepared them for one thing and one thing only: to get a JOB.
These days we almost require our kids to take up this much education in order to have a chance of getting a job which in theory pays enough to have what we in the western world have assumed is our right to a minimum proper lifestyle.
Looking back 60-70 years, my father's generation could leave school at 16, get a starting position in a formal employment and work their way up to senior management over a lifetime, go to war for 5 years and still come home, buy a house, have a wife who didn't go to work, except with their kids in their home, and could afford family holidays, local perhaps and not in Bora Bora, but quality time out, non-the-less. That notion today is as distant as can be. It seems to be a part of some unknown folk history. And yet that generation achieved some amazing things. They had an education but it was developed during the course of life and experience. They were not expected to have all that capability the day they started out working. Today any child leaving school at 16 is probably condemned to be slotted into a menial manual labour task to which a "minimum wage" assignment has been made. The direction of their life is largely locked in because with a "minimal education" there will be no way for them to advance in formal academics as even those with elevated marks in advanced formal education are not guaranteed a placement in University, despite the fact that Universities are popping up like mushrooms in every crevice.
This insane urge for every child to be pushed through a mill and expected to pick up a measured amount of learning as fed to them so that they can be pidgeon-holed by the system is a huge disservice to the well-being of the individual and to our society as a whole. Not all kids grow and learn at the same pace or in the same way.
It used to be that kids were "streamed" according to their ability to learn at the time. This was judged by the democratic do-gooders as being bad for them and streaming was taken away, kids of all abilities mixed together in the same class so that (in theory) those less able would rise to the level of performance of the rest. Finally it sunk in that what was happening was the brighter ones were being slowed down to the pace of the slowest, class sizes increased and overloaded teachers struggled to serve any student well. Next came standardised performance criteria and tests which in turn gave evidence to the lie that all could perfom like machines in exact unison. Why have to test them so if the instructional theory was aimed at producing a more predictable and uniform result? Everyone knows it just didn't happen that way.
To be fair to the dream that was such a failure (yet we persist in applying it uniformly), its important to say that both kids who were streamed and did or did not do well enough within their stream and kids who were forced into the equalising mill of a democratic education and didn't do so well, many have, in the end, equalised themselves. It seems that there is some sort of post education "education", which we may wish to call life-long learning, which seems to bring everyone to a reasonably balanced level. Yes, some learn differently and things come to a level of comprehensibility at different times, in different ways, because we are not machines.
Likewise even within the notionally streamed classes and the homogenised classes, there were still finer graduations of abilities. Myself I started out at the top of a streamed class in high school and quickly devolved to the bottom end of the class in MOST of my subjects because I found the teaching system so utterly boring and stultifying, learning by rote, by memorisation. I was in a rather "elevated" school where I suppose I did in fact get a good education, but I found much of the learning to be utterly uninteresting and the teachers to be uninspiring. Those classes taught by bright and interesting teachers using example and by doing, even in highly academic subjects, always seemed more fascinating and easy to learn and to get good marks in. I swear that the desired result in both the school's mind and my parent's minds was high marks, never mind if I had learned something that excited me.
The marks trick really apalled me in school. I think my favourite example came from one very serious mistake I made in following French literature instead of French language to the highest level. I had a good grasp of French and developed a very useful level of correct French. However when it came to literature I was asked to read books and learn what the establishment got from those books. Oddly I found that what I was being told about those books (what they meant and how they should be interpreted) was not what I saw in them. I thought that education was about recognising situations and being able to explain and back up what you saw and why, rather than mindlessly accepting the status quo. My marks and the commentary of the examiners told me that this clearly was not so! When a teacher/examiner cannot be bothered to read another view and automatically dismisses it, then it is the teacher who has failed, not the student.
I believe that education is about teaching the mind a discipline as much as learning "facts". Facts are subjective and now that I understand the reality of a volitional reality, I believe still more that homogenised and rote-filled education is a wrongful thing to subject kids to. In fact the entire notion of a set syllabus is wrong once a child starts to define for themselves what interests them. In my own education I had a compulsory 5 years of learning Latin, five days a week, only because the English education system at that time required Latin for University entrance. It was regarded as a marker for the ability to study at an elevated level. It was infuriating to me at the time, as I was not Catholic, was highly unlikely to persue a career in medicine or biology, an eclesiastical career was not my bent and although I liked languages, I could see little point in using a long dead langauge to study Roman history. How much more would I have learned from Roman history by spending some of that time stepping out of the classroom and examining more closely the Roman origins of my town? What did I get from those 5 years apart from a lot of headaches? I can read old tombstones in English churches (well some of the time!) and I remember Hic, Haec, Hoc and Mensa, Mensae, Mensam, but have not yet figured out exactly why one may be addressing a table (an inside joke for anyone who also suffered Latin as I did).
So much time was spent in my education learning all the stuff that I wanted to know nothing about and so little time was spent being fascinated. Looking back on it, I am (dare I say it?) happy that I had such a broad education because it did in fact broaden my outlook on life, but if I am asked to evaluate its contribution to not only the quality of my own life but also to my ability to contribute back to life, then I have to say that a lot of it was a total waste, as is the structure which is put in place and expensively maintained in order to be able to perpetuate this thing we have called education.
The same applies to my understanding of post secondary education, which I ignorantly subjected myself to too much of, somehow believing that was it was a provider, a key to greater things. It wasn't. It was a key to being eventually less and less useful in the context of a greater world.
The world sold us on the lie that the more we knew the more useful we would be to the world. "Go out and get an "education" young man!". Well a lot of young men and women did that and for a time were useful to the system in which they believed that they would have perpetual employment until the day they retired with a nice pension and started to enjoy what was left of their fading days. Except the system found it needed to slim down and bizarely the system came to realise that the ones they needed to shed were the fat ones, the ones with the most knowledge and experience and education who strangely seemed to think that they needed fatter salaries as a reward for their considerable abilities. Still more bizarrely the employers, in order to maintain their self perception, felt the need to have cheaper, less argumentative, less imaginative and probably a lot more scared junior employees, and the ones with hard earned experience found it very hard to even find work, let alone find work that respected their ability and paid an income which made all of their sacrifice of their life worthwhile.
How many PhD's are driving taxis around the world? There are many, some of whom never found work suitable for their education, rendering them unemployable and some of whom find greater pleasure driving taxi than they ever did in their years of work.
In my view, education is a mindless mill and needs a radical rethink, a new plan. More to come on this!
I think that "education" is in trouble. We have stopped thinking about education and we have settled into a state of what has become "normalcy" in our consideration of education. One of the biggest problems with our consideration of education has been that it has come to be considered a democratic right, which in turn stumbled into it being a standardised, homogenised package which should be universally delivered, to being a means by which we evaluate and categorise futures. This is all wrong, all wrong.
The moral imperative to make education universally available is in a sense admirable, but the thought behind it must necessarily go way beyond that simple notion. Education has to be about something and it must be useful to those being educated in it. Somehow we have come to believe that all kids should be taught a basic syllabus covering everything. The reasoning is obvious I suppose, if you choose to buy into it.
First, when you are dealing with a blank slate with an unknown capacity, you sling mud at it and see what sticks. You have to throw samples of a little bit of everything until you see what really sticks and by the time a child has undergone post graduate studies and a possible total of 20+ years of education, they are equipped to start into their life, when their real education begins. I choose to see this differently and yes, I want to be provactive.
Step back, take a look at that recent post-graduate degree earning individual. Look back at the 20 years of their life they have given up to get to where they are today. Look at all the courses they have taken and elected to forget all about because of boredom, lack of interest, bad teachers and a greater desire to having had some memorable experiences and a childhood. Take a look at the resources wasted putting them through this, and realise that this system prepared them for one thing and one thing only: to get a JOB.
These days we almost require our kids to take up this much education in order to have a chance of getting a job which in theory pays enough to have what we in the western world have assumed is our right to a minimum proper lifestyle.
Looking back 60-70 years, my father's generation could leave school at 16, get a starting position in a formal employment and work their way up to senior management over a lifetime, go to war for 5 years and still come home, buy a house, have a wife who didn't go to work, except with their kids in their home, and could afford family holidays, local perhaps and not in Bora Bora, but quality time out, non-the-less. That notion today is as distant as can be. It seems to be a part of some unknown folk history. And yet that generation achieved some amazing things. They had an education but it was developed during the course of life and experience. They were not expected to have all that capability the day they started out working. Today any child leaving school at 16 is probably condemned to be slotted into a menial manual labour task to which a "minimum wage" assignment has been made. The direction of their life is largely locked in because with a "minimal education" there will be no way for them to advance in formal academics as even those with elevated marks in advanced formal education are not guaranteed a placement in University, despite the fact that Universities are popping up like mushrooms in every crevice.
This insane urge for every child to be pushed through a mill and expected to pick up a measured amount of learning as fed to them so that they can be pidgeon-holed by the system is a huge disservice to the well-being of the individual and to our society as a whole. Not all kids grow and learn at the same pace or in the same way.
It used to be that kids were "streamed" according to their ability to learn at the time. This was judged by the democratic do-gooders as being bad for them and streaming was taken away, kids of all abilities mixed together in the same class so that (in theory) those less able would rise to the level of performance of the rest. Finally it sunk in that what was happening was the brighter ones were being slowed down to the pace of the slowest, class sizes increased and overloaded teachers struggled to serve any student well. Next came standardised performance criteria and tests which in turn gave evidence to the lie that all could perfom like machines in exact unison. Why have to test them so if the instructional theory was aimed at producing a more predictable and uniform result? Everyone knows it just didn't happen that way.
To be fair to the dream that was such a failure (yet we persist in applying it uniformly), its important to say that both kids who were streamed and did or did not do well enough within their stream and kids who were forced into the equalising mill of a democratic education and didn't do so well, many have, in the end, equalised themselves. It seems that there is some sort of post education "education", which we may wish to call life-long learning, which seems to bring everyone to a reasonably balanced level. Yes, some learn differently and things come to a level of comprehensibility at different times, in different ways, because we are not machines.
Likewise even within the notionally streamed classes and the homogenised classes, there were still finer graduations of abilities. Myself I started out at the top of a streamed class in high school and quickly devolved to the bottom end of the class in MOST of my subjects because I found the teaching system so utterly boring and stultifying, learning by rote, by memorisation. I was in a rather "elevated" school where I suppose I did in fact get a good education, but I found much of the learning to be utterly uninteresting and the teachers to be uninspiring. Those classes taught by bright and interesting teachers using example and by doing, even in highly academic subjects, always seemed more fascinating and easy to learn and to get good marks in. I swear that the desired result in both the school's mind and my parent's minds was high marks, never mind if I had learned something that excited me.
The marks trick really apalled me in school. I think my favourite example came from one very serious mistake I made in following French literature instead of French language to the highest level. I had a good grasp of French and developed a very useful level of correct French. However when it came to literature I was asked to read books and learn what the establishment got from those books. Oddly I found that what I was being told about those books (what they meant and how they should be interpreted) was not what I saw in them. I thought that education was about recognising situations and being able to explain and back up what you saw and why, rather than mindlessly accepting the status quo. My marks and the commentary of the examiners told me that this clearly was not so! When a teacher/examiner cannot be bothered to read another view and automatically dismisses it, then it is the teacher who has failed, not the student.
I believe that education is about teaching the mind a discipline as much as learning "facts". Facts are subjective and now that I understand the reality of a volitional reality, I believe still more that homogenised and rote-filled education is a wrongful thing to subject kids to. In fact the entire notion of a set syllabus is wrong once a child starts to define for themselves what interests them. In my own education I had a compulsory 5 years of learning Latin, five days a week, only because the English education system at that time required Latin for University entrance. It was regarded as a marker for the ability to study at an elevated level. It was infuriating to me at the time, as I was not Catholic, was highly unlikely to persue a career in medicine or biology, an eclesiastical career was not my bent and although I liked languages, I could see little point in using a long dead langauge to study Roman history. How much more would I have learned from Roman history by spending some of that time stepping out of the classroom and examining more closely the Roman origins of my town? What did I get from those 5 years apart from a lot of headaches? I can read old tombstones in English churches (well some of the time!) and I remember Hic, Haec, Hoc and Mensa, Mensae, Mensam, but have not yet figured out exactly why one may be addressing a table (an inside joke for anyone who also suffered Latin as I did).
So much time was spent in my education learning all the stuff that I wanted to know nothing about and so little time was spent being fascinated. Looking back on it, I am (dare I say it?) happy that I had such a broad education because it did in fact broaden my outlook on life, but if I am asked to evaluate its contribution to not only the quality of my own life but also to my ability to contribute back to life, then I have to say that a lot of it was a total waste, as is the structure which is put in place and expensively maintained in order to be able to perpetuate this thing we have called education.
The same applies to my understanding of post secondary education, which I ignorantly subjected myself to too much of, somehow believing that was it was a provider, a key to greater things. It wasn't. It was a key to being eventually less and less useful in the context of a greater world.
The world sold us on the lie that the more we knew the more useful we would be to the world. "Go out and get an "education" young man!". Well a lot of young men and women did that and for a time were useful to the system in which they believed that they would have perpetual employment until the day they retired with a nice pension and started to enjoy what was left of their fading days. Except the system found it needed to slim down and bizarely the system came to realise that the ones they needed to shed were the fat ones, the ones with the most knowledge and experience and education who strangely seemed to think that they needed fatter salaries as a reward for their considerable abilities. Still more bizarrely the employers, in order to maintain their self perception, felt the need to have cheaper, less argumentative, less imaginative and probably a lot more scared junior employees, and the ones with hard earned experience found it very hard to even find work, let alone find work that respected their ability and paid an income which made all of their sacrifice of their life worthwhile.
How many PhD's are driving taxis around the world? There are many, some of whom never found work suitable for their education, rendering them unemployable and some of whom find greater pleasure driving taxi than they ever did in their years of work.
In my view, education is a mindless mill and needs a radical rethink, a new plan. More to come on this!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The best high I ever got.....
The best high I ever got was from understanding, not chemicals.....
So where did that come from? There are some people I know, all from different walks of life, most but not all of them younger than me, with whom I stay in touch using Facebook. There is one young fellow whom I met at an investment finance training course. He seemed sharp and willing to learn, certainly far brighter than he seemed able to show on the face of his conversations.
There are some people who just don't look "sharp". Seen through my own eyes, I would say he seemed to be one of those. He still does seem that way to me at times, but his reality is enigmatic to me. He is like a sponge, always ready to take in more information. I admired that in him. He is inquisitive. The more time I spent talking to him, the deeper I found him to be. It caused me to examine my early thoughts about him, pidgeon holing him in a category of needing to be fed and nourished and provoked into using his mind. It troubled me that I saw him so and it troubled me that I started to observe him to find out what made him tick. It seemed to be an arrogance that I found myself feeling that I had something indefinable to give this fellow, and yet I found myself trying to enage him in a provocative way in discussions and voyages of self understanding.
The bigger surprise to me was that he seemed to be drawn in and responsive. In fact one day in an online discussion about general issues he proposed to me that he found he was learning from me and found himself putting me in a form of mentor role. His next statement took me aback totally. He asked if I could spare him some time to meet on a more regular basis to discuss things.
Aside from the undeniable fact that this was flattering, it was an exciting prospect in my eyes, as it seemed that here was an opportunity to do eaxctly as I believe in, and mentor a bright young man in ways I knew he was not getting and at the same time to fulfill his request.
As he lived away and was only occasionally in my area, we scheduled a coffee shop meeting for the next time he knew he would be in town. In that meeting he seemed to drop any defenses he may have previously had and probed deeply for my understanding of the way he saw his position in life, which it seemed to me was nervous, lacking in self confidence, a bit afraid of his own shadow, despite being secretly articulate and aware. I made every effort to impart some self training aids he could put into use to get him onto a raised level of self confidence, some mind training exercises. He seemed to grasp them and promised that for his own benefit he would work on them for the 3+ weeks I suggested, and we could get back together again after that and review what he had discovered about himself after applying this pattern of being. The idea was to straighten the table so that there was something sound to build on.
We agreed that we could check in with one another during that three weeks just to see how progress was going and to keep on track.
Much to my disappointment it seemed from that point forward he fought me and argued with every point and made no real effort. Even encouragement didn't seem to help and he has never again asked for my time, though we do pass some idle time from time to time online.
How do I see what I see in him?
I see a young man of huge potential who is really afraid of his own shadow. He grasps that there is a better world than the one he places himself in, yet his desire for it is low, exemplified by his unwillingness to fight for himself and focus himself on the task in hand so that he can achieve inner strength and reach for the goals he says he wants to attain. He wallows at the muddy edges of the great pond, stirs up the mud, gets his feet wet but seems to be afraid to push off into the deeper water where people who have what he says he wants play. He seems to not be willing to lose contact between his feet and the bottom of the pond, despite a steadying hand.
From time to time he makes statements which suggest that he is resentful that he doesn't have what he says he wants, yet he does nothing that will take him into the deeper water. He is full of the peripheral distractions of his cohorts who are doing nothing to complement his obvious desires. From time to time he makes short, brash, statements which are possibly him psyching himself up to get ready to get ready, but he never yet has pushed away from the edges.
It is frustrating watching him do this. A lot of people are like this. They know that "more" or "different" is needed and they see the rewards being possible for doing more or doing differently, seeing things from a different perspective, yet they will not even take an outstretched hand willing to guide them into the deeper water and hold them while they learn to swim.
Tonight he made a statement on Facebook which intuition, right or wrong, told me that he is looking for false evidence and happiness in unatural substances. It hit me in the gut, a sense of sadness overwhelmed me as I realised that unless he is very very careful and will grasp the hand of a friend and follow into deeper water, he is never going there except in his own mind.
