Category: Achievements and failures

It would have been easier if I’d been drunk

A young couple asked me, their minister, to conduct their wedding. “Delighted!” I replied. They added, “It will take place in Shetland,” apparently because the bride came from there. But that was no problem. Shetland is a long way north, but an easy flight from my base in Aberdeen.[1]

So, in mid summer I flew to the furthest place north of mainland Scotland where some of the 100 islands in the Shetland archipelago are closer to Norway than to major cities in the south. That far north, summer days are long and nights have very little darkness.[2] I had time to explore. Since then I have visited dozens of other countries, but Shetland is still the most awesomely beautiful place I have ever seen.[3]

The wedding service went well, after which the couple stood in warm sunshine for photographs and to greet their guests. Then came the reception, with plenty to eat and to drink. It was a great time.

I had a flight to catch back to Aberdeen that evening. But, just before I started on the 25 mile journey south from Lerwick to Sumburgh airport, I heard that a thick sea mist meant all flights were cancelled. Not to worry, because the airline had booked all passengers on the overnight sea ferry from Lerwick which would arrive in Aberdeen at breakfast time. ‘That will be fine,’ I thought.

It was very far from fine. The problem wasn’t the cabin, which I would be sharing with a Christian friend who’d also attended the wedding, and with two oil-rig workers going on leave. Nor was the problem lack of food on board, especially since I’d eaten well earlier and wasn’t hungry. And the oil workers weren’t the problem; they disappeared for hours to the bar.

The problem was everything to do with the ferry journey. Once out of the harbour and into the North Sea, the ship pitched up and down as strong waves lifted and dropped the vessel. My stomach began to heave in sync with those waves. Then the ferry got far enough south to escape the shelter of Shetland, and waves from the Atlantic competed with waves from the North Sea. The ship’s up/down movement was matched by an all around movement in my inner parts. I could not have been more miserable. Lying flat on my bunk was the worst so I went to the middle of the ferry where people were stretched out on seats and the floor. Apparently, so the gift shop assistant told me, they did that because the central area pitched less than the bow or stern. Maybe it did ‘less’ but still a lot. “Never mind,” the assistant tried to comfort me, “trawlermen also get sick on the ferry because it doesn’t pitch enough.” I was not comforted.

Back in my cabin, and foolishly lying down again, my stomach churned. Suddenly I knew I was about to bring up my delightful wedding reception meal. I rushed to the small ensuite bathroom, but the door was locked. My Christian friend was emptying everything he’d eaten that day. Now desperate, I ran into the corridor where there were toilets for passengers without ensuite facilities. I saw the word ‘toilet’, went straight in, and was sick on an almighty scale into a sink. Only after I got back to my cabin did I realise I hadn’t checked whether I’d entered the toilet for men or the toilet for women.

The rest of that night I lay sleepless on my bunk except when I was being sick. Around 1.30 in the morning, the two oil workers returned from the bar. Both were clearly very drunk. So drunk, they collapsed on their bunks, immediately fell asleep and stayed asleep until the ship docked in Aberdeen harbour. The oil men that morning were bright and cheery. I was not. Alison met me from the ferry, and said she’d never seen me look so ill. All I could reply was, “It would have been easier if I’d been drunk”.

I didn’t actually wish I’d been drunk, but I couldn’t escape the thought that my non-drinking friend and I had no reward for our righteousness. The oil men had a peaceful night. Our night was a horror story. It didn’t seem fair.

The hard truth is that doing what’s right doesn’t guarantee an easier life.

The writer of Psalm 73 in the Bible didn’t hesitate to complain to God that the wicked “have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills” (vs. 4-5). While he has kept his heart pure, the wicked have amassed great wealth (vs. 12-13). Later in his psalm, he does recognise that the final destiny of the wicked will be ruinous, but his earlier words are comfortingly honest, that those who live to please themselves may have an easy life, with none of the sacrifices faced by those who try to do what’s right.

So, let’s recognise a few realities.

