There is a talent which I lack which some other people have, it seems. It is a gift which involves the threading of one’s stories, like a string of beads, onto a credible chain or sequence – making a life history that is valid, secure and satisfying and forming a chain whose links are safe and robust. Life must be formed of more than a random selection of isolated incidents and chance happenings.
Instead, when I look back at my life, I see scattered fragments, like beads in a box, odd shapes and colours which can never be fitted together. I can find no way now to make something that is whole, structured and cohesive. I have moved on too many times, done too many things and forged and lost too many friendships.
I have been a shape-shifter. To begin with I was restless, easily bored, often searching for new experiences, new friends, new jobs and homes. Little by little, the restlessness has grown into a habit and now, it seems, my life has become an ever-revolving merry-go-round from which I cannot easily alight. Life is temporary. I have long ago lost those strong and lasting ties that held me fast to other people and other places that gave me a history and a sense of belonging. My roots are pitifully undernourished. A strong wind will topple me.
A book I have been reading lately has interacted with these jumbled thoughts and engendered in me a wistfulness, a sense of longing to find a way to assemble the fragments of my past in a new and creative way. Howard’s End, written with such a vision of hope by E.M. Forster, its innovative and thought-provoking author, encourages me to try again to ‘see things steadily and see them whole’. “Only connect” says Forster. Like the enigmatic and other-worldly Mrs Wilcox, I need a new vision that will make sense of the fragments and cause them to hang together to be the link, the connecting factor, of a life that is whole, integrated and fruitful. I am on a journey, searching for a meaning onto which I can thread both past events, people and happenings and the rest of my life. I must find it in the thread of ongoing personal identity and developing relationships with those around me which run through my life, moulding it and providing its meaning and value.
There is always more than one way of looking at things. From one point of view the fragments of my life are so varied, so different, so separate from each other that they defy any attempts to hold them together. However, on close examination, there is a pattern and there are links in the chain. Those links are myself, my family and the personality that has grown and developed, together with the values, the likes and dislikes and traditions that have formed themselves around me and permeated all my various doings. I will choose to look at life in this way and I will look for those connections that make sense of life and gather rather than scatter. As the psalmist once said (and Pete Seeger and The Byrds agreed!), “there is a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together.”
Instead, when I look back at my life, I see scattered fragments, like beads in a box, odd shapes and colours which can never be fitted together. I can find no way now to make something that is whole, structured and cohesive. I have moved on too many times, done too many things and forged and lost too many friendships.
I have been a shape-shifter. To begin with I was restless, easily bored, often searching for new experiences, new friends, new jobs and homes. Little by little, the restlessness has grown into a habit and now, it seems, my life has become an ever-revolving merry-go-round from which I cannot easily alight. Life is temporary. I have long ago lost those strong and lasting ties that held me fast to other people and other places that gave me a history and a sense of belonging. My roots are pitifully undernourished. A strong wind will topple me.
A book I have been reading lately has interacted with these jumbled thoughts and engendered in me a wistfulness, a sense of longing to find a way to assemble the fragments of my past in a new and creative way. Howard’s End, written with such a vision of hope by E.M. Forster, its innovative and thought-provoking author, encourages me to try again to ‘see things steadily and see them whole’. “Only connect” says Forster. Like the enigmatic and other-worldly Mrs Wilcox, I need a new vision that will make sense of the fragments and cause them to hang together to be the link, the connecting factor, of a life that is whole, integrated and fruitful. I am on a journey, searching for a meaning onto which I can thread both past events, people and happenings and the rest of my life. I must find it in the thread of ongoing personal identity and developing relationships with those around me which run through my life, moulding it and providing its meaning and value.
There is always more than one way of looking at things. From one point of view the fragments of my life are so varied, so different, so separate from each other that they defy any attempts to hold them together. However, on close examination, there is a pattern and there are links in the chain. Those links are myself, my family and the personality that has grown and developed, together with the values, the likes and dislikes and traditions that have formed themselves around me and permeated all my various doings. I will choose to look at life in this way and I will look for those connections that make sense of life and gather rather than scatter. As the psalmist once said (and Pete Seeger and The Byrds agreed!), “there is a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together.”
No comments:
Post a Comment