The sheer potential of this young man is huge. I see naievity and ignorance, but an inquisitive mind which could be trained and encouraged, going to waste and it saddens me.
This is I believe, a perfect example of witnessing the distress which comes when you understand that the more you know, the less you can ever explain. Some will understand and take it, some won't. Dare I say "So what?" Its the rule of life.
Next.
So where did that come from? There are some people I know, all from different walks of life, most but not all of them younger than me, with whom I stay in touch using Facebook. There is one young fellow whom I met at an investment finance training course. He seemed sharp and willing to learn, certainly far brighter than he seemed able to show on the face of his conversations.
There are some people who just don't look "sharp". Seen through my own eyes, I would say he seemed to be one of those. He still does seem that way to me at times, but his reality is enigmatic to me. He is like a sponge, always ready to take in more information. I admired that in him. He is inquisitive. The more time I spent talking to him, the deeper I found him to be. It caused me to examine my early thoughts about him, pidgeon holing him in a category of needing to be fed and nourished and provoked into using his mind. It troubled me that I saw him so and it troubled me that I started to observe him to find out what made him tick. It seemed to be an arrogance that I found myself feeling that I had something indefinable to give this fellow, and yet I found myself trying to enage him in a provocative way in discussions and voyages of self understanding.
The bigger surprise to me was that he seemed to be drawn in and responsive. In fact one day in an online discussion about general issues he proposed to me that he found he was learning from me and found himself putting me in a form of mentor role. His next statement took me aback totally. He asked if I could spare him some time to meet on a more regular basis to discuss things.
Aside from the undeniable fact that this was flattering, it was an exciting prospect in my eyes, as it seemed that here was an opportunity to do eaxctly as I believe in, and mentor a bright young man in ways I knew he was not getting and at the same time to fulfill his request.
As he lived away and was only occasionally in my area, we scheduled a coffee shop meeting for the next time he knew he would be in town. In that meeting he seemed to drop any defenses he may have previously had and probed deeply for my understanding of the way he saw his position in life, which it seemed to me was nervous, lacking in self confidence, a bit afraid of his own shadow, despite being secretly articulate and aware. I made every effort to impart some self training aids he could put into use to get him onto a raised level of self confidence, some mind training exercises. He seemed to grasp them and promised that for his own benefit he would work on them for the 3+ weeks I suggested, and we could get back together again after that and review what he had discovered about himself after applying this pattern of being. The idea was to straighten the table so that there was something sound to build on.
We agreed that we could check in with one another during that three weeks just to see how progress was going and to keep on track.
Much to my disappointment it seemed from that point forward he fought me and argued with every point and made no real effort. Even encouragement didn't seem to help and he has never again asked for my time, though we do pass some idle time from time to time online.
How do I see what I see in him?
I see a young man of huge potential who is really afraid of his own shadow. He grasps that there is a better world than the one he places himself in, yet his desire for it is low, exemplified by his unwillingness to fight for himself and focus himself on the task in hand so that he can achieve inner strength and reach for the goals he says he wants to attain. He wallows at the muddy edges of the great pond, stirs up the mud, gets his feet wet but seems to be afraid to push off into the deeper water where people who have what he says he wants play. He seems to not be willing to lose contact between his feet and the bottom of the pond, despite a steadying hand.
From time to time he makes statements which suggest that he is resentful that he doesn't have what he says he wants, yet he does nothing that will take him into the deeper water. He is full of the peripheral distractions of his cohorts who are doing nothing to complement his obvious desires. From time to time he makes short, brash, statements which are possibly him psyching himself up to get ready to get ready, but he never yet has pushed away from the edges.
It is frustrating watching him do this. A lot of people are like this. They know that "more" or "different" is needed and they see the rewards being possible for doing more or doing differently, seeing things from a different perspective, yet they will not even take an outstretched hand willing to guide them into the deeper water and hold them while they learn to swim.
Tonight he made a statement on Facebook which intuition, right or wrong, told me that he is looking for false evidence and happiness in unatural substances. It hit me in the gut, a sense of sadness overwhelmed me as I realised that unless he is very very careful and will grasp the hand of a friend and follow into deeper water, he is never going there except in his own mind.
The sheer potential of this young man is huge. I see naievity and ignorance, but an inquisitive mind which could be trained and encouraged, going to waste and it saddens me.
This is I believe, a perfect example of witnessing the distress which comes when you understand that the more you know, the less you can ever explain. Some will understand and take it, some won't. Dare I say "So what?" Its the rule of life.
Next.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Wistful wishing
Today I am wistfully wishing that younger ones WOULD listen and think and engage their brains before acting!
I observe that younger men do not want to hear the advice that older men can give them. They translate it as interfering, being "know-it-all".... and they reject it without consideration. This is so very foolish.
I know that there were times when I was younger that I would ignore advice given freely to me from people who have trodden the path I am on before me, so this angst does not come from arrogance. I wish I had listened to some of the stuff I was told...but I do understand that some things just have to be experienced for oneself. However I am also glad that I listened and took in the great advice I was given too, more often than not. I have such strong and powerful memories of calling my Father in the UK in the middle of his night, waking him up, apologising, and saying "I wouldn't be calling if I did not need, really need, to hear your input right now." He would always wake himself up, collect his thoughts, listen, consider the information and then using the decades of experience of life he had, he would say to me "well this is what I would do if I was in your situation".... and he would give me options... and I would listen to his reasoning.
I benefitted from this so much. I didn't always do what he reasoned was the right way to bring the question to a conclusion, but I benefitted from the input and found a way that suited my need. Sometimes his perspective saved me a lot of grief, a lot of money and a lot of time. I sadly no longer have my Father to do this with, but I do have sons of my own, and they are making some foolish decisions and don't want to hear the old man's input. That is sad because they are making mistakes that they are doomed to continue repeating if they do not learn. The sooner they gain perspective, the less serious and the less expensive their errors in judgement may be.
I don't know everything, even though they think I think I do.....but I do have perspective, and if I cannot immediately add any value to the situation, I am man enough, courtesy of my Grandfather and Father, to say so but still offer to listen, watch and apply my understanding to what is presented, in the hope that it may illuminate the scene just a little.
I think that at times we give younger men too much rope too early. Sometimes they fly with it and sometimes they hang themselves. I was given huge amounts of rope very early, and flew a lot, but sure spent a lot of time dangling too. Oh how I wish I had had the wisdom to know when I was walking off a cliff when I thought I was taking a stroll in the park. Some pain and suffering may have been alleviated and by having a good point of departure, I may have made better of things than was the fact.
I have just had to look at a situation and the reality that one young man didn't want to know and has made a seriously expensive mistake which will resonate down the way for some time. Its sad and was totally avoidable if before doing it for the first time he had asked about it and learned a bit about the process he was considering embarking upon. However, it is not my place to force a rescue. He is grown up and in theory self responsible. He has a partner and is planning a life. He has to grow to become a parent and he has to be allowed to learn from his expensive and foolish mistakes. I have to be sitting on the sidelines, my mouth closed, aware of the situation and be prepared to act later, not in an "I told you so" way, but to to keep things on an even keel. I think it will still be seen as "I told you so" and if indeed it is, that will be because he has seen the foolishness of what was done.
Why does it always have to be this way?
I observe that younger men do not want to hear the advice that older men can give them. They translate it as interfering, being "know-it-all".... and they reject it without consideration. This is so very foolish.
I know that there were times when I was younger that I would ignore advice given freely to me from people who have trodden the path I am on before me, so this angst does not come from arrogance. I wish I had listened to some of the stuff I was told...but I do understand that some things just have to be experienced for oneself. However I am also glad that I listened and took in the great advice I was given too, more often than not. I have such strong and powerful memories of calling my Father in the UK in the middle of his night, waking him up, apologising, and saying "I wouldn't be calling if I did not need, really need, to hear your input right now." He would always wake himself up, collect his thoughts, listen, consider the information and then using the decades of experience of life he had, he would say to me "well this is what I would do if I was in your situation".... and he would give me options... and I would listen to his reasoning.
I benefitted from this so much. I didn't always do what he reasoned was the right way to bring the question to a conclusion, but I benefitted from the input and found a way that suited my need. Sometimes his perspective saved me a lot of grief, a lot of money and a lot of time. I sadly no longer have my Father to do this with, but I do have sons of my own, and they are making some foolish decisions and don't want to hear the old man's input. That is sad because they are making mistakes that they are doomed to continue repeating if they do not learn. The sooner they gain perspective, the less serious and the less expensive their errors in judgement may be.
I don't know everything, even though they think I think I do.....but I do have perspective, and if I cannot immediately add any value to the situation, I am man enough, courtesy of my Grandfather and Father, to say so but still offer to listen, watch and apply my understanding to what is presented, in the hope that it may illuminate the scene just a little.
I think that at times we give younger men too much rope too early. Sometimes they fly with it and sometimes they hang themselves. I was given huge amounts of rope very early, and flew a lot, but sure spent a lot of time dangling too. Oh how I wish I had had the wisdom to know when I was walking off a cliff when I thought I was taking a stroll in the park. Some pain and suffering may have been alleviated and by having a good point of departure, I may have made better of things than was the fact.
I have just had to look at a situation and the reality that one young man didn't want to know and has made a seriously expensive mistake which will resonate down the way for some time. Its sad and was totally avoidable if before doing it for the first time he had asked about it and learned a bit about the process he was considering embarking upon. However, it is not my place to force a rescue. He is grown up and in theory self responsible. He has a partner and is planning a life. He has to grow to become a parent and he has to be allowed to learn from his expensive and foolish mistakes. I have to be sitting on the sidelines, my mouth closed, aware of the situation and be prepared to act later, not in an "I told you so" way, but to to keep things on an even keel. I think it will still be seen as "I told you so" and if indeed it is, that will be because he has seen the foolishness of what was done.
Why does it always have to be this way?
Thursday, August 19, 2010
One for the older guys.
A week ago, we bought a new car (well new to us, the newest car I have ever bought!). Its a process I have only undertaken a small number of times in my life (this is my 8th car) and its something I learned to enjoy doing as I learned the game, yet quickly I grew to hate the game.
Buying a car is an analogy of life.....there are vital things, important things, desired things, frivolous things.... and for most of us living a family life in western Canada, a car eventually comes under the vital thing heading. Consequently, the experience of buying a car, a significant outlay (hardly an investment!) is something which should leave you with a good taste in your mouth when all is said and done.
There are several parties involved with the process of this transaction. It pays to learn the game and to know the role you are going to be expected to be pressed into. Its tedious once you know how its going to unfold before you get to the shop. I for one am usually well prepared, jovial but with my battle armour on under my shirt.
We have spent four years looking at cars (!) while we drove around in an ever aging car, a nice car and one we have spent good money on maintaining, one which seemed to suit well our needs some 10 years ago when it was newer. The "family car" was large, comfortable, roomy, relatively adaptable, having once carried a new chest of draws home on the trunk lid, held in place by the somewhat decorative spoiler at its edge and some bungey cords. It was great for legroom (needed for my long frame) and satisfyingly zippy and has great handling which seemed to be fairly important to me 10 years ago when I used to drive a lot more aggressively.
Sadly she was getting a bit old and ragged around small edges. She needs some money spent on her and yet in this throwaway society, costs more to insure than the insurance company would give me for her if someone even lightly rear ended me. She is still safe to drive, but needs new shocks and this and that.....and at the end of the day the stuff which I would like to do to her will cost more than the insurance which is more than the "value" of the car..... that of course is the value as determined by the insurer, which bears NO resemblance to her value to me!
I must admit that my confidence in the old girl is a little diminished. On a recent long road trip she pulled a couple of squirlies on me which made my heart falter, then seemed to immediately recover. (The fuel tank would suddenly empty and then refill when cruise control was applied, heart stopping as an experience, but she didn't falter....)
It was time to get serious. Four years of "looking" was enough.
My needs and the needs of my other half were somewhat divergeant, but being a strong believer in "its worth it for a quiet wife" we had been looking at various utility type vehicles rather than rolling armchairs and had somehow managed to come to a compromise by looking at smaller SUV type vehicles, not because we wanted to go off-road (those days are past!) but because they may be somewhat fuel efficient, still reasonably zippy and would carry a decent load when needed. Also they are easier to step into and out of than the climbing down and up I had to do with most sedans. We had looked at many types, set some aside without even driving them, had driven some, looked at others. The biggest test for me was first and formost "Can I get into the vehicle?" followed by "Can I see out of the vehicle?" followed by "Am I comfortable in the vehicle?" followed by "do I like this vehicle?" and summarised by "Can I afford this vehicle?"
Before our last road trip, we had it down to a couple more to look at which we liked the apparent look of, but both needed a real sit-in test drive in city traffic and on the hills. Our biggest complaint with most of the selection to look at was that if you wanted a sunroof, you had to have leather seats and a third row of seating and we wanted neither, despite craving a sunroof again. (There is nothing worse than being really tall and driving in British Columbia scenary and not being able to see anything but the asphalt ahead of you!).
So we planned a trip to various dealerships to look at some options. I stated before we left home that I had a bad feeling about this trip around the dealerships, a feeling that we were not going out "looking" but actually "hunting" and likely to buy something. It was strange and we found some interesting things which we were not expecting. There was a nice large Suzuki XL7 sitting on a dealership lot, looking dusty. It was a 2009 model with only 113km on it... it just hadn't sold, was sitting at the back of the lot and they were anxious to be rid of it.....still there as far as I know..... anyone want a fantastic deal?. It was a nice vehicle.....but leather seats and a third row of seats. So we continued on to look at the Subaru Forester, the new model, a vast improvement on the previous model and a car that visually attracted us, but a disappointing ride in which we felt the window sills were too high as the seats were generally set very low and the passenger seat was unadjustable in height. Hmmmmm
Next target was the Mitsubishi Outlander which we had looked at several times but never test driven, but for some reason I thought is where we would end up. Some problems though....if you want the sunroof you have to have the leather seats and the third row of seats, and the third row are stupid seats! Hmmm .
So the salesman Marcel was listening (yes some do!) to my commentary and he asked if we had looked at the Mitsubishi Endeavor, as he thought that vehicle seemed to fit everything we described very closely? I had thought about that car fleetingly some years ago, but set it aside as large and expensive. I had looked at one at the car show but my lack of serious interest in it had pushed it out of my mind. So Marcel pushed us over to look at one.....the last one on the lot (there are not a lot of them around in fact) and we looked.
I liked the colour (how fickle!) a creamy pearly white metallic. I liked its presence. The cabin looked exceptionally spacious and well laid out. It was comfortable. It had durable fabric seats and NO THIRD ROW SEATING... and it had a full sun roof!
Inside everything fell to hand. Seating position was commodious and comfortable, visibility was amazing. I knew I was hooked. We did a test drive around some busy streets, up and down a very serious hill. It drove really well. However it was getting dark and the shop was wanting to close. It was suggested that we come back next day and do the test drive on the smaller Outlander, as that was what we set out to do. That was a very smart move on Marcel's behalf. I didn't think it was worth the time to do that as I already knew I couldn't get what I wanted in it, and was not interested in an expensive compromise. So we came back next day and we tested the Outlander and it felt weird to drive, peppy, tight, bouncy and somehow very plastic. That wasn't my car. A conundrum was raising its ugly head. Should we afterall go and look at the LandRovers? Mighty expensive options with huge engines big enough to tow the necessary oil well behind....Was the unsold 2009 Suzuki at a true clearance price a good backup proposition?
Marcel was good. He seemed like a salesman of course, gracious, polished in his technique (which was starting to become annoying), informative, chatty, doing his job and hoping for a commission. The atmosphere was beginning to change. The "sell" was coming down the chute next, I knew it. Most would have walked right into it and been oh so gently taken up in its rush and would have bitten. I braced for it.
I told him I liked the car but that I wanted to reconsider the Suzuki we had looked at and to talk things over with my other half. He was brave, polite, but saw his commission slipping away. He had no idea that I knew that this would be our car and had since we first sat in it. My poker face was on.
We returned the next day, made sure the car was on the lot still, found Marcel and said we had come to discuss buying the car. He looked almost surprised! We had done a lot of research on the type over the couple of days we had been dithering about, had developed some questions which we went over, raised the question of a part exchange on the old family bus and we were told that we could get at least a certain figure (which matched exactly my total expectation) and then he said "So are you ready to talk turkey then?" My affirmative sent him off the fetch the shop paperwork on the car but only after he had made a nice show of making us comfortable in the hotseats opposite his desk and introducing us to his sales manager, a spiffily dressed car salesman if I have ever seen one!
Back he came with a pile of papers and one on top which was the sales sticker from the car window with a number on it I had had no intention of paying, of course. He pointed to the number and said "Looks good doesn't it?!" to which I replied "No....". Oh, you should have seen the look on his face!
Out of the folder I had in front of me I pulled a printout of a page from their shop website, taken off maybe 30 minutes before this time. It showed the exact same car, matching unit number/stock number with a list price $4,000 less than the window price. Very Interesting! I said "it looks like we start there..." He feigned being shocked and a degree of "being nice" slipped a little. Of course he had to go and show this to his sales manager... of course! He was gone for a while, leaving us sitting there twiddling our thumbs.....there were raised voices in the background. I am not sure whose voices they were. As time grew more drawn out, I was making ready to get up and leave (a very useful technique in playing the game), when Marcel suddenly returned, with a bit less of a smile on his face now.
"My manager will honour the internet published price (of course he will, its the law!) but no further negotiations and no part exchange on your existing car.... are you interested?"
