Yearbook Entry

Hi Sir, hope everything’s well,

Basically, I’m the one that’s been given the incredibly fun job of organising the yearbook pretty much single handedly but the basic point is that there was a big demand to include yourself as one of the teachers that writes a little something in it. So, your challenge if you choose to accept, is a sort of summary of your memories of our year group, any general thing that you’d like to include I’m sue you’d have an idea. There’s no word limit so as much or as little as you like and if I could have that but Friday, if you’re willing to do it, would be really good.

Thanks,

Will

Will

I have been up, due to my crying baby, since half three. At half 4 this morning, unable to sleep and suddenly realising that I totally missed your Friday deadline, I got up and set myself a 30 minute target of writing down an entry.

It has now been three hours and I have only just stopped writing.

This is absurdly long. It also not quite what you asked for. I tried to write down memories of school and of students and of stuff like that, but it didn’t work. I tried lots of different approaches and ideas but this was the only one that allowed me to write honestly and without sounding contrived. You will doubtless have to edit it to fit, but I’ll leave that up to you.

Sorry to have blathered on so long.

Bouch

 

“Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never; never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense” (Winston Churchill).

Never be afraid of failure. Samuel Beckett said that while we know nothing about what our lives hold for us, while we know nothing of the success we can gain or the achievements we can gather, the one thing we can be certain of is that we will fail somewhere: the key is what you will do with that failure. He says that you must “fail better”, and I like this idea. I agree that you will never reach perfection. It’s like a play – you will never make the perfect play: at some point, you just have to stop and put on what you have, with all its flaws. I like the idea that you strive for perfection in the knowledge you will never reach it, but the journey – the process – the work – is worthy of your time and effort, and the failure that you will inevitably make, will make you a better person. The most valuable moments of my life have come not from success but from those moments of failure when I have had to confront shortcomings, or address a weakness that I wanted to pretend wasn’t there. Cry and be angry, but don’t let it get you down: embrace mistakes and use them to your advantage. Admit to them and seek to understand why. Laugh at them and look forward to making more. Without accepting failure – without seeking failure out – you will never be brave.

Be wary of comfort. Demand more from yourself. Comfort breeds self-satisfaction, indolence and laziness. Risk and danger are good reasons to change and do something different. Courage is turning your back on a good deal to strike out to do something you’re not sure about because you think you can make a difference. Being scared, for me, is something I hate but it signifies that I’m pushing myself. That is a good thing. Never think you have finished. You can always be better. Never stop thinking; never stop learning.

Do not accept mediocrity in yourself. Sometimes, you will be put in a position that you have to accept mediocrity from other people, and there will be nothing you can do about it. It is frustrating, but there you are. The one thing you must do in this situation is not get dragged down by their apathy and the contagion of the average. Never accept mediocrity from yourself. If it’s not worth putting 100% in, it’s not worth doing. Hold yourself to high standards, and hold yourself to account. Work with passion and care. Be determined. The only person that really matters is you. You will know if you have done right or wrong, good or bad. You will know if there was more you could have done, or if you could have tried harder. Don’t excuse your mistakes, pretend they don’t exist or lie to yourself. If you can look back on things and live with your decisions and feel in yourself that you have done all you can, then that is all that matters – regardless of what others say.

Listen, then speak. Don’t do one or the other: do both, but not at the same time. Listen carefully: listen to the words and listen to what’s behind the words. Listen to the individual not to the stereotype. Listen with your whole body and give the person, the idea, the argument, your whole thought, your whole attention. Shut up and wait until they’ve finished speaking. Don’t interrupt or predict what they have to say, either out of arrogance or out of excitement: physically stop yourself if you know, like me, your tendency is to jump in and take over – put a pen in your mouth and bite on it while they talk so that you don’t. When they’ve finished talking, question what they said. Attack it emotionally, then attack it rationally. Then look at it with empathy: why do you believe what you do; why do they believe what they do? Then speak out. Always do it with respect; always do it with empathy; my God, always do it with thought; and always do it with care (if you’re emotional like me, always speak out when your heart is not in charge of the situation: control yourself). But never remain silent if you have something to say; never remain silent if the situation you face is unacceptable. Do not accept the way things are if you feel they need to be changed. Cowardice is not an acceptable reason. Speak out, challenge expectations, explore.

Don’t fall into the fallacy of thinking that you are only interested in one or two things. Your whole education has been one oriented around the absurd idea of specialism, where your point of view and your ideas increasingly narrow inwards. Depth and richness of knowledge is a wonderful thing, but isolated and by itself, is shallow and rootless. Kick out against this cultural ludicrousness. Be interested in all things and all people: listen to what others have to say. If you don’t understand the socio-economic ramifications of the collapse of the Euro; if you can’t speak Swahili; if you don’t get the ins and outs of Fermat’s Last Theorem; if you look up at the night sky and see specks of light but not constellations; if you’ve never been to Bangladesh; if you don’t know what a broken tulip is or why the Dutch paid so much money for them in 1643-7 where they essentially became a new type of currency; if you can’t express an opinion on whether or not legislating prostitution is socially acceptable in order to facilitate policing, protection and care; then stop being so lazy, read upon it, have a conversation and join the debate. You have a voice: engage your brain and use it.

