From time to time in these pages I’ve written about conversations that Callum and I have had (particularly on dog walks) as he asked me to explain some stuff to him that he’s wrestling with in his 13 year old brain.
The other night though, for various reason it was “what’s it all about?”.
It’s a very interesting conversation that stops you in your tracks when your son asks you ‘why we’re here and what it’s all about’.
It took me back to the memory of talking to my mum after I watched Patrick Moore on The Sky at Night explain that in however many millions or billions of years, the sun was going to explode and the planet wouldn’t be here anymore.
I remember rushing into the kitchen to tell my mum who was wrestling with the cooking and the washing that in a billion years time humanity would cease to exist on earth (in reality a lot earlier than that) and understandably my mum was not overly concerned by the prospect of that crisis.
The fact is though that when many people reach the age of adolescence or at other parts of their life when their childhood is lost and they ‘come of age’ and they lie awake at night thinking ‘f*ck what is it all about’.
It’s my deep held belief that we should think that a lot but it’s also my deep held belief that many people just add as much distraction to their lives as they can to not think about that and to not think about what comes in the end.
It’s all well and good to say that and it’s all well and good for me to be the profit of a philosopher but it’s a totally different issue when you’re addressing it with your own 13 year-old son (and one that you’ve just had a big argument with).
And so, I boiled it down and basically said “we’re all going to die Callum, it’s probably the bit before that, that we should pay attention to’.
You get a choice to make it better or a choice to make it worse (doing nothing and pretending that you can sit in the middle is doing worse) and so, I choose to try to make it better.
I spoke to Callum about working for a living in a job that you don’t like, clocking in and clocking out to earn some money to raise some children, to work in a job that they don’t like and asked him if he thought that I liked my work.
I was relieved (at least to my face) that he said yes.
I think it’s possible everyday to make a positive difference to someone but also to write yourself a narrative that you’re making a positive difference to someone. Some people get to do it on a major scale, some people only get to do it on a minor scale.
Mine is very minor.
The fact is though that if you can continue to try to make it a little bit better, then it scales over time and so, when I first came to the bungalow on Loughborough Road I was trying to make it better for 4 or 5 people that worked in there and now I’m trying to make it better for 45 but in-between then and now there have been thousands of patients and hundreds of dentists and lots and lots of people in Africa whose lives have been made a little bit better because we are here.
More than that I’ve been able to stand side-by-side with my wife who’s done a proper job, for proper people, in proper need.
And so, a narrative of what we do in making it better and trying to create a more positive place rather than a more negative place, is the thing that sustains us from here to there and therefore probably what we’re here for.
I hope my explanation for Callum the other night helped.
Blog Post Number - 2789
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