Of course I was interested. I know that they hoped I would say no, because I am sure that whomever typed in that price on the website made a substantial mistake and I was going to be getting the car around where I expected to anyway and didn't have to go back and forth playing nickle and dime games, plus I got to keep the "old girl" as a family run about/second car (and remember that her value to me was greater than anything they would have allowed me).
So now it was face saving time. Marcel put his best jovial salesman face back on while clearly biting his lip and we went though all the paperwork and put down the deposit. He had a few things to make sure were right over the next day or so to prep the car to go out, and I had to go and do some banking. We went back Friday evening, cheque in hand, to find the car all spruced up with a big sticker in the window "Sold to some very nice people" (which I immediately removed) and had to succomb to having our photo taken with the car and Marcel.... and that was that.
So what is my point this time? Guys, don't play games with people. Its really degrading and usually pretty easy to get caught out by smart people. What does it say to you that you take advantage of people who are not smart enough to understand what game is being played? You are smart enough to dupe a dupe!.... don't do it. Be honest, be natural. Trying to sell a car for $4,000 more than you are actually willing and able to sell it for and still be in business, so that you can allow the guy $1,000 on his old car and make him feel like he won the game, is really a sick attitude, deceptive and trashy. Don't be his best friend while you rip him off.
When you treat people like this, this is what they learn. Its easy to fall into it and actually rather hard to not fall into it. It requires more effort from you to do the right thing. Marcel ended up looking like a fool. He was false and play acting. I am fairly sure that he is actually a nice guy outside of work, but he has sold his soul and no man should do that.
Yeah the Mitsubishi Endeavor is a really nice car and I am enjoying driving it, very much actually, but how much nicer would it have been if I had not been moved to write this blog?
Buying a car is an analogy of life.....there are vital things, important things, desired things, frivolous things.... and for most of us living a family life in western Canada, a car eventually comes under the vital thing heading. Consequently, the experience of buying a car, a significant outlay (hardly an investment!) is something which should leave you with a good taste in your mouth when all is said and done.
There are several parties involved with the process of this transaction. It pays to learn the game and to know the role you are going to be expected to be pressed into. Its tedious once you know how its going to unfold before you get to the shop. I for one am usually well prepared, jovial but with my battle armour on under my shirt.
We have spent four years looking at cars (!) while we drove around in an ever aging car, a nice car and one we have spent good money on maintaining, one which seemed to suit well our needs some 10 years ago when it was newer. The "family car" was large, comfortable, roomy, relatively adaptable, having once carried a new chest of draws home on the trunk lid, held in place by the somewhat decorative spoiler at its edge and some bungey cords. It was great for legroom (needed for my long frame) and satisfyingly zippy and has great handling which seemed to be fairly important to me 10 years ago when I used to drive a lot more aggressively.
Sadly she was getting a bit old and ragged around small edges. She needs some money spent on her and yet in this throwaway society, costs more to insure than the insurance company would give me for her if someone even lightly rear ended me. She is still safe to drive, but needs new shocks and this and that.....and at the end of the day the stuff which I would like to do to her will cost more than the insurance which is more than the "value" of the car..... that of course is the value as determined by the insurer, which bears NO resemblance to her value to me!
I must admit that my confidence in the old girl is a little diminished. On a recent long road trip she pulled a couple of squirlies on me which made my heart falter, then seemed to immediately recover. (The fuel tank would suddenly empty and then refill when cruise control was applied, heart stopping as an experience, but she didn't falter....)
It was time to get serious. Four years of "looking" was enough.
My needs and the needs of my other half were somewhat divergeant, but being a strong believer in "its worth it for a quiet wife" we had been looking at various utility type vehicles rather than rolling armchairs and had somehow managed to come to a compromise by looking at smaller SUV type vehicles, not because we wanted to go off-road (those days are past!) but because they may be somewhat fuel efficient, still reasonably zippy and would carry a decent load when needed. Also they are easier to step into and out of than the climbing down and up I had to do with most sedans. We had looked at many types, set some aside without even driving them, had driven some, looked at others. The biggest test for me was first and formost "Can I get into the vehicle?" followed by "Can I see out of the vehicle?" followed by "Am I comfortable in the vehicle?" followed by "do I like this vehicle?" and summarised by "Can I afford this vehicle?"
Before our last road trip, we had it down to a couple more to look at which we liked the apparent look of, but both needed a real sit-in test drive in city traffic and on the hills. Our biggest complaint with most of the selection to look at was that if you wanted a sunroof, you had to have leather seats and a third row of seating and we wanted neither, despite craving a sunroof again. (There is nothing worse than being really tall and driving in British Columbia scenary and not being able to see anything but the asphalt ahead of you!).
So we planned a trip to various dealerships to look at some options. I stated before we left home that I had a bad feeling about this trip around the dealerships, a feeling that we were not going out "looking" but actually "hunting" and likely to buy something. It was strange and we found some interesting things which we were not expecting. There was a nice large Suzuki XL7 sitting on a dealership lot, looking dusty. It was a 2009 model with only 113km on it... it just hadn't sold, was sitting at the back of the lot and they were anxious to be rid of it.....still there as far as I know..... anyone want a fantastic deal?. It was a nice vehicle.....but leather seats and a third row of seats. So we continued on to look at the Subaru Forester, the new model, a vast improvement on the previous model and a car that visually attracted us, but a disappointing ride in which we felt the window sills were too high as the seats were generally set very low and the passenger seat was unadjustable in height. Hmmmmm
Next target was the Mitsubishi Outlander which we had looked at several times but never test driven, but for some reason I thought is where we would end up. Some problems though....if you want the sunroof you have to have the leather seats and the third row of seats, and the third row are stupid seats! Hmmm .
So the salesman Marcel was listening (yes some do!) to my commentary and he asked if we had looked at the Mitsubishi Endeavor, as he thought that vehicle seemed to fit everything we described very closely? I had thought about that car fleetingly some years ago, but set it aside as large and expensive. I had looked at one at the car show but my lack of serious interest in it had pushed it out of my mind. So Marcel pushed us over to look at one.....the last one on the lot (there are not a lot of them around in fact) and we looked.
I liked the colour (how fickle!) a creamy pearly white metallic. I liked its presence. The cabin looked exceptionally spacious and well laid out. It was comfortable. It had durable fabric seats and NO THIRD ROW SEATING... and it had a full sun roof!
Inside everything fell to hand. Seating position was commodious and comfortable, visibility was amazing. I knew I was hooked. We did a test drive around some busy streets, up and down a very serious hill. It drove really well. However it was getting dark and the shop was wanting to close. It was suggested that we come back next day and do the test drive on the smaller Outlander, as that was what we set out to do. That was a very smart move on Marcel's behalf. I didn't think it was worth the time to do that as I already knew I couldn't get what I wanted in it, and was not interested in an expensive compromise. So we came back next day and we tested the Outlander and it felt weird to drive, peppy, tight, bouncy and somehow very plastic. That wasn't my car. A conundrum was raising its ugly head. Should we afterall go and look at the LandRovers? Mighty expensive options with huge engines big enough to tow the necessary oil well behind....Was the unsold 2009 Suzuki at a true clearance price a good backup proposition?
Marcel was good. He seemed like a salesman of course, gracious, polished in his technique (which was starting to become annoying), informative, chatty, doing his job and hoping for a commission. The atmosphere was beginning to change. The "sell" was coming down the chute next, I knew it. Most would have walked right into it and been oh so gently taken up in its rush and would have bitten. I braced for it.
I told him I liked the car but that I wanted to reconsider the Suzuki we had looked at and to talk things over with my other half. He was brave, polite, but saw his commission slipping away. He had no idea that I knew that this would be our car and had since we first sat in it. My poker face was on.
We returned the next day, made sure the car was on the lot still, found Marcel and said we had come to discuss buying the car. He looked almost surprised! We had done a lot of research on the type over the couple of days we had been dithering about, had developed some questions which we went over, raised the question of a part exchange on the old family bus and we were told that we could get at least a certain figure (which matched exactly my total expectation) and then he said "So are you ready to talk turkey then?" My affirmative sent him off the fetch the shop paperwork on the car but only after he had made a nice show of making us comfortable in the hotseats opposite his desk and introducing us to his sales manager, a spiffily dressed car salesman if I have ever seen one!
Back he came with a pile of papers and one on top which was the sales sticker from the car window with a number on it I had had no intention of paying, of course. He pointed to the number and said "Looks good doesn't it?!" to which I replied "No....". Oh, you should have seen the look on his face!
Out of the folder I had in front of me I pulled a printout of a page from their shop website, taken off maybe 30 minutes before this time. It showed the exact same car, matching unit number/stock number with a list price $4,000 less than the window price. Very Interesting! I said "it looks like we start there..." He feigned being shocked and a degree of "being nice" slipped a little. Of course he had to go and show this to his sales manager... of course! He was gone for a while, leaving us sitting there twiddling our thumbs.....there were raised voices in the background. I am not sure whose voices they were. As time grew more drawn out, I was making ready to get up and leave (a very useful technique in playing the game), when Marcel suddenly returned, with a bit less of a smile on his face now.
"My manager will honour the internet published price (of course he will, its the law!) but no further negotiations and no part exchange on your existing car.... are you interested?"
Of course I was interested. I know that they hoped I would say no, because I am sure that whomever typed in that price on the website made a substantial mistake and I was going to be getting the car around where I expected to anyway and didn't have to go back and forth playing nickle and dime games, plus I got to keep the "old girl" as a family run about/second car (and remember that her value to me was greater than anything they would have allowed me).
So now it was face saving time. Marcel put his best jovial salesman face back on while clearly biting his lip and we went though all the paperwork and put down the deposit. He had a few things to make sure were right over the next day or so to prep the car to go out, and I had to go and do some banking. We went back Friday evening, cheque in hand, to find the car all spruced up with a big sticker in the window "Sold to some very nice people" (which I immediately removed) and had to succomb to having our photo taken with the car and Marcel.... and that was that.
So what is my point this time? Guys, don't play games with people. Its really degrading and usually pretty easy to get caught out by smart people. What does it say to you that you take advantage of people who are not smart enough to understand what game is being played? You are smart enough to dupe a dupe!.... don't do it. Be honest, be natural. Trying to sell a car for $4,000 more than you are actually willing and able to sell it for and still be in business, so that you can allow the guy $1,000 on his old car and make him feel like he won the game, is really a sick attitude, deceptive and trashy. Don't be his best friend while you rip him off.
When you treat people like this, this is what they learn. Its easy to fall into it and actually rather hard to not fall into it. It requires more effort from you to do the right thing. Marcel ended up looking like a fool. He was false and play acting. I am fairly sure that he is actually a nice guy outside of work, but he has sold his soul and no man should do that.
Yeah the Mitsubishi Endeavor is a really nice car and I am enjoying driving it, very much actually, but how much nicer would it have been if I had not been moved to write this blog?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
....and back to Woody
Woody was another elderly gentleman who lived just around the corner from me. He was also a Brit in origin, proudly from the Wirral in Cheshire, a former Merchant Navy radioman from the days of WW2 and later, and more latterly worked in the paint industry.
Woody and I became friends originally because of our common British heritage. He was quite honestly something of a cantankerous old bugger but as I got to know him and his story I began to understand why he was so. Woody was one of two brothers and had a sister, His elder brother Joe had joined the Merchant Navy and had been killed in the torpedoing of a mysterious ship which it is apparent may have been carrying some secret volatile cargo off the coast of Africa during the war. Young Charles Wood Morton, then aged 16, promptly ran off to sea, lying about his age, and was himself torpedoed twice, once in the Mediterranean and once in the North Atlantic in mid winter. In the latter incident he and others were adrift in a lifeboat for 9 days before being rescued.
Some years after the war, he found himself in Calcutta and somehow met and became attached to a lady who was the daughter of a British Army General in charge of a garrison in Calcutta, probably attached to the Indian Army. He married her and they had a daughter. At some point they divorced and the daughter stayed with the Mother.
Woody ended up back in UK and left the sea and started to develop a career in the paint industry. He met a nurse who had also seen military duty in the ATS during the war. Her name was Rose and she was older than Woody. They married and I gather that they had a good life in UK as she worked nursing and he moved up in the world of paint. They had no children of their own, but at some point his daughter from his first marriage was living with them. Woody and family moved to the eastern seabord of the United States, then to Canada, then back to UK, all the time working for ICI paint division. At some point his daughter went back to her Mother and ended up living in the eastern USA, having very little contact with Woody and Rose, who themselves moved to Vancouver permanently and settled in a nice house in the West End.
Rose contracted cancer and died in the mid 1980's just after they both retired and Woody was utterly lost. He sold the house and moved into an apartment and for a long time hid out there, dealing with his sorrow.
When he was out walking, he was always dapperly dressed in Sport's Jacket and tie, polished brown shoes and neatly pressed trousers, would wave at people and say "good morning!", but he developed a local reputation of being cantankerous with people too. I began to get to know him better when we both had an interest in radio and satellite communications and he was an intinerant tinkerer with receivers and miles of wire.... I would hear that he was mad at this or that bit of equipment and so started to have him show me how these things worked, and we talked as we untangled... and thus grew a friendship.
Always interested in technology, he decided that he better get into the 20th Century before it expired and he bought himself a computer, with no idea what they did or could do, or for that matter how to access them! I became his teacher, focussing on letting him find out where the doors were and how to open them and explore behind them...which was a grand idea at first! However I quickly learned how easy it was to mess up a computer quite completely with a small application of a liberal amount of ignorance! The stories are far too many to tell, but countless times I would be summoned to "sort out this bloody machine!"
There is a limit to tolerance of this kind of repeated ineptness I suppose and it became annoying to be spending hours over at his place trying to untangle his messes, but eventually I think I caught on that it was how he got time with me. I think he found our conversations stimulating and I know that most of the time, ignoring the cantankerous nature he bore to the end, I enjoyed much of my time talking with him too.
Then one day he called me over and told me that he had met a lady. I had seen him with her a few times, sitting in the local café with her. This was his formal announcement that he was dating her! Verna was a spinster who had worked all her working life in the banking industry. She was slight to his rotundness, as quiet as a churchmouse and obviously happy to have Woody's attention. They made some trips together and spent more and more time together, but I was still "invited over to sort out the technology" a lot and Verna would remain quietly in a corner. Slowly however I managed to get Verna talking and she was friendly. I began to realise that while Woody was happy to have a girlfriend, there were times when he just wanted man company but didn't have the heart to send her home!
One time I got a call from Verna that Woody had fallen and couldn't get up, could I come over. He was heavily intoxicated on top of his many medications and was jammed in beside his bed on the floor with no room to help him up. He was in rough shape and a call to the ambulance got him lifted as I couldn't move him, but I had applied some cautionary first aid and stabilised him and got him room to breathe, his chest being pressurised by his fallen position. He spent quite a while in hospital and I visited him often. One of the nurses caught me one day on my way into the ward as he became easier to deal with and told me my Father was a real charmer with the ladies and so happy I had saved his life.....I explained that he wasn't my father, that I was just a neighbour/friend. It turned out that he was always referring to me to all concerned as "his son". I was touched. I managed use the authority of a son to insist that I remove all the booze he had been stockpiling in his place and mixing with his medications, and things seemed to settle down.
Over time Verna began to stay over at Woody's place more and more and not drive home, probably a good thing as her driving was to say the least quite scarey. She slept on the couch at Woody's place. Always on the couch. He told me "no lad, I canna get her into my bed. I've given up!"... and that is how it was with those two lovebirds. Verna, although she had her own place, slept on the couch at Woody's and she was there for months on end sometimes. Her concession was that she was allowed to bring her cat to stay with her!
Verna began to sink into early dementia, which seemed to come and go. I followed her one day driving behind her and saw her wandering all over the road. I talked to Woody about this and he was aware of the problem. Woody himself no longer drove. I was not aware of the reason, but he hadn't driven for some time. I asked him to talk to Verna about stopping driving and that conversation was in process when one morning, early on, I got a phone call from Verna. She was panicked. She had woken up on the sofa and found Woody laying on the floor beside the sofa, stone cold in his vest and underwear.
I went over there and I checked Woody and he was undeniably dead. I settled Verna down and called 911 and the entire team showed up, firemen first responders, then the life support team and they worked on Woody for what seemed like an hour. I had no idea that they are required to do that. It was obvious that he was dead. I felt awful about it because they worked hard with heart needles and drips and paddles and finally a Doctor arrived and pronounced him dead. I had been witness to all of this as had Verna. It was a very sad ending and a very traumatic day for her. I managed to get her family to come and take her to their home.
Its been over three years now since he died and I still miss Woody. Verna is still alive and seems to have stopped degrading.
But there is a postscript to Woody's story.
All along he talked about his daughter, often with some hatred. She had come to him with stories about first one thing and then another, asking for money. When he checked later he discovered that some of the stories were lies. At one time she had come to Vancouver and co-erced him into parting with a considerable amount of money to fund her education in the USA, then having the money had vanished off the scene totally again.
In his latter years he often told me some angry stories about Jane. She had written him to ask for financial help again, saying now that she had a brain tumour and needed his financial help to get surgery. He ignored her.
After Woody died I felt it was important to try to find his daughter, whose married name I did not know. I needed to tell her that her father had passed away and to send to her his family photos and the like which included many pictures of her. I found an address after much sleuthing and wrote to it. It turned out to be the address of a friend of this Jane which she had used once or twice. The news came back that Jane had died a year before Woody, of a brain tumour. He never knew. She had been married and Woody had Grandchildren he never knew about and who never knew about him. The family never told Woody his daughter was dead.
Sometimes, life is just sad.