Be aware of what love is. If you can step back and analyse love and decide it’s hyperbole, it’s not love. (And if you didn’t listen in English and you don’t know what “hyperbole” is, then get a dictionary and look it up). Any idiot can make a promise. Love is not an oath to be with someone until the end of time: that’s neither possible nor realistic, and frankly, resorting to ridiculous cliché like that shows a lack of thought and a lack of precision, and you are worth more than that – or if the cliché is coming out of your mouth, then they are worth more than that. Love is not a sweeping gesture to Paris on the Eurostar; love is listening to someone talk about why they like Braeburn apples because they’re sweeter than Granny Smith which they don’t like because they don’t like sour fruit; and that they like the texture and the taste of a Braeburn, which is lovely because they look like fruity balls of flame; but really it’s all about the crispness of the first crunch which is why they like Braeburns and Red Delicious because when you bite into it, you can hear the crunch echo in your head and reverberate out to the world through your ears…. Love is when you listen to conversations like this with real interest; and indeed, love is when you realise that you are – I am – the weird person actually having the conversation about apples with your wife, and you know that as you say it, this other person you have been lucky enough to find of all the people in the entire world is listening to you and thinking that you’re not a complete fool… that’s love. Louis de Bernieres, in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, writes that, “Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because that is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”

Be proud of who you are. Be proud of the beliefs you stand for. If you’re not proud of who you are, take action so that you do. Respect yourself and look out for yourself. At the same time, remember why you do so. Take care of yourself in order to take care of others. You live not for yourself, but so that you can help your fellow person, be that a dying patient in surgery, a lonely child in a Romanian orphanage, your best friend who’s feeling sad, a colleague who’s overwhelmed by work and is frightened of admitting that they need help because they don’t want to look inadequate, or your baby girl who even though she is only 4 months old and is only interested in putting her foot in her mouth, eating Sophie the rubber giraffe and pooing, you are aware that somewhere in her rapidly forming brain, utterly unconsciously, is a person who might be looking at you and learning from you and storing in her little mind the things you say and the things you do and the beliefs you hold and the worldview you have so that in time, maybe, one day, she will look at you and see someone that she respects, has learned from and cares for. Be an example to others, but more than that, be an example to yourself.

Don’t waste your time. There is precious little of it. Who knows what will happen tomorrow. Follow your passions. Don’t accept that there are limits to what you can do. When you think about it, there is always a way out of a problem, or a way into a dream. No situation is impossible: all you need is the courage to make it real. In time, other factors will limit how feasible and responsible your actions are: mortgages, savings, pensions, jobs, bills, responsibilities to your family – all of these things will play their part in limiting what you can do, and this is just part of growing up. My dream has always been to be a doctor. I know that it’s not impossible, and that I could do it – I could study the sciences in the evenings and sit the exams; I could quit my job, take out a loan and put myself through medical school; I know that I’ll question myself because I think I suck at the sciences, but I know that I’m determined and clever and will get my head around it eventually even though I will go through untold paranoia and fear; I know that while it’s scary, it’s patently not impossible – all it takes is a couple of forms and a lot of commitment. But now, I have more important responsibilities to others than fulfilling this. And I have come to terms with it, in that I have accepted it. But I regret it and I wish I could have tried. And that is a shame. Do what you can to not feel that. And if you fail, that’s OK. Because you’ll be in a position to realise that failure is good and it’s better to have tried and failed then not to try and always wonder if you could have done it.

Listen to Belle and Sebastian. In their song “We Rule the School”, they sing;

Do something pretty while you can

Don’t be a fool

Reading the Gospel to yourself is fine

Do something pretty while you can

Don’t be afraid

Skating a pirouette on ice is cool

Do something pretty while you can. And if the people around you think you’re ridiculous, who cares what they think. If they’re not going to support you for who you are, even if you yourself acknowledge you’re kind of weird, then they’re not a friend. Drop them as quickly as humanly possible. Look for people who will care for you and accept you for who you are. Look for people who will challenge you and disagree with you and tell you what you don’t want to hear and will be there for you in spite of the most momentous argument because they will help you to become a better person. That’s a friend. You don’t need a facebook-load. You need two or three to get you through your days.

Looking back to your past only with regret and not with purpose is pointless: it serves to grieve, makes you question your decisions, and makes you sad. On more than one occasion in the last year and a half since I have left you, the English Department, the school, I have looked back with sadness and regret that I did. I miss being there. I miss teaching you. I miss seeing you around. I miss working with friends. I miss Pav’s pathetic attempts at banter, Remy using the English block as his personal dressing room, and Qas’s complete calmness in the face of even the most absurd. I miss the guys in my form and I regret not being there to see each of you now as the men that you were becoming; I think of you most days. Your book of Shakespeare and Grammar for Dummies are on my shelf at school. I always knew that you remember your teachers – 12 years on, I remember almost all of mine from when I was at school; but I didn’t realise that as a teacher you remember your students with an equally vivid clarity. And so rather than looking back with regret, I look back with pride. I am proud to have been a part of WCGS for however short a time. I am proud to have been a part in your lives, to a large or small degree. I am grateful and thankful to you, for having known you and for the time I have spent in your company.

Never question your worth. You can change the world. Go and do it.