The Campbell Academy Blog (82)

The “gift”of bad news

I remember thinking that when you are young, you're like a newly carved marble statue with sharp edges, distinct and clear. It's obvious what you are; it's obvious what your shape is.

Then the statue gets put outside and is weathered by life, and every time you get bad news or a setback or a significant difficulty or an illness, then you start to get rounded off like the weather rounds off the marble statue as it sits outside.

And so, ultimately, you become rounded, whatever round it is.

Maybe rounded is the experience of the bad news you've received for whatever reason over your life.

And so, today, I spoke to a very old friend who has received some terrible news recently, and I got news of it last night.

Their partner is quite ill, and I got that news in an email after I'd emailed my friend about something utterly insignificant, and they emailed me back to say, sure, I can sort that out for you, but thanks for asking if we're ok, we're not really ok because of this.

And so, we had a conversation the other morning (while I was on my bike) about the bad thing that had happened to the family and where they were going next.

So, that is really sad, and I was sorry for them, and I wanted to try to help, but for me, it's kind of a gift, isn't it, because (at least at the moment) it hadn't happened to me.

And so, I was sitting in my shed after I came off the bike looking out into my beautiful garden, and there was a little daddy blackbird with a bright yellow beak that I guess I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been sitting thinking about the conversation I'd just had.

We have robins in our garden (I'm not a twitcher, and I'm not really into bird watching), but when you look and see, they're beautiful, staggering, and amazing.

So, then I could stop for a few minutes before I started work for the morning in the shed and realised that I just had to try my best. It didn't matter how much I got through today, and it didn't matter whether I got to the end of my list (whatever that is) because nobody gives a sh*t whether I get to the end of my list or not.

And so, the bad news that I had from my friend and their family was a gift to allow me to see the world for what it should be and for what is most important today, and not to worry about things that are really not worth worrying about.