I buried Woody's ashes beside those of his beloved Rose
Woody and I became friends originally because of our common British heritage. He was quite honestly something of a cantankerous old bugger but as I got to know him and his story I began to understand why he was so. Woody was one of two brothers and had a sister, His elder brother Joe had joined the Merchant Navy and had been killed in the torpedoing of a mysterious ship which it is apparent may have been carrying some secret volatile cargo off the coast of Africa during the war. Young Charles Wood Morton, then aged 16, promptly ran off to sea, lying about his age, and was himself torpedoed twice, once in the Mediterranean and once in the North Atlantic in mid winter. In the latter incident he and others were adrift in a lifeboat for 9 days before being rescued.
Some years after the war, he found himself in Calcutta and somehow met and became attached to a lady who was the daughter of a British Army General in charge of a garrison in Calcutta, probably attached to the Indian Army. He married her and they had a daughter. At some point they divorced and the daughter stayed with the Mother.
Woody ended up back in UK and left the sea and started to develop a career in the paint industry. He met a nurse who had also seen military duty in the ATS during the war. Her name was Rose and she was older than Woody. They married and I gather that they had a good life in UK as she worked nursing and he moved up in the world of paint. They had no children of their own, but at some point his daughter from his first marriage was living with them. Woody and family moved to the eastern seabord of the United States, then to Canada, then back to UK, all the time working for ICI paint division. At some point his daughter went back to her Mother and ended up living in the eastern USA, having very little contact with Woody and Rose, who themselves moved to Vancouver permanently and settled in a nice house in the West End.
Rose contracted cancer and died in the mid 1980's just after they both retired and Woody was utterly lost. He sold the house and moved into an apartment and for a long time hid out there, dealing with his sorrow.
When he was out walking, he was always dapperly dressed in Sport's Jacket and tie, polished brown shoes and neatly pressed trousers, would wave at people and say "good morning!", but he developed a local reputation of being cantankerous with people too. I began to get to know him better when we both had an interest in radio and satellite communications and he was an intinerant tinkerer with receivers and miles of wire.... I would hear that he was mad at this or that bit of equipment and so started to have him show me how these things worked, and we talked as we untangled... and thus grew a friendship.
Always interested in technology, he decided that he better get into the 20th Century before it expired and he bought himself a computer, with no idea what they did or could do, or for that matter how to access them! I became his teacher, focussing on letting him find out where the doors were and how to open them and explore behind them...which was a grand idea at first! However I quickly learned how easy it was to mess up a computer quite completely with a small application of a liberal amount of ignorance! The stories are far too many to tell, but countless times I would be summoned to "sort out this bloody machine!"
There is a limit to tolerance of this kind of repeated ineptness I suppose and it became annoying to be spending hours over at his place trying to untangle his messes, but eventually I think I caught on that it was how he got time with me. I think he found our conversations stimulating and I know that most of the time, ignoring the cantankerous nature he bore to the end, I enjoyed much of my time talking with him too.
Then one day he called me over and told me that he had met a lady. I had seen him with her a few times, sitting in the local café with her. This was his formal announcement that he was dating her! Verna was a spinster who had worked all her working life in the banking industry. She was slight to his rotundness, as quiet as a churchmouse and obviously happy to have Woody's attention. They made some trips together and spent more and more time together, but I was still "invited over to sort out the technology" a lot and Verna would remain quietly in a corner. Slowly however I managed to get Verna talking and she was friendly. I began to realise that while Woody was happy to have a girlfriend, there were times when he just wanted man company but didn't have the heart to send her home!
One time I got a call from Verna that Woody had fallen and couldn't get up, could I come over. He was heavily intoxicated on top of his many medications and was jammed in beside his bed on the floor with no room to help him up. He was in rough shape and a call to the ambulance got him lifted as I couldn't move him, but I had applied some cautionary first aid and stabilised him and got him room to breathe, his chest being pressurised by his fallen position. He spent quite a while in hospital and I visited him often. One of the nurses caught me one day on my way into the ward as he became easier to deal with and told me my Father was a real charmer with the ladies and so happy I had saved his life.....I explained that he wasn't my father, that I was just a neighbour/friend. It turned out that he was always referring to me to all concerned as "his son". I was touched. I managed use the authority of a son to insist that I remove all the booze he had been stockpiling in his place and mixing with his medications, and things seemed to settle down.
Over time Verna began to stay over at Woody's place more and more and not drive home, probably a good thing as her driving was to say the least quite scarey. She slept on the couch at Woody's place. Always on the couch. He told me "no lad, I canna get her into my bed. I've given up!"... and that is how it was with those two lovebirds. Verna, although she had her own place, slept on the couch at Woody's and she was there for months on end sometimes. Her concession was that she was allowed to bring her cat to stay with her!
Verna began to sink into early dementia, which seemed to come and go. I followed her one day driving behind her and saw her wandering all over the road. I talked to Woody about this and he was aware of the problem. Woody himself no longer drove. I was not aware of the reason, but he hadn't driven for some time. I asked him to talk to Verna about stopping driving and that conversation was in process when one morning, early on, I got a phone call from Verna. She was panicked. She had woken up on the sofa and found Woody laying on the floor beside the sofa, stone cold in his vest and underwear.
I went over there and I checked Woody and he was undeniably dead. I settled Verna down and called 911 and the entire team showed up, firemen first responders, then the life support team and they worked on Woody for what seemed like an hour. I had no idea that they are required to do that. It was obvious that he was dead. I felt awful about it because they worked hard with heart needles and drips and paddles and finally a Doctor arrived and pronounced him dead. I had been witness to all of this as had Verna. It was a very sad ending and a very traumatic day for her. I managed to get her family to come and take her to their home.
Its been over three years now since he died and I still miss Woody. Verna is still alive and seems to have stopped degrading.
But there is a postscript to Woody's story.
All along he talked about his daughter, often with some hatred. She had come to him with stories about first one thing and then another, asking for money. When he checked later he discovered that some of the stories were lies. At one time she had come to Vancouver and co-erced him into parting with a considerable amount of money to fund her education in the USA, then having the money had vanished off the scene totally again.
In his latter years he often told me some angry stories about Jane. She had written him to ask for financial help again, saying now that she had a brain tumour and needed his financial help to get surgery. He ignored her.
After Woody died I felt it was important to try to find his daughter, whose married name I did not know. I needed to tell her that her father had passed away and to send to her his family photos and the like which included many pictures of her. I found an address after much sleuthing and wrote to it. It turned out to be the address of a friend of this Jane which she had used once or twice. The news came back that Jane had died a year before Woody, of a brain tumour. He never knew. She had been married and Woody had Grandchildren he never knew about and who never knew about him. The family never told Woody his daughter was dead.
Sometimes, life is just sad.
I buried Woody's ashes beside those of his beloved Rose
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Back to Charley
I have just been re-reading the material I have written so far and realised that I promised some time ago that I would get to talking about Charley and Woody. When I wrote that I meant to do it soon, but as seems to happen in a busy life it got forgotten. The mental jog was good for me, as Charley and Woody are both worth writing about.
Let's start with Charley. Charley was more properly known as Charles Patrick Hay. I got to know him when he was an elderly neighbour living in what was at that time the senior's apartments, around the corner from where I live. He was about 5ft 7 inches tall, dapper, handsome and spoke with a disarming Irish accent from the northern province of Ulster, known to some as Northern Ireland. This was the soft accent of the countryside, not the harsh rasping accent of Belfast. I gather that at some time Charley had been married, as he often refered to "his daughter" and "his grandchildren", but I never saw them in years of neighbourly friendship. Charley lived alone and to a degree kept to himself, but if ever anyone took the time to really engage him in conversation, he had lots to offer and was willing to park somewhere or stroll and chat quite openly about his life.
It seemed that Charley (whom some people called Pat, though he seemed to prefer Charley) had had a very interesting life managing hotels and resorts in many different countries. He talked often of Spain, with a sense of reverence for the place and the people. He talked about how different life had been in Spain, about how time seemed to be dealt with differently there and about how the soul of that land had been ripped in two during the civil war and had somehow, even decades later, never properly healed, yet he had a reverence for the ways of the Spanish. He also talked a great deal about Asia and the time he had spent in hotels in several locations in Asia. I feel that he was not so impressed with Asia in general and as Vancouver became more and more of an Asian city (and as he aged) he seemed more and more willing to allow his feelings for Asia and Asians to rasp from his lips.
Charley was interesting. We would sit and discuss politics and politicians while perched on the low concrete wall beside the pathway. I would often find him sitting there, watching the world go by, staring into the park on the other side of the street. Many people would just pass him by, ignoring him. I always greeted him and it seemed to awaken him and a big welcoming smile and greeting emanated from his handsome face.
Charley had also managed hostelries in Vancouver and seemed to have a good grasp of the who-is-who of times past in local politics and business, both on the city level and the provincial level also. It seemed he counted many "names" as his personal friends over time, but was by this time beginning to miss them as they had passed on, one by one. He told many personal stories about these "names" which turned them into multi-fasceted people, rather than just characters in the news.
Charley never invited anyone inside his apartment. That was his own private retreat. I had no inkling of how he lived. As years went by his aging began to show. He limped more and more and he walked less and less distance. He moved more slowly and started to mutter aloud as he walked and he seemed less willing to sit on the wall, as I believe he was experiencing challenges getting up and moving again. He became more angry about life and soon whenever he spoke, there always seemed to be foamy spittle on his lower lip. People who had talked with him in the past started to avoid meeting him face to face and engaging him and soon it seemed he needed a companion. One day he suddenly had a small hound puppy who was so full of life. He would wander out with this small bundle of energy on the end of a leash and the dog would drag him around. He seemed to have no notion of training the dog to his needs and his perambulations became loud and incessant gesticulations and blaspheming at the poor innocent untrained dog.
I offered to help him with some basic training of the dog so that his experience of it wasn't such a battle, but he would have no part of that. I swear that he actually enjoyed cussing endlessly at the puppy. It quickly became harder and harder to engage Charley in conversation, and as time passed, the conversations that did happen seemed less and less reflective and somewhat more angry at life, Some days he would make it to the wall with the dog and just sit there cussing it out loud as it jerked on its leash, but he loved that small hound, clearly, as it was his constant companion.
We worried about the dog and we worried about Charley, but he would have none of our worry.
One day there was no more Charley. I came home to hear that the ambulance had been and taken away his corpse. His daughter, who indeed did exist, had been called to take the dog. His place was vacated.
But its funny, I still hear and see Charley in the park, cussing the dog on his walks around the neighbourhood and I sometimes sit on the wall and think about all the views of life, windows into strange places far away and near by he had shared with me.
Rest in peace Charley.
Let's start with Charley. Charley was more properly known as Charles Patrick Hay. I got to know him when he was an elderly neighbour living in what was at that time the senior's apartments, around the corner from where I live. He was about 5ft 7 inches tall, dapper, handsome and spoke with a disarming Irish accent from the northern province of Ulster, known to some as Northern Ireland. This was the soft accent of the countryside, not the harsh rasping accent of Belfast. I gather that at some time Charley had been married, as he often refered to "his daughter" and "his grandchildren", but I never saw them in years of neighbourly friendship. Charley lived alone and to a degree kept to himself, but if ever anyone took the time to really engage him in conversation, he had lots to offer and was willing to park somewhere or stroll and chat quite openly about his life.
It seemed that Charley (whom some people called Pat, though he seemed to prefer Charley) had had a very interesting life managing hotels and resorts in many different countries. He talked often of Spain, with a sense of reverence for the place and the people. He talked about how different life had been in Spain, about how time seemed to be dealt with differently there and about how the soul of that land had been ripped in two during the civil war and had somehow, even decades later, never properly healed, yet he had a reverence for the ways of the Spanish. He also talked a great deal about Asia and the time he had spent in hotels in several locations in Asia. I feel that he was not so impressed with Asia in general and as Vancouver became more and more of an Asian city (and as he aged) he seemed more and more willing to allow his feelings for Asia and Asians to rasp from his lips.
Charley was interesting. We would sit and discuss politics and politicians while perched on the low concrete wall beside the pathway. I would often find him sitting there, watching the world go by, staring into the park on the other side of the street. Many people would just pass him by, ignoring him. I always greeted him and it seemed to awaken him and a big welcoming smile and greeting emanated from his handsome face.
Charley had also managed hostelries in Vancouver and seemed to have a good grasp of the who-is-who of times past in local politics and business, both on the city level and the provincial level also. It seemed he counted many "names" as his personal friends over time, but was by this time beginning to miss them as they had passed on, one by one. He told many personal stories about these "names" which turned them into multi-fasceted people, rather than just characters in the news.
Charley never invited anyone inside his apartment. That was his own private retreat. I had no inkling of how he lived. As years went by his aging began to show. He limped more and more and he walked less and less distance. He moved more slowly and started to mutter aloud as he walked and he seemed less willing to sit on the wall, as I believe he was experiencing challenges getting up and moving again. He became more angry about life and soon whenever he spoke, there always seemed to be foamy spittle on his lower lip. People who had talked with him in the past started to avoid meeting him face to face and engaging him and soon it seemed he needed a companion. One day he suddenly had a small hound puppy who was so full of life. He would wander out with this small bundle of energy on the end of a leash and the dog would drag him around. He seemed to have no notion of training the dog to his needs and his perambulations became loud and incessant gesticulations and blaspheming at the poor innocent untrained dog.
I offered to help him with some basic training of the dog so that his experience of it wasn't such a battle, but he would have no part of that. I swear that he actually enjoyed cussing endlessly at the puppy. It quickly became harder and harder to engage Charley in conversation, and as time passed, the conversations that did happen seemed less and less reflective and somewhat more angry at life, Some days he would make it to the wall with the dog and just sit there cussing it out loud as it jerked on its leash, but he loved that small hound, clearly, as it was his constant companion.
We worried about the dog and we worried about Charley, but he would have none of our worry.
One day there was no more Charley. I came home to hear that the ambulance had been and taken away his corpse. His daughter, who indeed did exist, had been called to take the dog. His place was vacated.
But its funny, I still hear and see Charley in the park, cussing the dog on his walks around the neighbourhood and I sometimes sit on the wall and think about all the views of life, windows into strange places far away and near by he had shared with me.
Rest in peace Charley.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Being the youngster again
I have just returned from a long weekend down in Washington State, a time of rest and relaxation at a lovely old lodge on a lake in the mountains where there are no TV's or telephones in the rooms, which allows one to sit in a lovely dark lounge lined with woods, in front of a huge fireplace, and simply sit and contemplate the world, read a good book, or even get into a deep conversation with another hotel guest!
So I was sat, deeply ensconced in a large leather sofa, legs crossed, just starting on page 2 of a book. I had been intermittently watching people passing through the lounge, wondering who they were, what made them tick, contemplating life. One gentleman seemed to have an energy as he passed me and passed me again, obviously deep in thought....and so I had picked up the book, made myself comfortable and was enjoying page 2.
The same gentleman, somewhat older than myself and with a thick thatch of very white hair, passed by me again, right to left, still very inwardly focussed. Moments later he slowly passed me again, left to right, his hand on his chin. I smiled to myself and wondered exactly "where" he was inside his deep contemplation, and my face began to go down to my book again. However, suddenly this man stopped walking away, paused for the merest second, turned on his heels and walked right up to me and in a meaningful and penetrating way said "What are you reading....and would you recommend it?"
My immediate reaction was that this was very strange. I smiled, somewhat curious, and responded "I have only just started this book. Its about aviators in the Royal Flying Corps in WW1 (showing him the book cover which bore an image of two fighters chasing one another across a barren landscape), but I cannot say if I recommend it yet. However, I have just finished another book, which I found most interesting and would heartily recommend!"
"What was that one, and who wrote it?"
"It was by a man named John Nichol who had been a navigator in the Royal Air Force and had served active duty in Iraq, was shot down and taken prisoner and totured, and had later also served in Bosnia. Its his first novel after having written two other factual books about his service."
"What was significant and interested you about the book?"
"It was a novelised version of very real events presented by someone who had obviously experienced a great deal of the story and it evoked a reconnection for me with the issues of life in a squadron, the relationship and values between its members and the perceptions of life seen from that point of view..."
"So judging by your accent, you may have served under similar circumstances... did you go to Bosnia?"
"No, I didn't go to Bosnia but I had other experiences"
"Would you tell me where you went?"
"No, I cannot.."
"I respect that.....but obviously the qualities of this story resonate the qualities of a reality for you!"
"Well, yes they do, I am very familiar with the environment in which they operated and I like to think about the emotional qualities which that life brings forwards, a sense of values which one can subscribe to, an awareness of them which is very acute and probably rarely experienced by most folk in our modern society..."
We talked for some time, back and forth and he probed more and more deeply. My initial concern was that he was interested in the specific and I wasn't able or willing to go there with this total stranger. However the more our conversation progressed, the more I smiled and the more interested I became in why this man had started this conversation. I also became more and more aware that I was seated in the plush depths of a leather sofa and he was standing intent and close in front of me.
"Why don't you pull up a chair and get comfortable?' I asked, somewhat out of concern for the developing crick in my neck but in an endeavour to socialise this increasingly interesting and out-of-the-blue conversation.
Before he had finished adjusting the chair and himself to it, he was asking more and more questions about my perceptions of the values of people working in teams. The conversation and the vocabulary were very elevated and academic, his facial expression both fascinated and fascinating. He became philosophical and open. Before the conversation went any deeper than it already had I felt the need to understand who he was and what his background was, so I politely asked "Do you mind me asking... this is a very deep and out-of- the-blue conversation, and quite fascinating, but what is your background and interest in this subject?"
"Well I have spent many years in philosophy. I am a philospher of sorts I suppose! I have a specific interest in a pattern I have postulated which I call "volitional reality" and how it applies to our social order. I am interested in how two people seeing the same thing can "understand it" in very different ways and draw very different conclusions from what was presented.".
