What are you curious about?
I am curious about the future. Isn’t everyone? It’s a bit of a dull answer on the surface, but bear with me.
For the last few years, probably since the pandemic, I have been looking no further than the next week or so. Maybe some of you know the feeling. You are so caught up with the rat race that pretty much all you can do is look to the weekend and hope you can get a decent rest. I stopped being curious about anything other than my payslip at the end of the month. All the interests I had before just dropped away and just surviving until the next break was the focus.
Then, I decided to resign from my job and finish full time year round teaching. Almost immediately I became enthusiastic about projects that had been mothballed, education that had been forgotten about and places I had never visited but always wanted to. My curiosity about what I was capable of returned, after a few years of being employed in a job where no one in management cared what I was capable of and I was so tired that I stopped caring.
I have a new lease of life and for however long I can I will keep my curiosity for the future.
Write about a random act of kindness you’ve done for someone.
Another tricky one today until I decided to flick through my memory bank. When I was in the Cub Scouts in the early to mid 70s we had a week called Bob a Job. The phrase came from the slang for a shilling which was a ‘bob’ of which there were 20 in a pound. As Cub Scouts we would go to people’s houses in uniform, knock on the door and say, ‘Bob a job?’ and, if they had a job they wanted doing they would pay us 5 pence, or more if they were feeling generous, and we would do the job. It would usually be something in the garden but occasionally it was washing the car or doing something in the house.
Looking back, it was truly a good deed, because all of the money went to the Cub Pack we were so proud of and we got nothing tangible out of it, other than the feeling of having done something worthwhile which was actually really fulfilling. From those days onwards I have done something good without expectation or hesitation, and I believe that it was those times as a Cub that gave me that mindset.
Bob a Job was the butt of many jokes from those outside the Scout movement but it was truly decent in its intention and execution. Those days are gone with our focus on safety issues but it’s a shame in many ways. We need the principle if not the practice back in our societies across the world more than ever in this selfish world we live in.
Happy Color App Picture
How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you?
If someone can’t see me, I would start by describing my film star looks and perfect physique! 🤣🤣 I bet I wouldn’t be the only one either.
I am currently teaching English to Art and Design students online, and yesterday we had a webinar where one of the presenters reflected on the way that we only experience art through vision in Western culture. We completely ignore the other four senses unless we are specifically forced to use them. Why is there this primacy of vision? I think it is because we live in a cultural environment where everything is behind a rope. DON’T TOUCH is thundered at us throughout our lives from our earliest days, through school and into the adult world. Why is this? Well, my theory is that we are not encouraged to take part in art, music or other creative pursuits by mucking around and seeing what happens. We are told there are ways of doing things and that we have to watch experts to see how it is done. Even music, which you would think of as primarily an auditory experience is very much focused on vision. We watch our teachers demonstrating the correct way of doing things, and when our teachers identify a mistake it tends to be a mistake they saw, for example your hand in the wrong place for a particular chord. Musicians who cannot sight read music are regarded as less skilled than those who can. Playing by ear is seen as inferior to playing by sight.
We need to move away from sight on its own and incorporate as many of our other senses as possible. Only then will we fully understand the nature of things.
What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?
This is a very interesting prompt, because the more I thought about it, the more complex the answer became. I think every generation is brought up by the two generations before them, even if they don’t meet their grandparents. The way your parents brought you up is related to the way that their parents brought them up. Sometimes the children will do the same and sometimes they will do the opposite depending on how much they enjoyed their own family life. Usually, however, they develop a mix of their own traditions and the traditions handed down to them.
In addition to the feelings that the children have about their own upbringing you have to factor in the make up of the family unit. My wife and I were both only children so when we discussed becoming parents the clear line we had was that, barring issues of health which could arise, that we would have more than one to avoid the lonely childhood both of us had. Once we had more than one child our focus was on making sure that we made them the absolute focal point of our lives. This is something that our parents were not encouraged to do by society in the years when children were seen and not heard. For example, every holiday we took while our children were growing up was based on what they needed so holiday camps were in because they were cheap and fully child focused. We did not consider what we wanted until they were a lot older. When we were younger, we were treated like mini adults and expected to go on adult holidays.
I can’t imagine many of my parents generation doing what I did and giving up alcohol when it became a choice between my evening drink and the children being able to go to sports or dance clubs, but the Sunday lunchtime pub visit which my Dad saw as essential finished there and then. Also, Sunday lunch was a roast every single weekend. I am not a huge fan of roast dinner so we have them every month or so.
What tends to happen with festivals like Christmas is that your traditions evolve and are built upon. Father Christmas always came to my bedroom to drop off his presents and he did the same with my children. Christmas dinner has a turkey as its centrepiece as my childhood did, but I prefer to have cold accompaniments.
What really interests me is what happens with our own children and their traditions and approaches to life. They will keep some of our traditions and they will decide on their own. My grandparents would not recognise our traditions in so many ways but they would not recognise the world we live in. We will not recognise the world ourselves in 20 years time if we are still around.
Tradition has its place in terms of setting a benchmark both personal and cultural, but every generation will alter those traditions to suit their society and their place in the world. We can choose what we want to keep and what we get rid of and those traditions will go on changing generation after generation.
Was today typical?
If you had asked me this question a couple of years ago I would have answered ‘Yes’ with no hesitation. I was convinced that every day was the same, or at least they just blended into each other as I worked and commuted day in day out, week in week out. Then I decided to do a couple of things. I decided to finish year round teaching and I decided to start being more present.
Now I notice the differences between the days. They are there in so many ways big and small. This weekend my wife and I went to a play on Saturday and watched the Lionesses retain their title of European Champions. As we were watching the match, my daughter was messaging from Basel having got tickets for the England end. Now that is an extreme example of a lack of typicality, but I can see small differences everywhere and I can make small differences everywhere. The second factor is the important one. Change your route to work, wear a different outfit, cook a different meal. Whatever you do, do it with enthusiasm because in the end you will find that even the typical has its own power. The love of family, the home baking, the music, books or TV you enjoy, all of these can now seem fresh. If you will excuse me I now have to prepare my wife’s packed lunch, which is typical! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 