your gods and mine

In conversation about the RAF retaliation against the Houthis and the build up of aggression relating to trade via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, a friend said  “… and of course because so many people  believe in nothing,

there is no comfort” – I am paraphrasing.   And I remember looking at a couple of things on my mantel, at the themes of objects and images that occur and recur in my home and thinking “household gods.”  I learned that phrase in the Latin division at grammar school when I was 12 or 13.   Touchstones, things that suggest a standard (originally used for gold), remind me of good things – love, continuum, courage, another world – interestingly a touchstone

was sometimes made of jasper, itself a stone of strength and well being.

And although it is getting a whipping internationally,  I am very glad I grew up  with a broadbased liberal interpretation of the world with a strong sense of rules that were not to be broken alongside every other kind of knowledge I was open to acquire and knowing that to change one’s mind was sometimes a strength and not a weakness – and to seek understanding of the difference.

The Wellcome Foundation (Britain’s leading scientific charity, valued at £38 billion) has mounted an exhibit called The Cult of Beauty and the art critic Waldemar Januszczak in reviewing it refers to us as obsessed with beauty. 

And that made me think. 

I looked up obsession.   I looked up fixation.   Both denote unbalance, ill health even.  And I asked myself about what was I obsessed ?   Certainly not major money or beauty.  Other people’s business..  Power  ? not me.  Success ?  Always relative.  Being accepted ?  Past my teenage years, no. I thought about my parents and the word obsession was missing from my upbringing.  You made the best of yourself, you did the best you could, you tried at your exams, that’s what they taught me

– and armed me with two strategies which can only grow better with using, which have served me admirably well – communication and good manners.   

I’m not obsessed with communication but I mourn the decline in its perception and want shout with joy when I meet a young woman like Raisa (Bulgarian, I asked) yesterday, who was a lesson in retail – informed, communicative, willing.  

Like the young man (20, I asked), Asian, who sniffed and blotted his nose twice as discreetly as he could next to me on the bus so that I touched him arm and said into his ear “Take two” offering him the tissues.  “I am sorry” he said.  “It’s the cold…” I agreed, and added “May I ask how old you are ?  He told me and I said, still into his ear” Well done you, for being able to take a tissue from an old white woman with grace” and we beamed at each other.  I suppose really, you can’t separate  communication and good manners in these stories.

Politeness is seen as a weakness.  I see it as strength.  It makes it possible for me to account for myself.   And people are not taught to communicate.   A little girl (8) of my acquaintance is dealing with a year of upheaval and change –  divorced mother has moved  manfriend in (he likes both the ex husband and the child, that’s a good start), moved premises, change of school, father has a serious new relationship  – and she has withdrawn into the commonplaces and silence. 

In a similar circumstance, my family would have gently explained over and over that I could always come to them, that I could always ask questions, nothing was too difficult – they loved me, they were there.  Was I ever lucky ?  And on my inner ear, I can hear that young mother telling me her side of the story, how busy she is, how tired – and wanting to shake her and say “Yes, but you’re the adult – get on with it.  What about the child ?”  You don’t buy communication and good manners in the supermarket, under home products.  You have to teach them and there is no point in obsessing about them or anything else, if you won’t face up to what’s there, chose and do the work.