My eyes lit up. My mind switched gears immediately. I suddenly understood the pattern of his conversation. He had seen a man comfortable in himself, engrossed in a book, not reading a scandalous rag of a newspaper or a frivolous comic. Relatively speaking, this is a rare thing these days and an academic mind, in search of familiarity, seized upon a social but serious opportunity to start a conversation with a stranger, itself something rare these days. I also recognised with an open smile that this man was indeed a thinker and interested in something I myself have been interested in for eons.
We talked for a long time. He explained and defined his understanding of volitional reality and we went back and forth over how experience and input change the the perception of a witnessed set of circumstances, be they routine and common, or extreme and uncommon. We took the conversation deep into a definition of what reality in fact is and how the lack of a workable definition of reality, because of the undisputable fact of what he called volitional reality, is the cause of mankind's problems frpm the absolute micro-scale to absolute macro-scale.
I was in awe of this conversation. It elevated me and thrilled me. His simple definition and understanding of volitional reality flooded my mind and gave context to so much of my own experience and struggles in this world. It gave me a framework within which to place and examine the happenings around me and learn to manage them.
He told me that me offering my own rendering of perceptions from varied experiences had also helped him to understand some aspects of reality which he had struggled to come to terms with.
This was a true sharing. An older man had once again stepped into my life and opened himself to me and talked and listened and together we had both grown. I had met a mind that worked at a very elevated level.
I felt fed and enriched..... and then it dawned on me that we had not even introduced ourselves to one another!
"My name is Chris, I live in Vancouver BC"
"I am Ralph. I am originally from Chile, but I came here when I was 11 years old ..."
This started another great conversation about how two very different experiences of upbringing had moulded our lives and brought us, by happenstance or by destiny, to this moment in time.
Ralph's wife had been lingering patiently in the distance and she signalled to him that time was up (probably long up!), so we parted with a smile and a wonderful handshake.
My own wife had been siting nearby during all of this and I just looked at her and said "Wow!............that was amazing!.........I am not alone in this world.......I have not been able to have a conversation of that quality with another human being in YEARS....."
Her smile spoke a thousand words... "You needed a conversation like that... you need more of them. You thrive in that environment, you speak differently, you look different......"
For the rest of that day, walking on forest trails, I felt as though I was floating inside my own head, my mind stretched, with fresh air flowing through it to blow out the cobwebs of the daily grind and the relatively uninspiring everyday. I genuinely hoped that I would run into Ralph again that evening and be able to expand the conversation.
I reflected that the last time I remembered feeling that I shared the planet and that level of understanding with a man was the time I spent with Greg Duncan (a man somewhat younger than myself) whose thinking and expression has had a major impact on my life. Before that in grad school, back in the mid 1980's with Professor Abraham Rogatnick, a tiny man in physical stature, whom I was shocked to learn had been a US Army infantryman at the Battle of the Bulge, yet had grown to become one of the most sensitive, aware and expressive historians of mankind, art and architecture I have ever known. Abe passed away in 2009.
Sadly I didn't see Ralph again. I guess the reality was that he was about to check out of the Lodge. I have no idea who he was other than "Ralph, born in Chile, resident of the USA", but Ralph has taught me that there is no reality other than everything. Reality is values and morally based, experiential, perceived and indeed volitional. We do indeed create our own reality. There is no actual right and no actual wrong (or left). Stuff happens. How we interpret it is what makes the world go around. How we handle it is what makes us happy or sad. That too is volitional. Thank you Ralph.
So I was sat, deeply ensconced in a large leather sofa, legs crossed, just starting on page 2 of a book. I had been intermittently watching people passing through the lounge, wondering who they were, what made them tick, contemplating life. One gentleman seemed to have an energy as he passed me and passed me again, obviously deep in thought....and so I had picked up the book, made myself comfortable and was enjoying page 2.
The same gentleman, somewhat older than myself and with a thick thatch of very white hair, passed by me again, right to left, still very inwardly focussed. Moments later he slowly passed me again, left to right, his hand on his chin. I smiled to myself and wondered exactly "where" he was inside his deep contemplation, and my face began to go down to my book again. However, suddenly this man stopped walking away, paused for the merest second, turned on his heels and walked right up to me and in a meaningful and penetrating way said "What are you reading....and would you recommend it?"
My immediate reaction was that this was very strange. I smiled, somewhat curious, and responded "I have only just started this book. Its about aviators in the Royal Flying Corps in WW1 (showing him the book cover which bore an image of two fighters chasing one another across a barren landscape), but I cannot say if I recommend it yet. However, I have just finished another book, which I found most interesting and would heartily recommend!"
"What was that one, and who wrote it?"
"It was by a man named John Nichol who had been a navigator in the Royal Air Force and had served active duty in Iraq, was shot down and taken prisoner and totured, and had later also served in Bosnia. Its his first novel after having written two other factual books about his service."
"What was significant and interested you about the book?"
"It was a novelised version of very real events presented by someone who had obviously experienced a great deal of the story and it evoked a reconnection for me with the issues of life in a squadron, the relationship and values between its members and the perceptions of life seen from that point of view..."
"So judging by your accent, you may have served under similar circumstances... did you go to Bosnia?"
"No, I didn't go to Bosnia but I had other experiences"
"Would you tell me where you went?"
"No, I cannot.."
"I respect that.....but obviously the qualities of this story resonate the qualities of a reality for you!"
"Well, yes they do, I am very familiar with the environment in which they operated and I like to think about the emotional qualities which that life brings forwards, a sense of values which one can subscribe to, an awareness of them which is very acute and probably rarely experienced by most folk in our modern society..."
We talked for some time, back and forth and he probed more and more deeply. My initial concern was that he was interested in the specific and I wasn't able or willing to go there with this total stranger. However the more our conversation progressed, the more I smiled and the more interested I became in why this man had started this conversation. I also became more and more aware that I was seated in the plush depths of a leather sofa and he was standing intent and close in front of me.
"Why don't you pull up a chair and get comfortable?' I asked, somewhat out of concern for the developing crick in my neck but in an endeavour to socialise this increasingly interesting and out-of-the-blue conversation.
Before he had finished adjusting the chair and himself to it, he was asking more and more questions about my perceptions of the values of people working in teams. The conversation and the vocabulary were very elevated and academic, his facial expression both fascinated and fascinating. He became philosophical and open. Before the conversation went any deeper than it already had I felt the need to understand who he was and what his background was, so I politely asked "Do you mind me asking... this is a very deep and out-of- the-blue conversation, and quite fascinating, but what is your background and interest in this subject?"
"Well I have spent many years in philosophy. I am a philospher of sorts I suppose! I have a specific interest in a pattern I have postulated which I call "volitional reality" and how it applies to our social order. I am interested in how two people seeing the same thing can "understand it" in very different ways and draw very different conclusions from what was presented.".
My eyes lit up. My mind switched gears immediately. I suddenly understood the pattern of his conversation. He had seen a man comfortable in himself, engrossed in a book, not reading a scandalous rag of a newspaper or a frivolous comic. Relatively speaking, this is a rare thing these days and an academic mind, in search of familiarity, seized upon a social but serious opportunity to start a conversation with a stranger, itself something rare these days. I also recognised with an open smile that this man was indeed a thinker and interested in something I myself have been interested in for eons.
We talked for a long time. He explained and defined his understanding of volitional reality and we went back and forth over how experience and input change the the perception of a witnessed set of circumstances, be they routine and common, or extreme and uncommon. We took the conversation deep into a definition of what reality in fact is and how the lack of a workable definition of reality, because of the undisputable fact of what he called volitional reality, is the cause of mankind's problems frpm the absolute micro-scale to absolute macro-scale.
I was in awe of this conversation. It elevated me and thrilled me. His simple definition and understanding of volitional reality flooded my mind and gave context to so much of my own experience and struggles in this world. It gave me a framework within which to place and examine the happenings around me and learn to manage them.
He told me that me offering my own rendering of perceptions from varied experiences had also helped him to understand some aspects of reality which he had struggled to come to terms with.
This was a true sharing. An older man had once again stepped into my life and opened himself to me and talked and listened and together we had both grown. I had met a mind that worked at a very elevated level.
I felt fed and enriched..... and then it dawned on me that we had not even introduced ourselves to one another!
"My name is Chris, I live in Vancouver BC"
"I am Ralph. I am originally from Chile, but I came here when I was 11 years old ..."
This started another great conversation about how two very different experiences of upbringing had moulded our lives and brought us, by happenstance or by destiny, to this moment in time.
Ralph's wife had been lingering patiently in the distance and she signalled to him that time was up (probably long up!), so we parted with a smile and a wonderful handshake.
My own wife had been siting nearby during all of this and I just looked at her and said "Wow!............that was amazing!.........I am not alone in this world.......I have not been able to have a conversation of that quality with another human being in YEARS....."
Her smile spoke a thousand words... "You needed a conversation like that... you need more of them. You thrive in that environment, you speak differently, you look different......"
For the rest of that day, walking on forest trails, I felt as though I was floating inside my own head, my mind stretched, with fresh air flowing through it to blow out the cobwebs of the daily grind and the relatively uninspiring everyday. I genuinely hoped that I would run into Ralph again that evening and be able to expand the conversation.
I reflected that the last time I remembered feeling that I shared the planet and that level of understanding with a man was the time I spent with Greg Duncan (a man somewhat younger than myself) whose thinking and expression has had a major impact on my life. Before that in grad school, back in the mid 1980's with Professor Abraham Rogatnick, a tiny man in physical stature, whom I was shocked to learn had been a US Army infantryman at the Battle of the Bulge, yet had grown to become one of the most sensitive, aware and expressive historians of mankind, art and architecture I have ever known. Abe passed away in 2009.
Sadly I didn't see Ralph again. I guess the reality was that he was about to check out of the Lodge. I have no idea who he was other than "Ralph, born in Chile, resident of the USA", but Ralph has taught me that there is no reality other than everything. Reality is values and morally based, experiential, perceived and indeed volitional. We do indeed create our own reality. There is no actual right and no actual wrong (or left). Stuff happens. How we interpret it is what makes the world go around. How we handle it is what makes us happy or sad. That too is volitional. Thank you Ralph.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Neither underestimate or assume
Last Saturday there was a big garage sale in the neighbourhood in which we live. It was a bit tedious trying to sell off some of our excess as attendance, despite a warm sunny day, was rather low. However, we had the chance to chew the cud with neighbours, socialise and extract ourselves from a long winter hibernation when socialising on the street is greatly reduced.
Its fun people watching. Its fun listening to the conversations passing by. You look at people and make assumptions. Sometimes you underestimate who they may be as a person based on appearance. I believe we all fall victim to that sad fact from time to time.
Well, in a sense I received my reminder to neither underestimate or assume.
Along the street strolled a relatively elderly couple, well enough dressed, but I could sure hear them coming! Vocal recognition was instant. Its not often in Canada that one hears an exceptionally broad Australian accent coming down the street. I looked up and looked far and saw a man and his wife. The man was wearing a broad brimmed hat and bouncing along quite healthily. He obviously had a sense of humour as he was commenting and teasing as he walked along, quite indifferent to what anyone thought. People were noticing him. I smiled.
As he pulled up alongside me he said in the broadest of bush accents that "he hadn't realised that so many people were doing this garage sale and that he would have to go and take his booty to the car and come back and buy all my stuff too." Off he wandered, leaving his wife to chat with me. She was Australian too, though with a much milder Sydney accent and she apologised for her husband's raucous presence, "a bushman and full of life!" I wondered why she apologised? We chatted about Australia and England and Canada for a while and meanwhile the man came back and walked right past my small sale. I called out to him "Heh, Australia! You said you were coming back to buy all my stuff!! Get back here!" and so he returned and we started to laugh and chat. He picked over my odds and ends and his wife suggested that he should buy a pair of unused sandals that were his size and near identical to ones he was wearing. He wasn't interested.. "Pah! I have these and they are nearly new!" I looked down to note a pair that had obviously walked a mile or ten. Another smile.
So I couldn't persuade him to buy my table full of stuff, despite a jocular attempt, but somehow we got onto the subject of aircraft and historical military aircraft and before I knew it we were deep in conversation about his life in the Australian Army and his service in the Korean war in the early 1950's. I do have to confess that at times I had to listen quite closely to his accent, one that was quite unfamiliar to me and its only fair to describe as "broad". He talked for about a half hour about some engagements he had been involved in which presented me with an aspect of the Korean war with which I was totally unfamiliar, and frankly quite fascinated, opening up views of that war which we are rarely presented with. My encouragement of his conversation was more than polite.
It is quite fascinating to hear someone who had been on the ground and "there" talking about their memory and views of the struggles they experienced. I suppose that every man there would have taken home a different rendition of the things which impacted them, but this man had brought home and retained some very accute memories and impressions and his expression of them was deeply evocative. I listened and realised that this was a view of history which we don't often see, from the grass roots level of the man on the ground. I asked him if he had written down his stories so that they didn't die with him and he said he hadn't, that no-one would be interested in them.
I had sat there soaking it all in for quite some time. I was fascinated to hear this distinctictly Australian view of a war I had not given much thought to their participation in, presented in a rather briney Australian accent by a man to whom this was a vivid, descriptive, memory which he was more than willing to share with me. I encouraged him again to consider writing down his stories.
Finally his wife said "Well you have kept this poor man tied up for a long time now. You really should buy those sandals! You can use them next summer when yours finally fall off your feet...and besides, the price is right!" He laughed, said "Sure thing!" and paid me for the sandals. It was the only thing we sold at our garage sale that day.
As we finished up our transaction his wife said "Come on Bruce, let the man have his day..."
I burst out laughing. "Is your name REALLY Bruce?"
He said "Yes sir, it is."
I had finally met an Australian called Bruce!
Neither underestimate nor assume anything about the old people who pass by you in life. They have given much.
Its fun people watching. Its fun listening to the conversations passing by. You look at people and make assumptions. Sometimes you underestimate who they may be as a person based on appearance. I believe we all fall victim to that sad fact from time to time.
Well, in a sense I received my reminder to neither underestimate or assume.
Along the street strolled a relatively elderly couple, well enough dressed, but I could sure hear them coming! Vocal recognition was instant. Its not often in Canada that one hears an exceptionally broad Australian accent coming down the street. I looked up and looked far and saw a man and his wife. The man was wearing a broad brimmed hat and bouncing along quite healthily. He obviously had a sense of humour as he was commenting and teasing as he walked along, quite indifferent to what anyone thought. People were noticing him. I smiled.
As he pulled up alongside me he said in the broadest of bush accents that "he hadn't realised that so many people were doing this garage sale and that he would have to go and take his booty to the car and come back and buy all my stuff too." Off he wandered, leaving his wife to chat with me. She was Australian too, though with a much milder Sydney accent and she apologised for her husband's raucous presence, "a bushman and full of life!" I wondered why she apologised? We chatted about Australia and England and Canada for a while and meanwhile the man came back and walked right past my small sale. I called out to him "Heh, Australia! You said you were coming back to buy all my stuff!! Get back here!" and so he returned and we started to laugh and chat. He picked over my odds and ends and his wife suggested that he should buy a pair of unused sandals that were his size and near identical to ones he was wearing. He wasn't interested.. "Pah! I have these and they are nearly new!" I looked down to note a pair that had obviously walked a mile or ten. Another smile.
So I couldn't persuade him to buy my table full of stuff, despite a jocular attempt, but somehow we got onto the subject of aircraft and historical military aircraft and before I knew it we were deep in conversation about his life in the Australian Army and his service in the Korean war in the early 1950's. I do have to confess that at times I had to listen quite closely to his accent, one that was quite unfamiliar to me and its only fair to describe as "broad". He talked for about a half hour about some engagements he had been involved in which presented me with an aspect of the Korean war with which I was totally unfamiliar, and frankly quite fascinated, opening up views of that war which we are rarely presented with. My encouragement of his conversation was more than polite.
It is quite fascinating to hear someone who had been on the ground and "there" talking about their memory and views of the struggles they experienced. I suppose that every man there would have taken home a different rendition of the things which impacted them, but this man had brought home and retained some very accute memories and impressions and his expression of them was deeply evocative. I listened and realised that this was a view of history which we don't often see, from the grass roots level of the man on the ground. I asked him if he had written down his stories so that they didn't die with him and he said he hadn't, that no-one would be interested in them.
I had sat there soaking it all in for quite some time. I was fascinated to hear this distinctictly Australian view of a war I had not given much thought to their participation in, presented in a rather briney Australian accent by a man to whom this was a vivid, descriptive, memory which he was more than willing to share with me. I encouraged him again to consider writing down his stories.
Finally his wife said "Well you have kept this poor man tied up for a long time now. You really should buy those sandals! You can use them next summer when yours finally fall off your feet...and besides, the price is right!" He laughed, said "Sure thing!" and paid me for the sandals. It was the only thing we sold at our garage sale that day.
As we finished up our transaction his wife said "Come on Bruce, let the man have his day..."
I burst out laughing. "Is your name REALLY Bruce?"
He said "Yes sir, it is."
I had finally met an Australian called Bruce!
Neither underestimate nor assume anything about the old people who pass by you in life. They have given much.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Looking back with the wisdom of age
hmmm. Yes another bee in my bonnet this morning. Waste and bureaucracy. Its time for a rant!
Let's deal first with bureaucracy. I grew up in England where bureaucracy was and still is rife. So many rules to follow, with rules behind them to make sure that the rules created several iterations ago are still supported and enforced, oh and let's have a NEW rule about that rule this morning.
I left England a long time ago and came to Canada (and believe me we have more than our share of bureaucracy here too) and found a less oppressive atmosphere. Yes, I said OPPRESSIVE. I had forgotten how opressive the atmosphere of bureaucracy in England was until I had cause to deal with their banking system this year.