First, this world often seems unfair. People cheat – such as some students at school or university with assignments or exams – and too many are not found out. Applicants for top jobs submit their résumé or CV (curriculum vitae) claiming qualifications they have never earned. Mistakes at work are covered up. Tax claims are falsified or earnings hidden. The owner of a garage told me I would be entitled to a big discount on my car repairs if I paid with cash rather than cheque. Naïvely I asked how that could be. “It’s simple” the garage owner said. “If you pay with cash we can avoid the value added tax.” I quickly replied that I couldn’t do that since I was a church minister. “Yes, I know you’re a minister,” he said. “That’s why I thought you might appreciate a discount.” I smiled, but he was proposing fraud. I paid by cheque.

There is a cost – sometimes literally – from being honest, truthful and virtuous. It has always been like that, and it’s never likely to change.

Second, short-term advantage can, however, lead to long-term disaster. I recall being asked to check if someone had actually held the university posts he claimed on a job application. I did find out – he had never held any of those posts. Not only was that applicant not appointed to the position he now sought, news of his deceit inevitably spread far and wide. His dishonesty meant he’d never be employed at a senior level.

Cheating can reach the level of bizarre. One of the most flagrant and now notorious cases concerns George Santos who was elected to the US House of Representatives from a New York congressional district in 2023. News reporters then researched Santos’ background. What they found differed significantly from his own story. He had lied about his education, past employment, business activities, earnings and wealth, and not disclosed his criminal history, nor that he was facing lawsuits. Just before the end of 2023 the House of Representatives voted 311 to 114 to expel Santos. In August the next year, he pleaded guilty to identity theft and wire fraud, and was sentenced to 87 months in prison. On the day of his sentence, John J. Durham, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said this: “Today, George Santos was finally held accountable for the mountain of lies, theft, and fraud he perpetrated. For the defendant, it was judgment day, and for his many victims including campaign donors, political parties, government agencies, elected bodies, his own family members, and his constituents, it is justice.”[4] Santos was jailed but a few months later President Donald Trump commuted his sentence and he was released. He had freedom from prison, but no freedom from a ruined reputation.

Another reputation – that of David, King over Israel and Judah – was ruined around 1000 years BC. While walking on the roof of his palace late one evening, David saw a beautiful woman called Bathsheba bathing in her nearby home. Her husband, Uriah, had been gone for some time, fighting in David’s army. Filled with desire, David sent for Bathsheba and they had sex. Later she discovered that she was pregnant and let David know. The King’s secret affair would soon not be a secret. Trying to cover his tracks, David had Uriah brought back from the front line, supposedly to report on the progress of the fighting but actually so he would go home and have sex with his wife. But Uriah’s sense of honour would not let him make love to his wife while his fellow soldiers were camped on a battle field. David was now desperate. He gave Uriah a sealed letter to take back to the army commander. That letter was Uriah’s death sentence, because it ordered the commander to put Uriah where the upcoming battle would be fiercest, and then withdraw support from him so Uriah was stranded and killed. It happened: Uriah was abandoned during the battle and died. David, an adulterer and now a murderer, breathed a sigh of relief. But not for long. Through a prophet, David’s sin became known, resulting in great trouble during the rest of his reign. His sin was also recorded in the Jewish scriptures and then in the whole Bible, where we can read about it today (in 2 Samuel, ch.s 11-12). David indulged his lust for Bathsheba, but one night of pleasure led to one of the world’s worst stories of illicit sex and murder being read everywhere for some three millennia.

Doing something wrong for short-term gain rarely ends well.

Third, honouring your beliefs and principles is always right. In a previous blog post I described a personal experience.


The UK runs a national census in every year that ends in a ‘1’. The census is done now by answering questions online but in earlier years everyone filled out census forms. In one of those past ‘1’ years, I was a student looking for summer employment and got hired to help deal with the millions of census forms. My job was in a very large warehouse, almost entirely filled with shelving holding boxes of forms. A small team of ‘experts’ sat at one end coding each answer for entry into the rudimentary computer system used back then. I was a much more lowly file-picker. All I did every day was take an order for a batch of files, find their boxes among the shelves, and transport them by push-trolley to the coders. When the coders were finished with them, I put them back on the shelves. It was brain-numbingly boring work. But they paid me to do it, so I was grateful to have the job.

A fellow file-picker told me one day that when he was given an order to bring a batch of files, he was told not to use a trolley, just bring them one box at a time and walk slowly. He thought it hilarious that he was ordered to take as long as possible to do his job. I didn’t think it funny, just strange, perhaps too strange to be true. Until one of the bosses gave me virtually the same instruction: to fetch files but not to use a trolley and to take my time.

