Dear K.,
Happy Birthday!
This is an odd way to express that, isn’t
it? I could’ve send a postcard or
email. But I’ve had it in my head to
write you letters for your birthday for some time now – well, for less than a
year, of course – because you’re my goddaughter. To be honest I’ve always been a little
bewildered by what your parents expected of me when they asked me to take on
the role. Yes, I can look it up; I did
look it up. Classically and religiously,
I’m supposed to teach you the Christian Lord’s Prayer and be a guide through
life. Me, a guide through life? Are you laughing? I suppose that’s a little less strange than
teaching you a prayer.
I remember when I was a teenager, all
green-limbed and red-faced unlike you, and your mom asked me to be your
godparent. I remember her and I giggled
about it (whether to break the tension of a serious moment, or because it
actually was hilarious that I had been picked, I don’t know). I remember two things about your baptism: how
you wouldn’t stop crying, and how embarrassed I was that I, your godparent,
couldn’t make you stop. In fact, I think
you cried even more when I tried to hold you.
You never really liked me, did you?
I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to
do then, and I’m afraid I’m not much more advanced now, thirteen and a half
years later. But I did know at the time
– right when I was your age – that it was important, honourable, and even with
the religion aside, somehow sacred. I am
just as honoured and humbled today, if not more so, as I was when your mom
asked me, in no small part because of how well you’ve ‘turned out’.
But let’s toss these opening obfuscations
away: we’ve still got that pesky guidance
bit, don’t we? So now what the hell am I
supposed to say?
Moderation. The ancient Greeks preached
this one quite a lot. It’s possible that
all guidelines or advice or correction can fit into the Doctrine of the Mean,
so I’d be remiss or at best half-finished in my epistle of advice if it wasn’t
included. It is simple in principle but
perhaps impossible in execution.
Essentially: find the middle ground in all things. Nourish the solution between the
extremes. Eat healthy, but still enjoy
your food. Spend time with your friends
but don’t forget yourself. Be patient,
but know when to move. Learn not just
broadly, but deeply. Get some sun, but
don’t get burned. Make waves, but don’t
sink any ships. Be ambitious, but don’t
lose yourself in money or power. Balance
openness and decisiveness, justice and mercy, work and play, knowing and not
knowing, the old and the new. I think
human beings are naturally attracted to excess, and naturally healthy in
balance. Without the tug and pull of
radical ideas or whimsical fantasies, what would we all be? Boring, most likely, or bloodless. The trick of moderation, perhaps, is to go
far, and then to return – to not become stuck.
Don’t hold the pendulum at one end, but let it swing.
Read
Kafka. I
could’ve just said, Read; but given
that I’ve named you ‘K.’ in this letter, I couldn’t help but make the
connection. Read The Trial or The Castle and
you’ll know what I mean. Love, loss,
fear, dreaming, friendship, bewilderment, bureaucracy, memory, and the machinery
of the modern world: it’s all in his writing.
And best of all, it’s never quite complete. Some readers hate this, but I think it’s
liberating: you have to do a little work, fill in the pieces, make assumptions,
posit solutions, and so forth. You might
not like Kafka, or not yet. His writing
is old-fashioned, long-winded, and takes some practice. But the deeper advice still stands:
read. The power of the written word,
which places you in direct conversation with the writer, is one of the greatest
achievements of our species.
While
driving, assume everyone else is an idiot; while not, assume the opposite. My mom gave me the first
half to this, and I’ve idealistically added part two. You can’t control the actions of others,
especially not from a steel box on wheels going 120 km/h, so don’t try. Instead of shouting or honking, assume the
other guy doesn’t know what he’s doing; so when he cuts you off, or turns too
widely, or tailgates you all aswerve, you won’t be surprised, and you’ll have
created a safe and open space for him to be a complete loser. Likewise for any dangerous situation
involving other people who might very well be damn stupid. On the other hand, when you’re not under the
threat of traffic and lane-changing, remember that everyone knows something you
don’t, has been somewhere you haven’t, and might help you when you can’t help
yourself. They say if you assume the
worst you’ll never be disappointed. But
if you assume the best, you might just discover it.
Listen. This is a continuation of
the last one. Don’t judge or dismiss,
even when someone has gone out of their way to be judged or dismissed; because
if you listen, even your enemies can teach you how to defeat them. I was once in a pub in Brighton, south of
London, when a local heard my accent and figured I’d be the right set of ears
for his bigotry. He started saying that
“Hitler got it right”, “the Arabs want everyone to be Muslim terrorists,” and a
bunch of other ignorant bile. I could’ve
walked away, and I could’ve put up a fight.
Instead, I listened, and asked questions, and listened, and asked
questions, and listened, and asked questions.
Eventually, despite the few drinks he’d had, his face sank, his
shoulders slumped, and he had nothing more to say. He was twisted in his own fears and lies and
false logic, and was eventually dumbfounded by himself. I did barely anything at all, expended almost
no energy, and still, ignorance won the battle against itself. In chess, novices stick to their pieces,
their calculations, their plans; they can win when their opponent does the
same. But the really good players are
always playing on both sides of the board, in the mind of the other,
sympathising and learning and listening; their opponents will always reveal how
they may be beaten. But you don’t have
to take this advice so aggressively: everyone’s got a story. Everyone’s got a thing that’ll wow you or
thrill you or make you laugh or cry. And
listening doesn’t just give you the chance to hear the story, it gives them the
chance to tell it. My mom gave me this
advice too.
Exercise. This has nothing to do with
how you look, and everything to do with how you feel. It might not be important yet, because you’re
moving all the time. But later on,
you’ll feel cranky or frustrated or tired and won’t know why. Your body wants to move; and not just move,
it wants to be challenged, so that it may learn and grow. Let me get technical. Television and the internet, 3D films and
omnipresent advertising, mobile phones and, soon enough, online eyewear – these
are all vehicles for delivering to you the widest possible variety of the most
intense possible stimuli, with the greatest possible results (buy more stuff,
visit more sites, go to more movies, etc.).
This sounds great, but your body isn’t thinking about fantasy worlds and
caramel chocolate bars. It’s thinking,
as its ancestors did hundreds of thousands of years ago: fight or flight. Every time
your body thinks fight or flight, it essentially boosts itself with chemicals,
like adrenaline. Adrenaline is there for
you to sprint away from a lion or rush with your spear against a boar. It’s there to help you move. If you don’t move, it gets stuck in your
body, and forms reservoirs of tension.
So when you get excited by a film or music video or a clothing sale, or
if you’re driving through bad traffic and assuming everyone else is an idiot,
you will most likely be sitting, and the adrenaline will go nowhere. You need to move; maybe not then, but soon;
maybe even move when you have no good reason to. The same is true with caramel chocolate bars
and all other sweets: your brain thinks it’s fruit, and has been trained by the
same thousands of years of evolution to get as much as possible, as fruit used
to be scarce. It’s part of why we can
get so moody: too much sugar, not enough good stuff, sends us for a loop. And it’s part of why obesity rates are so
high, and getting higher, around the world: we’re just following our instincts
and the paths of least resistance. So we
need to train ourselves. The mind works
in the same way. Watch the ice cream, exercise
your body and your brain, and you’ll wonder why you ever let yourself get so
twisted up in the first place.
Framing. When taking photos, always
remember to frame it just right.
Now, after my chunks of unsolicited advice
to you, I have to ask: got any for me? Yeah,
yeah, I’m already seeing your first line: follow your own advice… I’m trying!
In the meantime, happy birthday, good luck, have a great one, and all
that jazz. You deserve it.
Your honoured and bewildered godparent,
QM