In a nutshell, I had a UK inheritance and while I was in UK earlier in the year I tried to set in motion transferring that money to my Canadian bank. It has now been 7 weeks past and today I found out (when I eventually managed to get someone to actually give me a phone number for Customer Service) that they have totally lost track of where things are at or what is happening with the account. I offered to short circuit the messy system by initiating a new transfer request and asked that they allow me to communicate by email or fax rather than by snail mail. That could apparently only be done if I established "a protocol". So, being the rational man I am I asked what that meant. Apparently it meant me giving permission to the bank to allow me to transfer my money to myself. I said "OK, let's do that right now then!" The answer was I suppose, in retrospect, quite predictable.
"Sorry sir, you have to come into your local branch (in UK) to set that up"
"But I am in bloody Vancouver!!!"
"Sorry about that sir, but that's the way we do it here."
"When I was in my local branch in March they wouldn't let me set up a protocol!"
"Sorry Sir...."
Well, yes its worse than it used to be 30 odd years ago. I suppose that this is yet another enigma. Here I am saying that we should stand on the shoulders of the experienced and look further to achieve more. I suppose that this is a really good example of what is WRONG with that hypothesis. Clearly in some cases we stand on the shoulders of the assenine and look futher into the gaping maw of despondancy and ignorance and add to the level of stupidity.
Then there is the subject of waste. (Don't you love a good rant???)
When I was a kid we had a single steel "dustbin" (garbage can for the non anglo's in the audience) which stood beside the garage and maybe every third or fourth week we would put it out for emptying. Its content included ...hmm what did it include? Largely ash from the two fireplaces as I recall. We didn't have central heating in those days. The newspapers were "recycled" by turning them into tightly wound paper spills with which to start the fire in the fireplace each morning. We were not inundated by flyers and local free "newspapers" which were really either just advertising all bundled up, or a means of delivering advertising. I seem to remember that we had chicken and fish bones in there too, and very rarely something plastic and filmy, as we didn't see much in the way of plastic because we took so-called "String bags" shopping with us. I remember when in-store plastic bags first started to appear.... Man oh man, were they a GREAT idea we thought.....yes sir, we really stood on the shoulders of great men and looked farther ahead on that one! Mind you, today they do come in really handy for picking up our doggydoo, something I remember RARELY happening in dog-loving England of the 50's and 60's. Parks were a lovely place to play on the grass in those days. Pathways were an obstacle course of small or not so small deposits. And of course English people to this day still have the disgusting habit of wearing their outside shoes inside their fully carpeted homes....but then I digress.
Milk rather strangely did not come in disposable plastic containers or waxed cardboard boxes (unless you were buying perpetual (sorry UHT) milk), but it was delivered daily to your door in glass bottles which were collected next day when the next delivery came.....we didn't call it recycling in those days... it was common sense, and quite normal.
Here in Vancouver some years ago, some almost 40 years later, we found it harder and harder to buy milk in glass bottles and had to spend a lot of time and fuel resources running to the dairy once a week, so we gave up and now we buy in 4 litre plastic jugs which we collapse (or use for bulk water storage in our earthquake preparedness area at the back of the garage) and put in the plastic blue-box for the weekly recycling exercise, and then wear as a winter sweater some months or years later.
Things sure got technical.... now we have a blue box for metals and plastics, a blue bag for newsprint (but don't you dare add non-newsprint paper to that blue bag), a yellow bag for "all other paper type waste", we still have our own composter (also known as a red-wriggler worm farm) which does an amazing job of destroying vegetative food wastes and creating a worm-mold compost for the garden. No matter how much we put in it, it never seems to get more than half full....we use public transit as much as possible to avoid putting cars on the road and carbon mon and di-oxide into the atmosphere.
But there is still a garbage problem in our lives..... despite trying to purchase responsibly (in a city environment) and putting out our triple system recycling apparatus weekly, we still find that when we put our plastic garbage bin out roughly once a month (lined of course with a plastic garbage bag to keep the bin clean), what is in there is largely chicken bones and plastic and styrofoam wrappings. Plastic is the saviour and bane of modern society.... How on earth we as a species managed to live without plastic wrapping everything not just once, but twice and thrice, and then putting it into a cardboard box which is again wrapped in plastic I just do not understand! And please do not misunderstand....I am not just describing the awful amount of processed food we are encouraged to eat, but the organic produce from the local vegetable store which is unitised and presented on foam trays and wrapped in plastic!
Young people (and old ones too)... Please protest and get smarter.... we do not need all this plastic and cardboard . No, we cannot all have a cow on the patio and no, urban chickens are not welcome everywhere.
Stop to think. It all has to go somewhere and if its not piling up in your backyard, it sure as hell is beside someone elses!
Let's deal first with bureaucracy. I grew up in England where bureaucracy was and still is rife. So many rules to follow, with rules behind them to make sure that the rules created several iterations ago are still supported and enforced, oh and let's have a NEW rule about that rule this morning.
I left England a long time ago and came to Canada (and believe me we have more than our share of bureaucracy here too) and found a less oppressive atmosphere. Yes, I said OPPRESSIVE. I had forgotten how opressive the atmosphere of bureaucracy in England was until I had cause to deal with their banking system this year.
In a nutshell, I had a UK inheritance and while I was in UK earlier in the year I tried to set in motion transferring that money to my Canadian bank. It has now been 7 weeks past and today I found out (when I eventually managed to get someone to actually give me a phone number for Customer Service) that they have totally lost track of where things are at or what is happening with the account. I offered to short circuit the messy system by initiating a new transfer request and asked that they allow me to communicate by email or fax rather than by snail mail. That could apparently only be done if I established "a protocol". So, being the rational man I am I asked what that meant. Apparently it meant me giving permission to the bank to allow me to transfer my money to myself. I said "OK, let's do that right now then!" The answer was I suppose, in retrospect, quite predictable.
"Sorry sir, you have to come into your local branch (in UK) to set that up"
"But I am in bloody Vancouver!!!"
"Sorry about that sir, but that's the way we do it here."
"When I was in my local branch in March they wouldn't let me set up a protocol!"
"Sorry Sir...."
Well, yes its worse than it used to be 30 odd years ago. I suppose that this is yet another enigma. Here I am saying that we should stand on the shoulders of the experienced and look further to achieve more. I suppose that this is a really good example of what is WRONG with that hypothesis. Clearly in some cases we stand on the shoulders of the assenine and look futher into the gaping maw of despondancy and ignorance and add to the level of stupidity.
Then there is the subject of waste. (Don't you love a good rant???)
When I was a kid we had a single steel "dustbin" (garbage can for the non anglo's in the audience) which stood beside the garage and maybe every third or fourth week we would put it out for emptying. Its content included ...hmm what did it include? Largely ash from the two fireplaces as I recall. We didn't have central heating in those days. The newspapers were "recycled" by turning them into tightly wound paper spills with which to start the fire in the fireplace each morning. We were not inundated by flyers and local free "newspapers" which were really either just advertising all bundled up, or a means of delivering advertising. I seem to remember that we had chicken and fish bones in there too, and very rarely something plastic and filmy, as we didn't see much in the way of plastic because we took so-called "String bags" shopping with us. I remember when in-store plastic bags first started to appear.... Man oh man, were they a GREAT idea we thought.....yes sir, we really stood on the shoulders of great men and looked farther ahead on that one! Mind you, today they do come in really handy for picking up our doggydoo, something I remember RARELY happening in dog-loving England of the 50's and 60's. Parks were a lovely place to play on the grass in those days. Pathways were an obstacle course of small or not so small deposits. And of course English people to this day still have the disgusting habit of wearing their outside shoes inside their fully carpeted homes....but then I digress.
Milk rather strangely did not come in disposable plastic containers or waxed cardboard boxes (unless you were buying perpetual (sorry UHT) milk), but it was delivered daily to your door in glass bottles which were collected next day when the next delivery came.....we didn't call it recycling in those days... it was common sense, and quite normal.
Here in Vancouver some years ago, some almost 40 years later, we found it harder and harder to buy milk in glass bottles and had to spend a lot of time and fuel resources running to the dairy once a week, so we gave up and now we buy in 4 litre plastic jugs which we collapse (or use for bulk water storage in our earthquake preparedness area at the back of the garage) and put in the plastic blue-box for the weekly recycling exercise, and then wear as a winter sweater some months or years later.
Things sure got technical.... now we have a blue box for metals and plastics, a blue bag for newsprint (but don't you dare add non-newsprint paper to that blue bag), a yellow bag for "all other paper type waste", we still have our own composter (also known as a red-wriggler worm farm) which does an amazing job of destroying vegetative food wastes and creating a worm-mold compost for the garden. No matter how much we put in it, it never seems to get more than half full....we use public transit as much as possible to avoid putting cars on the road and carbon mon and di-oxide into the atmosphere.
But there is still a garbage problem in our lives..... despite trying to purchase responsibly (in a city environment) and putting out our triple system recycling apparatus weekly, we still find that when we put our plastic garbage bin out roughly once a month (lined of course with a plastic garbage bag to keep the bin clean), what is in there is largely chicken bones and plastic and styrofoam wrappings. Plastic is the saviour and bane of modern society.... How on earth we as a species managed to live without plastic wrapping everything not just once, but twice and thrice, and then putting it into a cardboard box which is again wrapped in plastic I just do not understand! And please do not misunderstand....I am not just describing the awful amount of processed food we are encouraged to eat, but the organic produce from the local vegetable store which is unitised and presented on foam trays and wrapped in plastic!
Young people (and old ones too)... Please protest and get smarter.... we do not need all this plastic and cardboard . No, we cannot all have a cow on the patio and no, urban chickens are not welcome everywhere.
Stop to think. It all has to go somewhere and if its not piling up in your backyard, it sure as hell is beside someone elses!
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tiny impulses create value beyond count
When I was a kid I collected stamps...(LOL I still have them all!).... and people used to think I was nuts.... but I looked at each stamp and discovered that they told me a story, a story of time and change and progress and technology and geography and and and.... and from each stamp I learned just a little....I heard of far away islands with names like Montserrat and Naui, I discovered history of a great Commonwealth spanning the geography of Africa and Asia and the Americas...I could go on and on and on....I was fascinated by the things that people put on their stamps.... I learned about politics and trade. Although I kept all my stamps inside big albums, row upon row , I looked at them individually and thought of how each one should be individually framed and hung on a wall, individualised so that each could be studied and researched for its OWN meaning by the viewer. Again most people thought I was mad.
When I see a special stamp issued by one country or another to memorialise someone or something, I think about how significant that commemorated thing must be to earn its way onto a national stamp. But then I see the small bit of paper it is printed on and realise that most people never really look at the design, the fine craftsmanship, the art that is front of them, let alone look INTO the image and find out a bit more about that tiny reminder of something precious.
I hope that stamps never vanish from our world. The postal system may be cumbersome and expensive and to a degree inefficient in our world, but I think about the kids who will never have the chance or exposure to be so inspired if those tiny flashes of inspiration were to vanish. Never underestimate the impact the tiniest item has upon the mind of a child.
oldlincolnian
When I see a special stamp issued by one country or another to memorialise someone or something, I think about how significant that commemorated thing must be to earn its way onto a national stamp. But then I see the small bit of paper it is printed on and realise that most people never really look at the design, the fine craftsmanship, the art that is front of them, let alone look INTO the image and find out a bit more about that tiny reminder of something precious.
I hope that stamps never vanish from our world. The postal system may be cumbersome and expensive and to a degree inefficient in our world, but I think about the kids who will never have the chance or exposure to be so inspired if those tiny flashes of inspiration were to vanish. Never underestimate the impact the tiniest item has upon the mind of a child.
oldlincolnian
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Dating much older people
That may sound like a funny title to launch into.
The purpose of this post is to encourage both younger people to date older people and older people to encourage themselves and others to date younger people.
No No...don't go getting all juiced up and excited. This what I mean:
There is a great deal of value in younger people associating with, seeking out and spending time with much older people. As a young lad I used to spend a lot of time with my Grandfather who lived about a mile or more away. I was so lucky to have him there. I enjoyed his company first of all. He treated me as another person of equal stature to him, a fellow human being, and somehow in a totally non-condescending way. He would talk to me about pretty well anything, history, current affairs, whatever my current interests were, family history, his own youth and experiences, World War One in the trenches, World War Two having a son stuck in Malta, being a Police officer, his gardening interests, what he knew about plants, animals, mechanical things, politics and politicians...in fact you name it and he probably had conversations with me about it! Added to that he made a point of always introducing me to other older men anytime he had the chance.
In short, he engaged me in interesting conversations in ways which drew me into them. He gave me interesting examples, shared things with me. He showed me how the continuing reality of my own life was a continuation of many things which I could observe and learn from. I hated hearing " Well its time to head on home now ......"
My Grandfather died when I was 21, mere weeks after I graduated from my post-secondary education. I had so much more to share with him too. I missed him in 1973 and I am still missing him in 2010. It seems that it is just not possible that he has been gone 37 years now. I still talk to him and think about the input he would give me on any given subject.
However, loss aside, he gave me a continuing inspiration. Always engage older men, learn from them. And I have done that. In my jobs and career moves I have always sought out the senior people, usually men, though I very strongly believe that girls and younger women should seek out the wisdom of older women also. (Yes I do believe very fundamentally that men and women in general function in very different ways.)
So why have I chosen to write about this, my own very personal experience?
As stated at the beginning I want to encourage younger folk to deliberately seek out and date older folk and I want older folk to make themselves available to younger folk, not just if asked, because I think that generally younger folk will not engage older folk, knowing full darned well that they have nothing to offer. I think that older folk have an obligation to put themselves in the paths of the younger folk and seek out suitable venues to engage them. When I have seen this happen, I have seen great results!
The means can be as varied as chalk and cheese. Leaning on a fence and listening to the neighbour's child talk, eliciting their interests and then expanding upon the converstaion and showing a continuing interest can be fun. Just smiling at a child or younger person and saying "Hello! How are you today?" but then not dropping the ball when they reply with "I am well, thank you!" but expanding it, gradually, until the younger one opens up a little.
I know that this can in certain circumstances be a little uncomfortable. Here is an example from my own experience. I have Russian neighbours. Educated people. They have a young daughter with an inquisitive smile and bright red hair. At the age of 5 or 6 this little one spoke both Russian and English quite flawlessly and she asked a lot of questions. Me being me, she got answers, and she asked more! Sometimes when the air wasn't too cool or too wet she'd be outside sitting on the wall, watching the world go by and I would greet her and join her, and before long we would be having a great back and forth conversation appropriate to her age but being handled by her at a level way over her age. Really inquisitive that one!
One day another neighbour made a comment to me that "I seemed to be spending a lot of attention to that young girl"... the suggestion being that it was considered inappropriate. It had never dawned on me to see it in that light, but obviously it was possible that there was such a perception in the mind of some. Consequently I spoke to her parents and said "Look, your daughter and I like to sit on the wall and chat... and you have seen and heard us do this many times. I think I need to ask you..... Do you mind me doing that with her? Some people seem to think its inappropriate."
I was granted permission quite gladly. As time went by she started into school and was placed in a French langauge immersion school and very quickly it became apparent that she was learning French very fast, so our conversations turned into conversations in French. That small girl is now almost 10 and speaks Russian, English and French very comfortably. Her parents do not speak French (and I dare say she gets plenty of it in school), but its nice to sit down from time to time on the wall and speak French with her. As she gets older, she has engaged more with her own friends and is less available to chat with now but a small sort of bond developed and I always get a small smile and a Hello!
Do I have any pretentions that this experience changed her life? No not really. However it puts me in mind of a man whom I considered ancient when I was 8 years old, though he was maybe only 10 years my senior today. My family used to visit the same small seaside village every year and we had the use of a beach hut up on the seawall. Adjacent to our hut (which was named Shibden) was a shelter with seats for the public to sit and watch the world go by or to meet, or shelter from the rain. On the other side of that shelter was another beach hut occupied by a family who always brought "grandfather" along with them. The children of that family were a little older than me and at that age it meant that we did not associate, but "grandfather" used to sit in front of their hut and wittle away at wood with a pocket knife, for hour after hour after hour. This facinated me. He had a windbeaten, leathery, old farmer's face, big gnarled hands and a lovely smile whenever anyone approached him (which didn't seem to be often). I made up my mind to ask him about whatever it was he was doing with a lump of wood and a knife.
He explained to me that it was "just something to do", making shapes or spoons or whatever took his fancy. It seemed that he wanted to have something to do with his usually busy hands while dragged off to the seaside by his family. From what I could see his own family didn't spend much time with him, so I made a point of doing that. I discovered that he was a farmer and lived in the Lincolnshire village of Billinghay, which for some reason fascinated me as a name. His family always dragged him away for this 2 week period while his crops were growing, but he was like a fish out of water away from his farm. So he carved wood!
I learned so much from him about farming in the two years when I saw him for 2 weeks at a time. Then he stopped coming with them the next year and then they stopped coming to the same location too. However, its obvious that I have never ever forgotten about this man or the impression he made upon me. He gave me his time and we had some great conversations. He added depth and breadth to my life.
We should all try to do that for those who are younger than us, no matter what we have to offer.
Even as an aging man myself, I continue to seek out the company and wisdom of older men. More on Charley and Woody later!
The purpose of this post is to encourage both younger people to date older people and older people to encourage themselves and others to date younger people.
