'Wisdom' or something like it

'Wisdom' comes from many sides

'Wisdom'…what is it? Sometimes I feel that I have ‘it’, other times, I reflect on how little I have changed since the age of seven. I can cringe at my lack of maturity and my naïve and often childish attitude to life’s problems. Containing the silliness within is perhaps my greatest achievement if I was keeping a list, which I am not. Well, maybe a small one. At the top of it, I have pencilled in in small, hesitant writing, small enough so that the daughters will not see it ‘good dad’.  I have destroyed all means of erasing it and keep it hidden, but it really is the top of my list of life’s achievements. My belief in myself as a ‘good dad’ is very fragile sadly and varies from day to day…just like my sense of what wisdom is and my tentative and hold on it. So back to wisdom then.

I thought that Art making would be able to accommodate my need for expression, so it has come as a surprise to me that I have the need to write at all. In fact, the reason I retired early to pursue a career in art, can be traced to a particular summer, when I was going through and making notes of important points to consider for the next year’s school development plan. I occurred to me as clear as day at that point (despite the late hour) that there was a need for a different view of the world away from the artificial organisational models and the expectations of our roles.  I was perhaps silly to leave such a lovely job and jump into the unknown. But I like to think that it was a wise decision. In that flash of clarity, it was an exchange of professional status for five years of life and of freedom.

So that is one bit of wisdom under the belt. What else? Hard to evaluate, but perhaps one bit of wisdom I wish to cultivate further is the wisdom to walk away from insoluble situations. To let go and to accept. I can only really demonstrate these things because I am a narrative sort of person, an artist that likes to make stories. So my realisation that I needed to work on this came when I was supporting a friend through a very difficult time. He was a very kind person, but very demanding of himself and others. He was critical and could be hurtful. His family background was highly problematic and his relationship with one of his parents was very difficult, whilst he idolised the other. Many a time I escorted him to medical appointments and many a time he called around to our house in a very bad way. After several years, the situation deteriorated and he came to rely on us more and more, as our house was always open and we understood that he had lost his way. The friendship became more and more strained and his demands for attention reached dramatic heights. After a very bad episode which led to his hospitalisation, it was clear that we needed to walk away. It was a painful separation, leaving such needs to fend for themselves and protecting our family’s wellbeing. We did not keep in touch, but many years later, we know that he is settled down and from what can be gleaned, happy. That situation was possible through a wise decision. To let go of someone who was determined not to try to improve his circumstances and whose life became highly dependent on our support. We were all suffering with no clear end in sight. Leaving was a wise choice.

Many years later, when in I was in a pastoral role within a large school, that letting go, that little bit of wisdom gleaned out of desperation and dead ends came in useful. It enabled me to speak with conviction about ‘letting go’. That particular chat was mostly used when someone was being exploited and irrevocably damaged by a relationship or a friendship. The story became a metaphor of a young woman trying to save her friend who has fallen over the side of their small boat. She puts everything into it. She spends hours, days pulling, cajoling and pleading.  Her friend refuses help, much to her horror.  But then, after all the effort, her friend begins to pull her over too, trying to get her in the angry sea, over the side of their boat.  It is not malicious, it is just she wants to be with someone, to share the discomfort and fear of being in the dark waters. The friend on the boat pleads with her to stop. Nothing. The pulling continues, until the one on the boat knows that she must either let go, or they will both capsize.  Writing like this, it feels in retrospect manipulative to use these metaphors with students in distress, but in my defence, I needed to save at least one of them. Perhaps as she lets go, the friend wakes up and grabs the boat. My story always ended with letting go, of avoiding further the damage.  I did not offer the hope that everything would be alright. This talk and wisdom itself, the wisdom that makes us let go of impossible situations, is a hard-earned thing and it is hard to re-enact. Hope can blind us to hard decisions.  It makes me sad to acknowledge the last point.

But my inspiration to write this blog actually came from three sources.  A conversation with the lady that works in my local minimarket, a very tricky negotiation with a business partner in 2010 and an interview with Tracy Emin on how men have changed.

The 'wisdom' that was awoken by the lady in the minimarket

The lady in the minimarket breathed a sigh of relief that the recent Icelandic temperatures had risen. She went on to remark at how they cope on the continent and how we just freeze in our tracks, so to so to speak. I was reminded of how beautiful Switzerland is and how snow, a regular visitor in the winter is just brushed aside to allow normal life to continue. I also recall the Samaritan's adverts in Zurich railway station, an image that was both striking and telling. A man’s face was split into two. One side, clean shaven and showing a crisp white collar, the other, a rough, bearded dishevelled result of job loss. Swiss society and its standards of excellence in the workplace and by inference on the emotional landscape of the workers is both commendable and scary. Self-reliance and success are not just desirable it seemed to me, but actually essential. I am a stranger in Switzerland, but it feels that failure is shameful and must be avoided. I would like to be corrected by a reader more familiar with Swiss society. I could be way off the mark and be oversimplifying. My apologies, but let me know if so.

The rhetoric makes for a great economy, partly at least, as this blog post would be something else if I went on about the history of the Swiss economic miracle. So, I had a small glimpse of ‘wisdom’ as she was talking, because I knew that although the attitude makes for a social and ethical framework where the work ethic is a defining imperative, where roads are near perfect and snow will not slow down the beautiful and efficient trains….I would much rather embrace the imperfections that make up my country’s failures and successes. The welfare state, the patience and accommodation of imperfection and the humanity to accept that failure is well…human.

Wisdom from someone’s anger

Negotiating with a particular business partner was a difficult process which seven years later I still remember with some discomfort. He was quick to react and I was highly sensitive to his temper which tended to alienate me and the other staff and make us feel really miserable. I could feel the sense of futility as our negotiations reached a difficult point. My ego was saying retaliate…retaliate. Then, was it wisdom? Patience, simply tiredness? I do not know, but in a moment I knew that the minute I expressed my anger, we would both lose everything. I decided to be ‘like a reed in the wind’ to bend rather than break. We managed to move on to an amicable solution and he and I went on to find many happy solutions, in time. But that is my next lesson about 'wisdom', which reinforces the first. ‘Wisdom’ if that is really the right word here, is hard work.  It needs effort and patience.

Finally, wisdom from Tracy Emin.

I am a fan and I am not a fan. Hugely influential, her unflinching work can no longer be dismissed as narcissism. She puts it all out there, there is no holding back.  I like it, I do not like it…But the debate about humanity, our cultural shift towards more self-disclosure, I am sure she has played a part. The interview was clearly rehearsed, as I am sure the interviewer would otherwise be treading much more carefully. She was asked about whether things had changed in terms of gender violence by men towards women. She replied that men had changed. She answered that most younger men would find it abhorrent to behave in a blatant sexually aggressive way. It was a short and sweet answer, that encapsulated many things and which can be stretched out to cover several books. It was reassuring to see and hear her. Her work explores social, personal and gender issues. She could have made a meal of the question, went on for hours. Wisdom.  It comes from many sides and is often brief. Enough said.

George Sfougaras 5^th March 2018