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RITES OF PASSAGE (2012)

grahamcmorgan1963

RITES OF PASSAGE

FINN FEBRUARY 2012.

BIRTHDAY LETTER

When I think of age and innocence, of men and women, of child and adult and of good and bad, right and wrong I blink. I blink and shake my head and then I clutch at the arms of my chair, take a sip of whisky and know I’ll never know.

We build lines in our minds to define the journey we invent; the path we create to give guidance to our fearful uncertainty.

And our tramlines of meaning and responsibility are as impermanent as the frost on a sunny window, as delicate as dandelion clocks swaying in the wind.

My own shaping of my destiny, my heavy set morality by which I store my treasure trove of values will be mocked by today’s children, discarded unregarded for new ways of creating the bright world. And my elders, my elders, if they have any sense, will look down at the thorny path of destiny and chew their lips with pity and the complacency that knows that certainty is as constant as the sea and as ever changing as the waves and the ripples and the tides and the fish that scatter every which way.

I offer you no guidance that I have confidence in. I am as young as a mayfly, as blinded by myself as a rabbit sat confused in the bright headlights of a rushing juggernaut. I cannot sit you or anyone at my knee and say in the wise voice of someone like Kofi Annan, that this is the righteous path. This is how to live, this is what you must do to be a man, a success, a whatever you need to be.

My knowledge of manhood is perhaps poverty ridden. I rejected the constraints of my elders and found my own path for living. I see people replace the old ideals of strength and virility and courage and domineering control but have no faith in them. I am no ‘Iron John’ and no masculine ideal, in tune with my own femininity; ready to bath the baby before going to join my mates for a rousing game of football.

I do have a few words that sometimes flutter round me. I have learnt them through the byways of my journey to be whatever I am today.

I would think to myself that that crystal certainty of believing in what is right and of sticking to it. Of striding in the sunshine with a smile on your lips; to say “I value my values, I do not give them up.”

To me this is good. I see people doing this and I admire their vision and morality but, in the same breath, I would say that the strength to value right and wrong becomes even stronger when you realise that your right is another’s wrong and that it is often only force of will that lets one triumph over another. To allow the blossom of awareness that celebrates difference even when that difference tears your heart, seems to me to be good.

Sometimes I think that the biggest mistakes, the greatest burdens that we place on the world are created by those of us that pursue the vision of changing the world for the better. In our desperate vision to create a fairer place; populated by the values of a goodness we desire so much, we uproot communities and create our own destruction. Sometimes I think that the contempt people have for the slow and the content, for those that do not seek to succeed; for those that don’t enquire and question, for those that amble through life is the biggest mistake we can create.

Living peacefully, not questioning the daily utterances of your so called betters; drinking too much beer, loving your children and slipping into retirement in front of the television may, in its humility and lack of disturbance, be the most heroic way to carve a life.

And yet I question this. I see people beset by the desperation that life can cause us and as I look around me; I look at people and some of them seem to just float over the surface, breathing streams of tears that pursue them to their graves.

Those, that in the blank nervousness and the harsh silence, walk from birth to death without once opening their eyes.

Maybe the key to manhood, womanhood; adulthood is learning to live fully. To breathe life and feel it to your very soul. To catch the sunbeams and find the passion to engage and argue and swim in the sea of the wonder of joy, sadness, anger, excitement and peace.

Maybe it is opening your heart and breathing in the beauty of humanity in all its chaos and joy. It is loving yourself and those around you and it is grumping about the state of whatever you want to grump about but really knowing how to grump. It is joining yourself to your heart and then learning to combine it with the path you create for yourself and the righteousness of whatever morality fills your soul.

Lastly being adult is prizing the glow of the setting sun on the silver sea, the fall of raindrops on your face, the hot sand under your feet. It is understanding we are a tiny part of something amazing and we need to preserve that wonder and treasure it and pass it on to our children to come.

love

Uncle Graham

(Photo: The walk to Rhu; top of Helensburgh. 11 2020)

 
 

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