No No...don't go getting all juiced up and excited. This what I mean:
There is a great deal of value in younger people associating with, seeking out and spending time with much older people. As a young lad I used to spend a lot of time with my Grandfather who lived about a mile or more away. I was so lucky to have him there. I enjoyed his company first of all. He treated me as another person of equal stature to him, a fellow human being, and somehow in a totally non-condescending way. He would talk to me about pretty well anything, history, current affairs, whatever my current interests were, family history, his own youth and experiences, World War One in the trenches, World War Two having a son stuck in Malta, being a Police officer, his gardening interests, what he knew about plants, animals, mechanical things, politics and politicians...in fact you name it and he probably had conversations with me about it! Added to that he made a point of always introducing me to other older men anytime he had the chance.
In short, he engaged me in interesting conversations in ways which drew me into them. He gave me interesting examples, shared things with me. He showed me how the continuing reality of my own life was a continuation of many things which I could observe and learn from. I hated hearing " Well its time to head on home now ......"
My Grandfather died when I was 21, mere weeks after I graduated from my post-secondary education. I had so much more to share with him too. I missed him in 1973 and I am still missing him in 2010. It seems that it is just not possible that he has been gone 37 years now. I still talk to him and think about the input he would give me on any given subject.
However, loss aside, he gave me a continuing inspiration. Always engage older men, learn from them. And I have done that. In my jobs and career moves I have always sought out the senior people, usually men, though I very strongly believe that girls and younger women should seek out the wisdom of older women also. (Yes I do believe very fundamentally that men and women in general function in very different ways.)
So why have I chosen to write about this, my own very personal experience?
As stated at the beginning I want to encourage younger folk to deliberately seek out and date older folk and I want older folk to make themselves available to younger folk, not just if asked, because I think that generally younger folk will not engage older folk, knowing full darned well that they have nothing to offer. I think that older folk have an obligation to put themselves in the paths of the younger folk and seek out suitable venues to engage them. When I have seen this happen, I have seen great results!
The means can be as varied as chalk and cheese. Leaning on a fence and listening to the neighbour's child talk, eliciting their interests and then expanding upon the converstaion and showing a continuing interest can be fun. Just smiling at a child or younger person and saying "Hello! How are you today?" but then not dropping the ball when they reply with "I am well, thank you!" but expanding it, gradually, until the younger one opens up a little.
I know that this can in certain circumstances be a little uncomfortable. Here is an example from my own experience. I have Russian neighbours. Educated people. They have a young daughter with an inquisitive smile and bright red hair. At the age of 5 or 6 this little one spoke both Russian and English quite flawlessly and she asked a lot of questions. Me being me, she got answers, and she asked more! Sometimes when the air wasn't too cool or too wet she'd be outside sitting on the wall, watching the world go by and I would greet her and join her, and before long we would be having a great back and forth conversation appropriate to her age but being handled by her at a level way over her age. Really inquisitive that one!
One day another neighbour made a comment to me that "I seemed to be spending a lot of attention to that young girl"... the suggestion being that it was considered inappropriate. It had never dawned on me to see it in that light, but obviously it was possible that there was such a perception in the mind of some. Consequently I spoke to her parents and said "Look, your daughter and I like to sit on the wall and chat... and you have seen and heard us do this many times. I think I need to ask you..... Do you mind me doing that with her? Some people seem to think its inappropriate."
I was granted permission quite gladly. As time went by she started into school and was placed in a French langauge immersion school and very quickly it became apparent that she was learning French very fast, so our conversations turned into conversations in French. That small girl is now almost 10 and speaks Russian, English and French very comfortably. Her parents do not speak French (and I dare say she gets plenty of it in school), but its nice to sit down from time to time on the wall and speak French with her. As she gets older, she has engaged more with her own friends and is less available to chat with now but a small sort of bond developed and I always get a small smile and a Hello!
Do I have any pretentions that this experience changed her life? No not really. However it puts me in mind of a man whom I considered ancient when I was 8 years old, though he was maybe only 10 years my senior today. My family used to visit the same small seaside village every year and we had the use of a beach hut up on the seawall. Adjacent to our hut (which was named Shibden) was a shelter with seats for the public to sit and watch the world go by or to meet, or shelter from the rain. On the other side of that shelter was another beach hut occupied by a family who always brought "grandfather" along with them. The children of that family were a little older than me and at that age it meant that we did not associate, but "grandfather" used to sit in front of their hut and wittle away at wood with a pocket knife, for hour after hour after hour. This facinated me. He had a windbeaten, leathery, old farmer's face, big gnarled hands and a lovely smile whenever anyone approached him (which didn't seem to be often). I made up my mind to ask him about whatever it was he was doing with a lump of wood and a knife.
He explained to me that it was "just something to do", making shapes or spoons or whatever took his fancy. It seemed that he wanted to have something to do with his usually busy hands while dragged off to the seaside by his family. From what I could see his own family didn't spend much time with him, so I made a point of doing that. I discovered that he was a farmer and lived in the Lincolnshire village of Billinghay, which for some reason fascinated me as a name. His family always dragged him away for this 2 week period while his crops were growing, but he was like a fish out of water away from his farm. So he carved wood!
I learned so much from him about farming in the two years when I saw him for 2 weeks at a time. Then he stopped coming with them the next year and then they stopped coming to the same location too. However, its obvious that I have never ever forgotten about this man or the impression he made upon me. He gave me his time and we had some great conversations. He added depth and breadth to my life.
We should all try to do that for those who are younger than us, no matter what we have to offer.
Even as an aging man myself, I continue to seek out the company and wisdom of older men. More on Charley and Woody later!
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Enigma
This morning Tom emailed me with some deeply personal comments about his own experiences as a young fellow and how they are impacting him as an "aging" man. Tom is less verbose than I am, and he managed to bring to mind for me that one of my proposed "discussions" was about Enigma. I was thinking to discuss this sometime soon, but the poignancy of his mail encouraged me to spend some time on a Sunday morning and exercise my two finger typing skills before my day got too complicated.
Enigma. Something that defies explanation by rational means. I suppose the very concept of trying to add value to young lives can be considered enigmatic. I refer back to an earlier comment that the more you understand, the harder it is to explain it. As one gains experience in life, as experience after experience come together like the pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle with no hard edges, slowly making a discernable and to some degree predictable pattern out of the mess of life's experiences, it becomes harder and harder teach that it is the process in which lies the value rather than the end result.
Read that again.... that is the enigma....an argument against itself.
Not everyone likes jigsaw puzzles. The presentation packaging gives them an image of what to expect in the end result. Why take it further? Its a picture of Constable's painting of Dedham Mill. So what? Who was Constable anyway? When does the pub open?
Others may look at the packaging, the same packaging and see an amazing image, and be curious about the way it impacts their eyes and senses and be curious as to who and what this fellow Constable was and what was he trying to achieve and go on to look him up in the Library or on the Internet and use that as a springboard to further exploration of art and culture
Others may take the puzzle, open the packaging, scatter the pieces, and simply become immersed in the act of assembly of the adjacently matching elements of the puzzle, entralled by the complexity of the image. An urge to complete the task for the sake of it.
And still others may become immersed in the complexity of the assembly but carefully study the elements contained in each small piece and then look at the complexity of the art as it assembles and perhaps be driven to go and find the artwork in its original form and stare into its rurality.
Each response is a valid response. How each response comes about is an enigma. Clearly each response brings about a different result. It is clearly inappropriate to judge the response, but it is part of human reality to consider the response in light of the viewer's self perception and sense of their own life.
Parents, in their own way, informed by their own sense of being and aggregated experience in life, try to influence to a greater or lesser degree the experiences of their children. Adults do the same for the young, and older people do the same for younger adults. It is a cycle, a natural cycle. It is an enigma that seems to grow stronger with age. Most everyone experiences that feeling of wanting to add value to younger lives to some degree or another and the older we become, the less we seem able to explain to our younger cohorts how important and valuable it is to learn in this way.
At the same time, winding the clock backwards instead of forwards, the young seem, the younger they get, to reject that the experience of others has any value. There is a striving in the human animal to learn from experience, but their own, not that of others which may project them further forwards. It seems that we are destined for the most part to continually re-invent forward motion, thus standing largely on the spot, with perhaps only marginal forward motion evident.
The power of the human mind is so vast, yet we faithfully resist applying it. In a technological sense we seem to need bigger and bigger hard drives in our computers to store and to be able to re-use more and more "already done" work, yet we cannot make the connection that this applies to life also. Sadly we seem to find the offer of input an affront to our personal growth. This is especially noticable in the young. Yet we must not give up in our effort to add value to young lives, no matter how fruitless and frustrating it may feel at times. Once in a while it is welcomed.
It is noticable that Newton was correct. When mankind accepts the foundation of knowledge we have already developed and stands on its shoulders and looks further ahead, we can make vaste strides. Yet when we must keep re-inventing old things we can actually lose knowledge. There are many examples of lost learning. We keep finding ancient things again and what they show us about understandings we have since lost is actually awe inspiring at times, humbling at others.
What an Enigma!
Enigma. Something that defies explanation by rational means. I suppose the very concept of trying to add value to young lives can be considered enigmatic. I refer back to an earlier comment that the more you understand, the harder it is to explain it. As one gains experience in life, as experience after experience come together like the pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle with no hard edges, slowly making a discernable and to some degree predictable pattern out of the mess of life's experiences, it becomes harder and harder teach that it is the process in which lies the value rather than the end result.
Read that again.... that is the enigma....an argument against itself.
Not everyone likes jigsaw puzzles. The presentation packaging gives them an image of what to expect in the end result. Why take it further? Its a picture of Constable's painting of Dedham Mill. So what? Who was Constable anyway? When does the pub open?
Others may look at the packaging, the same packaging and see an amazing image, and be curious about the way it impacts their eyes and senses and be curious as to who and what this fellow Constable was and what was he trying to achieve and go on to look him up in the Library or on the Internet and use that as a springboard to further exploration of art and culture
Others may take the puzzle, open the packaging, scatter the pieces, and simply become immersed in the act of assembly of the adjacently matching elements of the puzzle, entralled by the complexity of the image. An urge to complete the task for the sake of it.
And still others may become immersed in the complexity of the assembly but carefully study the elements contained in each small piece and then look at the complexity of the art as it assembles and perhaps be driven to go and find the artwork in its original form and stare into its rurality.
Each response is a valid response. How each response comes about is an enigma. Clearly each response brings about a different result. It is clearly inappropriate to judge the response, but it is part of human reality to consider the response in light of the viewer's self perception and sense of their own life.
Parents, in their own way, informed by their own sense of being and aggregated experience in life, try to influence to a greater or lesser degree the experiences of their children. Adults do the same for the young, and older people do the same for younger adults. It is a cycle, a natural cycle. It is an enigma that seems to grow stronger with age. Most everyone experiences that feeling of wanting to add value to younger lives to some degree or another and the older we become, the less we seem able to explain to our younger cohorts how important and valuable it is to learn in this way.
At the same time, winding the clock backwards instead of forwards, the young seem, the younger they get, to reject that the experience of others has any value. There is a striving in the human animal to learn from experience, but their own, not that of others which may project them further forwards. It seems that we are destined for the most part to continually re-invent forward motion, thus standing largely on the spot, with perhaps only marginal forward motion evident.
The power of the human mind is so vast, yet we faithfully resist applying it. In a technological sense we seem to need bigger and bigger hard drives in our computers to store and to be able to re-use more and more "already done" work, yet we cannot make the connection that this applies to life also. Sadly we seem to find the offer of input an affront to our personal growth. This is especially noticable in the young. Yet we must not give up in our effort to add value to young lives, no matter how fruitless and frustrating it may feel at times. Once in a while it is welcomed.
It is noticable that Newton was correct. When mankind accepts the foundation of knowledge we have already developed and stands on its shoulders and looks further ahead, we can make vaste strides. Yet when we must keep re-inventing old things we can actually lose knowledge. There are many examples of lost learning. We keep finding ancient things again and what they show us about understandings we have since lost is actually awe inspiring at times, humbling at others.
What an Enigma!
Shaken, not stirred
I had the privilege at several points in my life, after my own post secondary education, to teach in several post secondary institutions, both in UK and in Canada. I viewed these opportunities with a sense of awe, for a while at least.
When I was a post-secondary student myself in UK, I went off full of trepidation into a new, rather more liberal world than the one I had inhabited during my secondary education, in a school with almost a thousand years of history. The new environment was going to be different. Somehow I was going to learn the "real stuff" now from "professors" who somehow were far more elevated than the teachers I had had in secondary education. How wrong I was.
They were friendlier, more familiar for the most part. They failed to inspire me. Some were buffoons, posers, some seemed interested in the art and notion of genuinely teaching, but failed to grab my attention. I wanted to learn and synthesize, while it seemed that some of my classmates were rather putting in time before the student union bar opened. It was an eye opener to personal responsibility. If I wanted to learn something, I had to use what I was hearing as a spring board for further personal study of something else other than the sudsy bottom of a beer glass. I have to admit that at times the lure of the beer glass was inordinately strong.
Upon my own graduation, I was amazed to find that my application to work in a another University department in Wales was accepted. I was appointed to the highest salary ever granted a graduate of my program and I thought I had it made. Visions of professorial grandeur after some very interesting work periods were visualised.
Reality was quite different. I was actually expected to sit in front of a class and teach. I was younger than some of my students. Ooooer! That was quite disconcerting. These were bright, intelligent people. I was expected to impart things to them which would expand their knowledge and in a way that made it interesting for them. This was serious business! I knew instantly that I had to find a way to engage these people. Then I remembered where I had just come from and understood that they were thinking about how long it was to get to the student union bar. Non the less they engaged me and put effort into their studies because I worked hard to make the theoretical material clearly relevant to things they would use and need to know in a practical sense in their working life. This seemed important to do and it motivated me. However, it didn't take long to learn that many of these "young folk" were working to just get through because the course was a compulsory component of a bigger program.
I learned here what it took to catch the imagination and discovered that only a small number could be hooked while the rest were "C-ing their way through". However there was a willingness and a basic ability to LEARN.
Later, while again teaching, but now in the post secondary system in Canada, I learned that teaching in different countries is like teaching on different planets. There are similarities, but the difference is greater than I could have imagined.
Growing up in UK, attending an all boys school where the "Masters" wore their academic gowns, the boys wore a strictly controlled uniform and because of being a product of the 50's and 60's in England, I had grown up in a relatively stiff, perhaps stuffy, traditional world, where respect was an integral part of both the boy's life and for the most part the Masters' too. While this heaviness had eased in my UK post-secondary experience, that attitude of mind, that way of being, was deeply ingrained in me and those around me. You gave and got respect while earning it.
Teaching in Canada was a shock. There were very touchy/feely situations in place and the students were your "client" and you were there to "serve" them. At the end of each course, the students evaluated the teacher and security and tenure depended on one's popularity in the class. This made properly evaluating the effort and endeavour of the student and equitably grading their work very difficult in some cases. The students bore an air of entitlement, some very much so. They had paid heavily to attend the class and they came into it with a sense of expectation of getting high grades. Marks on the whole it seemed were given far more liberally in that system than the one I had grown up in and experienced myself. People complained bitterly if their mark was lower than 75%, where my experience had been that to achieve 75% was considered a good mark.
What struck me the most when teaching highly complex and mathematical/technical matters to 18 year olds was that they came into the system woefully unprepared to work, ill-prepared to study and largely incapable when it came to literacy. I was shocked. While some may be offended by the comment, I was amazed that some had graduated High School. This was late 1970's to early 1980's. Me daring to make such comments to my cohorts at that time was considered to be in poor taste and rather shocking. Interestingly I note that some post-secondary teachers today are still making loud noises more generally about this in Canada.
Well, I had a job to do, a job I rather enjoyed. I wanted to impart this possibly complex knowledge to the students and knowing my material well, I worked very hard at making it relevant and contextual and exemplified in practical hands-on ways. With relatively small classes, the opportunity to learn was high for the students, but I found all too often that a dumb, angry look took them and no matter how I simplified things and gave them techniques to use to aid the learning process, they struggled and did not exemplify "learning".
I started to question myself. Do I know my material? Am I teaching in a digestible way? I modified and modified to the point that I was starting to dumb-down the content of the material to a point that was unacceptible for the level of coursework. No matter what I did, a too substantial portion of the class was simply not getting it and was exhibiting strong anger towards myself because of it. I was verbally threatened, promised bad reviews if the marks didn't come up. Finally I talked this through with my colleagues. They empathised. They were also aware that the students seemed to be struggling in general. I sat down with my students and tried to ascertain what the blocks to learning were. Some blamed my cultured English accent and said I was a snob. That certainly helped. I was shocked by the ATTITUDE of the students who were struggling. Their sense of entitlement was enormous. They had paid their fees and they expected a passing grade. It was that simple. They had bought their education as a commodity. Probing brought out that they rarely if ever did assigned reading outside of whatever I was prattling on about in class. They never reviewed their incomplete notes or read to xpand their understanding and they never came to me in my office for aid, despite my repeated offering to set up coaching and review.
In the end I understood what they expected. They wanted me to open their cranium, poor in measured amounts of knowledge which would instantly form a part of their reality, close the cranium again and shake gently to ensure an even coating of knowlege on the inside of their empty skulls, rather than shake their world and drive them to explore it.
I was shaken by this experience and certainly not stirred to continue for long in the environment.
Teaching those who pay for their education is no-where near as effective as teaching those who earn their education.
oldlincolnian
When I was a post-secondary student myself in UK, I went off full of trepidation into a new, rather more liberal world than the one I had inhabited during my secondary education, in a school with almost a thousand years of history. The new environment was going to be different. Somehow I was going to learn the "real stuff" now from "professors" who somehow were far more elevated than the teachers I had had in secondary education. How wrong I was.