Eventually the explanation dawned on me. It wasn’t just the file-pickers who were temps; so were the coders and so were many of the bosses. Almost everyone working in that warehouse had a financial interest in their job lasting as long as possible, hence a secret ‘go-slow’ policy.

That first time I carried the files one by one to the coders and back to the shelves. And I did it the next day. But then I couldn’t do it any more. This was wrong, just wrong. Deliberately slow work cheated the top officers who needed census results processed promptly, cheated the tax payers who were paying my wages, and, for me as a Christian, I felt I was cheating God by not giving my best. I didn’t sleep well that night; I knew what I had to do next morning. I got my first order for files, went to the shelves, offloaded the boxes on to a trolley, and wheeled it to the coders. Later I did the same in reverse to put them back on the shelves. I kept doing that through the day. No-one said anything.

But they did the day after. I got an order for files, and found my way to their location in the centre of the ‘stacks’. Two file-picker colleagues were waiting there for me. One pinned me against the shelving, while both of them made their views very clear. ‘You do what you want to do, but you’d better not show us up by how you do it.’ I can’t reproduce the hostile tone they used, and I haven’t included the words beginning with ‘f’ and ‘b’ that littered their warning. With a last shove they let me go, and disappeared. It was a moment of decision. But the only decision I could make was to be true to myself. I had to live what I believed, and that was to do the job right. Which I did, day after day. And, as with most bullies, the file-pickers didn’t go through with their threats.

Living with a clear conscience, living as you believe you should – it’s the only way to feel good about yourself, to honour others and God, and to get a good night’s sleep.  [From https://occasionallywise.com/2021/03/27/be-true-to-yourself/]

That was a trial-of-principles moment for me. It was hard at the time but it strengthened my determination to always be true to what I believe is right.

But no trial of mine can be compared to the choice which faced Polycarp.[5]

Polycarp was Bishop of the church in Smyrna, a city in Asia Minor (modern Izmir in Turkey), around 160 AD, a time when Christians were distrusted and hated in the Roman Empire. They would not submit to the rule of the emperor as a divine figure, nor would they sacrifice to the Roman gods, so Christians were considered guilty of disloyalty and treason. Many died for their faith.

Bishop Polycarp was an old man, old enough to have known and followed the Apostle John. His age did not save him from persecution. He was told to burn incense to the Roman emperor or he would die. He refused and he was arrested. Polycarp knew what lay ahead for him, but said: “86 years have I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?”[6]

Dragged into an arena, the Proconsul warned Polycarp he would be torn by wild animals if he would not recant his faith. Polycarp was unmoved. Then, the Proconsul said, you will be burned at the stake. Wood and bundles of sticks were heaped up. Soldiers stood ready to nail Polycarp to the stake so he could not flee when the fire was lit. Polycarp stopped them: “Leave me as I am, for he that gives me strength to endure the fire, will enable me not to struggle, without the help of your nails.” The fire was lit and blazed furiously. Polycarp stood still, and somehow – by a miracle observers said – the flames burned around Polycarp but did him no harm. But he could not be allowed to live, so an executioner was ordered to stab Polycarp to death, which he did, and his dead body was later burned by the Roman authorities.

Not many have been as true to their beliefs as Polycarp was. His remarkable example is of someone determined to be firm in his faith, no matter how dreadful the consequences.

In conclusion, then, it’s easy to opt for the easy life, doing what everyone else does. You don’t upset anyone. You don’t get into trouble. But can you live with yourself doing that? Suppressing the truth deep in your soul? Abandoning your principles just to be safe, just to be comfortable? It’s not right, and the benefits don’t last.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, could not accept Nazi ideology, could not go along with the crowd as many others did. Alexei Navalny could not keep quiet about the way his beloved Russia was being governed. Both dared to oppose their nation’s rulers, knowing that might mean paying the ultimate price. Bonhoeffer was hanged only a few months before World War II ended. Navalny died in a remote Arctic prison colony in February 2024. Neither saw their dreams fulfilled, but their example, their refusal to abandon their beliefs, has inspired thousands, probably millions.

Jesus said: “… wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it” (Matthew 7:13). Don’t be part of the crowd on that road.