They were friendlier, more familiar for the most part. They failed to inspire me. Some were buffoons, posers, some seemed interested in the art and notion of genuinely teaching, but failed to grab my attention. I wanted to learn and synthesize, while it seemed that some of my classmates were rather putting in time before the student union bar opened. It was an eye opener to personal responsibility. If I wanted to learn something, I had to use what I was hearing as a spring board for further personal study of something else other than the sudsy bottom of a beer glass. I have to admit that at times the lure of the beer glass was inordinately strong.
Upon my own graduation, I was amazed to find that my application to work in a another University department in Wales was accepted. I was appointed to the highest salary ever granted a graduate of my program and I thought I had it made. Visions of professorial grandeur after some very interesting work periods were visualised.
Reality was quite different. I was actually expected to sit in front of a class and teach. I was younger than some of my students. Ooooer! That was quite disconcerting. These were bright, intelligent people. I was expected to impart things to them which would expand their knowledge and in a way that made it interesting for them. This was serious business! I knew instantly that I had to find a way to engage these people. Then I remembered where I had just come from and understood that they were thinking about how long it was to get to the student union bar. Non the less they engaged me and put effort into their studies because I worked hard to make the theoretical material clearly relevant to things they would use and need to know in a practical sense in their working life. This seemed important to do and it motivated me. However, it didn't take long to learn that many of these "young folk" were working to just get through because the course was a compulsory component of a bigger program.
I learned here what it took to catch the imagination and discovered that only a small number could be hooked while the rest were "C-ing their way through". However there was a willingness and a basic ability to LEARN.
Later, while again teaching, but now in the post secondary system in Canada, I learned that teaching in different countries is like teaching on different planets. There are similarities, but the difference is greater than I could have imagined.
Growing up in UK, attending an all boys school where the "Masters" wore their academic gowns, the boys wore a strictly controlled uniform and because of being a product of the 50's and 60's in England, I had grown up in a relatively stiff, perhaps stuffy, traditional world, where respect was an integral part of both the boy's life and for the most part the Masters' too. While this heaviness had eased in my UK post-secondary experience, that attitude of mind, that way of being, was deeply ingrained in me and those around me. You gave and got respect while earning it.
Teaching in Canada was a shock. There were very touchy/feely situations in place and the students were your "client" and you were there to "serve" them. At the end of each course, the students evaluated the teacher and security and tenure depended on one's popularity in the class. This made properly evaluating the effort and endeavour of the student and equitably grading their work very difficult in some cases. The students bore an air of entitlement, some very much so. They had paid heavily to attend the class and they came into it with a sense of expectation of getting high grades. Marks on the whole it seemed were given far more liberally in that system than the one I had grown up in and experienced myself. People complained bitterly if their mark was lower than 75%, where my experience had been that to achieve 75% was considered a good mark.
What struck me the most when teaching highly complex and mathematical/technical matters to 18 year olds was that they came into the system woefully unprepared to work, ill-prepared to study and largely incapable when it came to literacy. I was shocked. While some may be offended by the comment, I was amazed that some had graduated High School. This was late 1970's to early 1980's. Me daring to make such comments to my cohorts at that time was considered to be in poor taste and rather shocking. Interestingly I note that some post-secondary teachers today are still making loud noises more generally about this in Canada.
Well, I had a job to do, a job I rather enjoyed. I wanted to impart this possibly complex knowledge to the students and knowing my material well, I worked very hard at making it relevant and contextual and exemplified in practical hands-on ways. With relatively small classes, the opportunity to learn was high for the students, but I found all too often that a dumb, angry look took them and no matter how I simplified things and gave them techniques to use to aid the learning process, they struggled and did not exemplify "learning".
I started to question myself. Do I know my material? Am I teaching in a digestible way? I modified and modified to the point that I was starting to dumb-down the content of the material to a point that was unacceptible for the level of coursework. No matter what I did, a too substantial portion of the class was simply not getting it and was exhibiting strong anger towards myself because of it. I was verbally threatened, promised bad reviews if the marks didn't come up. Finally I talked this through with my colleagues. They empathised. They were also aware that the students seemed to be struggling in general. I sat down with my students and tried to ascertain what the blocks to learning were. Some blamed my cultured English accent and said I was a snob. That certainly helped. I was shocked by the ATTITUDE of the students who were struggling. Their sense of entitlement was enormous. They had paid their fees and they expected a passing grade. It was that simple. They had bought their education as a commodity. Probing brought out that they rarely if ever did assigned reading outside of whatever I was prattling on about in class. They never reviewed their incomplete notes or read to xpand their understanding and they never came to me in my office for aid, despite my repeated offering to set up coaching and review.
In the end I understood what they expected. They wanted me to open their cranium, poor in measured amounts of knowledge which would instantly form a part of their reality, close the cranium again and shake gently to ensure an even coating of knowlege on the inside of their empty skulls, rather than shake their world and drive them to explore it.
I was shaken by this experience and certainly not stirred to continue for long in the environment.
Teaching those who pay for their education is no-where near as effective as teaching those who earn their education.
oldlincolnian
Thursday, April 29, 2010
First came "If you don't understand, its OK to ask!"
I cannot remember how many times my Father told me, "If you don't understand something, its OK to ask!"
It must have been happening when I was quite young because it was and has always been a mantra for me. I hear that phrase in my head every time I don't understand, or want to know something about what is the current event or conversation. I suppose it served me well for the longest time, but it came home to roost when at the age of about six I was in the last year of infant school, preparing for the move to elementary school. (I started school at the age of 4 in UK). We had a parent/teacher night and we had assembled all of our work for our parents to see. We were supposed to walk our parents through what we had been doing in school and it was an opportunity for our parents to talk to the classroom teacher.
My classroom teacher was, as I remember it, an ancient, wizzened lady with frizzy grey hair and a stoop. My Father asked her how I was doing in school and she commented that I was doing very well (how pleased I was to hear that!) but then she added that there was one very real problem. My Father was anxious to hear what that was and he asked. The reply? "He is always asking questions!"
My Father looked suprised at the response and said in my defence "I am pleased to hear it! I have always told him that if you don't understand something to not be afraid to ask." The teacher's response I can still hear as clearly today as I heard it 52 years ago. "Yes, but not in the middle of a test!"
oldlincolnian
It must have been happening when I was quite young because it was and has always been a mantra for me. I hear that phrase in my head every time I don't understand, or want to know something about what is the current event or conversation. I suppose it served me well for the longest time, but it came home to roost when at the age of about six I was in the last year of infant school, preparing for the move to elementary school. (I started school at the age of 4 in UK). We had a parent/teacher night and we had assembled all of our work for our parents to see. We were supposed to walk our parents through what we had been doing in school and it was an opportunity for our parents to talk to the classroom teacher.
My classroom teacher was, as I remember it, an ancient, wizzened lady with frizzy grey hair and a stoop. My Father asked her how I was doing in school and she commented that I was doing very well (how pleased I was to hear that!) but then she added that there was one very real problem. My Father was anxious to hear what that was and he asked. The reply? "He is always asking questions!"
My Father looked suprised at the response and said in my defence "I am pleased to hear it! I have always told him that if you don't understand something to not be afraid to ask." The teacher's response I can still hear as clearly today as I heard it 52 years ago. "Yes, but not in the middle of a test!"
oldlincolnian
What is important about adding value to young lives?
For a very long time in my ever expanding number of years I have benefitted from the advice of others around me. Not all of it was given as advice, although "do this" and "do that" certainly formed part of my education. Much came from the demonstration of "how to" and a great deal came from the observation, admittedly tainted by own perception, of "what not to do".
I have also learned, largely from observation yet backed up by the comments of others around me, that many people do not learn much from advice or experience. In fact it has caused a quandry for me in trying to understand how it can be that many do not learn.
This has left me with a rather poor opinion of the majority of people who seem to operate in the middle to very low ground of awareness and perception. This came to me naturally. It was not born out of innate personal rudeness or a sense of arrogance. However, indeed I suppose that over time I have upset a number of people who fall into this middle to lower ground, as they consider me to be arrogant (or one of many other names I have been called).
Having a deeply enquiring mind ever since I was a small child allowed me to always wonder why this unpopularity and malperception of myself existed. It took me a very long time to realise it was happening, longer to come to terms with it and longer still to have the courage to face up to it and understand how it may have come about and how to control it.
Well, as of this writing I am now 58 years old. I am still as "arrogant" as I ever was and in some ways I suppose that I grow more so and feel the need to explore this more.
I think I have come to some understanding of why it is that people perceive me so, as seen from their perspective, yet it does not clarify for me why it is that they see this as they do. The problem as I understand it now is that I have been exposed to a great deal, I have exposed myself to a great deal, I am an observer and gifted with intelligence, literacy and an ability to express myself. The problem is that what is lacking is an audience of companions who are operating on a like frequency.
Such people are, sadly for me, few and far between.
However, during my search for self understanding I have had the good fortune to meet others who are as "able" as I am blessed to be and some more who are vastly more able and willing to share their insight.
As a younger man I once read a quote attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. I forget now the precise quotation, but it is very close to this:
IF I HAVE UNDERSTOOD MUCH, IT IS BECAUSE I HAVE STOOD ON THE SHOULDERS OF GREAT MEN AND LOOKED FURTHER.
This has been very important to me. I have been blessed with the opportunity to stand beside and observe and learn from men and women who have experienced much more than I have. I have sought them out and inserted myself in their lives, to a greater or lesser degree. This happened because I came from very humble and ordinary roots but always wanted to see and understand more than my day by day environment could offer me.
Some of these people were not even aware I was learning from them. Some most definitely were. What placed me in a state of awe around them was that they willingly gave of their experience when asked. They opened up their world, their experience bank and their own understanding as developed from their world and shared it, allowing me to take from it what I wanted, and helping me to expand upon the experience.
I do not think I was always aware that this was happening at the time. Perhaps they were not either? I think and believe that we are not always aware of what we are contributing to others, even when it is good; however this means that we are not always aware of what we are contributing to others when it is bad, and that should be a large cause for concern and a signal to us to be as aware as we can of our thoughts, actions and behaviours towards those whom we may influence.
Non-the-less, I have learned to create good out of bad and how to do better from good. I have come to own that reality as a form of self-consciousness. I try to be an active helper, a catalyst, a signpost to generosity of self. Alas I am not perfect. I have also from time to time done harm, almost never maliciously, but even to that I must confess, thankfully in small measure.
In my meanderings through many fields in life I have met, literally and metaphorically, people of a great number of sorts in a large number of countries. This has been good for me as I have been placed face to face with realities which are quite different in experience and exposure to my own. Some of these people have been a real challenge to me as their reality was from point to point quite divergeant from my own. Spending time with these people was quite literally hard on me as everything was questioned. My self-created precepts were under attack and review from outside and within, all the time being honed and modified, improved and converted because of the influence of these people.
I have not stayed in the small circle of same-age friends in small-town England where I grew up. I have not fallen into a comfortable life of familiar things which cosset and cradle one into a sense of narrow awareness. I have stood on the edge of precipices and on the top of rocky crags which I have had to struggle to climb and have been hurt physically and emotionally by some of the experiences endured reaching the high ground. I have benefitted and grown stronger.
In graduate school, learning from some good men who had some very esoteric understanding of life and ways of being, I was presented with a short poem. Its origin is unknown to me, though I think that it is likely it was penned by the man who gave it to me. I do not recall all of its words, but its meaning helped me to understand why it is that I find myself unpopular. "The more you understand, the less you can ever explain".
This can be seen as a curse! But it is indeed true. This explained to me why great men cannot ever really pass on their wisdom as an identifiable block of conscious understanding. Each and every generation must learn by repeating the learning of their forbears, but possibly because of a marginal willingness to learn, with a small increment of wisdom and then, standing on their shoulders, look further, and then repeat the cycle.
Sadly it is hard to have this understood by the young. My own son fights the notion, expressing to me that he desires to make ALL his own mistakes and learn from them for himself. He doesn't often want to know what we know. This is deeply saddening. It is part of the arrogance of youth. I can see that from age 58 and with a lot of experience in life to date. I am just grateful to my own Grandfather that he ignored this element which I am sure I must to some extent have exhibited early on and proceeded to tell me about real life and how to deal with it.
So this blog is dedicated to my Grandfather, Robert Reuben Langley 1891-1973
What he started in me I want to recruit other men and women into. I believe strongly in this and I shall speak it into being by writing here, as others have encouraged me to do, about that which comes to me day by day. I hope that others will find some value in what I write, that it will provoke thought in many ways on many subjects and add value to the lives of others.
My aim is to offer and expand my experience for the consumption of others. If you are reading this, you are welcome to email me to add your own perspective.
oldlincolnian
I have also learned, largely from observation yet backed up by the comments of others around me, that many people do not learn much from advice or experience. In fact it has caused a quandry for me in trying to understand how it can be that many do not learn.
This has left me with a rather poor opinion of the majority of people who seem to operate in the middle to very low ground of awareness and perception. This came to me naturally. It was not born out of innate personal rudeness or a sense of arrogance. However, indeed I suppose that over time I have upset a number of people who fall into this middle to lower ground, as they consider me to be arrogant (or one of many other names I have been called).
Having a deeply enquiring mind ever since I was a small child allowed me to always wonder why this unpopularity and malperception of myself existed. It took me a very long time to realise it was happening, longer to come to terms with it and longer still to have the courage to face up to it and understand how it may have come about and how to control it.
Well, as of this writing I am now 58 years old. I am still as "arrogant" as I ever was and in some ways I suppose that I grow more so and feel the need to explore this more.
I think I have come to some understanding of why it is that people perceive me so, as seen from their perspective, yet it does not clarify for me why it is that they see this as they do. The problem as I understand it now is that I have been exposed to a great deal, I have exposed myself to a great deal, I am an observer and gifted with intelligence, literacy and an ability to express myself. The problem is that what is lacking is an audience of companions who are operating on a like frequency.
Such people are, sadly for me, few and far between.
However, during my search for self understanding I have had the good fortune to meet others who are as "able" as I am blessed to be and some more who are vastly more able and willing to share their insight.
As a younger man I once read a quote attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. I forget now the precise quotation, but it is very close to this:
IF I HAVE UNDERSTOOD MUCH, IT IS BECAUSE I HAVE STOOD ON THE SHOULDERS OF GREAT MEN AND LOOKED FURTHER.
This has been very important to me. I have been blessed with the opportunity to stand beside and observe and learn from men and women who have experienced much more than I have. I have sought them out and inserted myself in their lives, to a greater or lesser degree. This happened because I came from very humble and ordinary roots but always wanted to see and understand more than my day by day environment could offer me.
Some of these people were not even aware I was learning from them. Some most definitely were. What placed me in a state of awe around them was that they willingly gave of their experience when asked. They opened up their world, their experience bank and their own understanding as developed from their world and shared it, allowing me to take from it what I wanted, and helping me to expand upon the experience.
I do not think I was always aware that this was happening at the time. Perhaps they were not either? I think and believe that we are not always aware of what we are contributing to others, even when it is good; however this means that we are not always aware of what we are contributing to others when it is bad, and that should be a large cause for concern and a signal to us to be as aware as we can of our thoughts, actions and behaviours towards those whom we may influence.
Non-the-less, I have learned to create good out of bad and how to do better from good. I have come to own that reality as a form of self-consciousness. I try to be an active helper, a catalyst, a signpost to generosity of self. Alas I am not perfect. I have also from time to time done harm, almost never maliciously, but even to that I must confess, thankfully in small measure.
In my meanderings through many fields in life I have met, literally and metaphorically, people of a great number of sorts in a large number of countries. This has been good for me as I have been placed face to face with realities which are quite different in experience and exposure to my own. Some of these people have been a real challenge to me as their reality was from point to point quite divergeant from my own. Spending time with these people was quite literally hard on me as everything was questioned. My self-created precepts were under attack and review from outside and within, all the time being honed and modified, improved and converted because of the influence of these people.
I have not stayed in the small circle of same-age friends in small-town England where I grew up. I have not fallen into a comfortable life of familiar things which cosset and cradle one into a sense of narrow awareness. I have stood on the edge of precipices and on the top of rocky crags which I have had to struggle to climb and have been hurt physically and emotionally by some of the experiences endured reaching the high ground. I have benefitted and grown stronger.
In graduate school, learning from some good men who had some very esoteric understanding of life and ways of being, I was presented with a short poem. Its origin is unknown to me, though I think that it is likely it was penned by the man who gave it to me. I do not recall all of its words, but its meaning helped me to understand why it is that I find myself unpopular. "The more you understand, the less you can ever explain".
This can be seen as a curse! But it is indeed true. This explained to me why great men cannot ever really pass on their wisdom as an identifiable block of conscious understanding. Each and every generation must learn by repeating the learning of their forbears, but possibly because of a marginal willingness to learn, with a small increment of wisdom and then, standing on their shoulders, look further, and then repeat the cycle.
Sadly it is hard to have this understood by the young. My own son fights the notion, expressing to me that he desires to make ALL his own mistakes and learn from them for himself. He doesn't often want to know what we know. This is deeply saddening. It is part of the arrogance of youth. I can see that from age 58 and with a lot of experience in life to date. I am just grateful to my own Grandfather that he ignored this element which I am sure I must to some extent have exhibited early on and proceeded to tell me about real life and how to deal with it.
So this blog is dedicated to my Grandfather, Robert Reuben Langley 1891-1973
What he started in me I want to recruit other men and women into. I believe strongly in this and I shall speak it into being by writing here, as others have encouraged me to do, about that which comes to me day by day. I hope that others will find some value in what I write, that it will provoke thought in many ways on many subjects and add value to the lives of others.
My aim is to offer and expand my experience for the consumption of others. If you are reading this, you are welcome to email me to add your own perspective.
oldlincolnian
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