[1] There are more than 790 islands off the mainland of Scotland, but only 93 of these are inhabited. The islands can be grouped into four main clusters: the Inner Hebrides and the Outer Hebrides to the north west, the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands to the north.

[2] In midsummer, after 19 hours of daylight, Shetland experiences the ‘simmer dim’ – described this way: “Simmer dim refers to the time around midsummer, when after the sun has set, light lingers. It is neither daylight or darkness, but an uncanny in-between time, an extended twilight blurring the boundaries between day and night.” https://www.shetland.org/blog/midsummer-in-shetland

[3] For more information about Shetland, I recommend this website: https://www.shetland.org/about

[4] U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/ex-congressman-george-santos-sentenced-87-months-prison-wire-fraud-and-aggravated

[5] The details which follow about the death of Polycarp were in a letter called The Martyrdom of Polycarp sent by eye-witnesses of the martyrdom to churches in the surrounding area.

[6] It is hard to be sure if Polycarp meant he was 86 years old, or that 86 years had passed since his conversion to follow Christ.

Keep on keeping on

Who recorded this entry in their autobiography?

Well, my book was finally written. The next thing was to find a publisher. I typewrote it myself, on my old secondhand typewriter that never made the capitals plain and wouldn’t print “w” at all, and I sent it to a new American firm that had recently come to the front with several “best sellers.” I thought I might stand a better chance with a new firm than with an old established one that had already a preferred list of writers. But the new firm very promptly sent it back. Next I sent it to one of the “old, established firms” and the old established firm sent it back. Then I sent it, in turn, to three “Betwixt-and-between firms”, and they all sent it back. Four of them returned it with a cold, printed note of rejection; one of them “damned with faint praise.” They wrote that “Our readers report that they find some merit in your story, but not enough to warrant its acceptance.”

That finished me. I put **** away in an old hat-box in the clothes room, resolving that some day when I had time I would take her and reduce her to the original seven chapters of her first incarnation. In that case I was tolerably sure of getting thirty-five dollars for her at least, and perhaps even forty.

The manuscript lay in the hatbox until I came across it one winter day while rummaging. I began turning over the leaves, reading a bit here and there. It didn’t seem so very bad. “I’ll try once more,” I thought. The result was that a couple of months later an entry appeared in my journal to the effect that my book had been accepted. After some natural jubilation I wrote: “The book may or may not succeed. I wrote it for love, not money, but very often such books are the most successful, just as everything in the world that is born of true love has life in it, as nothing constructed for mercenary ends can ever have.

“Well, I’ve written my book! The dream dreamed years ago at that old brown desk in school has come true at last after years of toil and struggle. And the realization is sweet, almost as sweet as the dream.”

If you’re struggling to identify the writer, here are a few clues: Canadian, female, born 1874, died 1942, the four letter word I’ve hidden with stars **** is the first name of her best-known character, and that character famously insisted the last letter of her name was an ‘e’.

By now many will have realised the book being talked about is Anne of Green Gables. It was the first and the most famous work of Lucy Maud Montgomery.

L.M. Montgomery’s book was published in 1908. It has sold more than 50 million copies, and been translated into at least 36 languages. Anne of Green Gables is usually mentioned when people are listing the best-sellers of all time in all languages. After success with Anne, Montgomery wrote many more books.[1] Some were sequels to Anne of Green Gables, though by 1920 Montgomery recorded in her journal that she was tired of Anne as a character. In all she penned 20 novels, over 500 short stories, an autobiography, and a book of poetry. Not bad.

But what if Lucy Maud Montgomery had never retrieved that first manuscript from her hatbox? What if she’d been so discouraged by publishers’ refusals that she had never sent it to the Page Company of Boston, Massachusetts? But she did send it, and Anne’s appeal to both children and adults was recognised. The rest is literary history.

A modern day parallel to Montgomery’s publishing experience involves another female writer, J.K. Rowling.[2] She finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in June 1995, and was accepted as a client by a noted literary agency. But her fantasy novel was then turned down by 12 publishers. Finally, it was bought by Bloomsbury Publishing because the head of the firm let his young daughter read the manuscript, and saw how she kept wanting to read chapter after chapter. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997, the first of seven volumes in the Harry Potter series which has sold over 600 million copies, been translated into 84 languages, and made into successful films.

There are two immediate lessons from the experiences of these women. One, even the most famous writers have endured multiple disappointments when their work has been rejected. Two, many publishers must weep over best-sellers they could have accepted but didn’t.

For me, the most impressive lesson is that these two wonderful women writers didn’t give up. They kept on keeping on, and eventually found success. They persevered.

Perseverance is an important character trait. I looked up perseverance in my thesaurus for words of similar meaning, and got this entry: constancy, dedication, determination, doggedness, endurance, indefatigability, persistence, purposefulness, resolution, sedulity, stamina, steadfastness, tenacity.

So, exploring the theme of keep on keeping on, I’ll expand on some of the words my thesaurus gave me, hoping that will help us understand the value of perseverance.

Purposefulness

During the time I was a reporter in the Glasgow office of a national newspaper, one of the journalists retired after working there for 40 years. The staff gathered round, speeches were made, glasses were raised, and parting gifts were given. Then the elderly reporter left, and everyone else returned to work on their stories.

On the Monday following, the team were back at work, and, to everyone’s surprise, the retired journalist was back too. And he was there on the Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And every day after that. Our former colleague simply couldn’t cope with sitting around at home with no purpose for each day. Once it was obvious he’d keep coming to the office, the news editor let him report on minor stories. Which he did for many months.

We all need purpose in our lives. It may come from paid work, or from family, study, caring for others, from a compelling sport or hobby, community projects, or many other things. There is a strong drive to keep doing what gives us purpose.

A motivating purpose is an essential element of perseverance. In 1924 George Mallory made his third attempt to reach Everest’s summit. If he succeeded, he’d be the first to stand on top of the world’s highest mountain. It was his life’s goal. Mallory – and his climbing partner, Andrew (Sandy) Irvine – knew there was a high risk of failure and death. So, in his final letter to his wife Ruth, Mallory wrote, “It is 50 to 1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet & do ourselves proud”. Soon after, Mallory and Irvine disappeared in the mist, and it has never been known for sure whether or not they reached Everest’s summit. (Their bodies were finally discovered only in 1999 and 2024.) Maybe they were right to try; maybe they should not. But, imbued with a driving purpose, they felt they must make one final attempt, whatever the consequence.

Perseverance and purpose are inextricably linked together.

Stamina

I have painful and humbling memories from the school day when the P.E. teacher told us to run four laps of the athletic track. I started well, by which I mean only that I almost kept up with everyone else during lap one. Lap two wasn’t as good, but I got round it without completely losing sight of the leaders. My mental and physical agony began on the third lap. For one thing the leaders were going past me on their fourth lap. For another thing I had a near disabling pain in my side, and my legs were getting heavier with every stride. My humiliation and suffering peaked on lap four. Clearly someone had secretly attached invisible lead weights to my legs, because now they refused any signal from my brain to go faster. I kept telling my legs to run, but they weren’t listening. In fact running was now no more than a dream. All I could do was drag my legs forward, one painful step after another. I never finished. I just didn’t have what it takes to run four laps of that track.

What was missing was stamina. I had a purpose, a goal to get round all four laps as quickly as possible. But neither my head nor my body could supply the staying power to keep running.

The inability to last the course is disturbingly common. I’ve watched marathon races in both London and Chicago. The elite runners did really well. The good runners kept striving for PBs (personal best times). But then, long after most, came the mass of marathon one-timers. For too many of them, training had been little more than occasional runs around their local park, which was seriously inadequate preparation for a 26.2 mile (42km) race. They failed, some because they hadn’t prepared their bodies, and others because they had never really believed they could run the distance, and therefore gave up as soon as they experienced pain.

Similarly, I’ve seen work colleagues give up on complex tasks. When they couldn’t find answers immediately, they didn’t keep trying; they just abandoned the project. I’ve known dog owners take their puppies to obedience classes, but completely fail later to continue the disciplines with their dog. One owner shrugged his shoulders and muttered “the training didn’t work”. Wrong. The owner didn’t work. He didn’t keep applying the lessons until the dog really knew what to do. He should have kept trying, kept persevering. But he didn’t. He lacked stamina, an essential element for reaching any important goal.

Constancy

I like this word. Dictionaries define it with synonyms and phrases like ‘faithfulness’, ‘fidelity’, ‘loyalty’, ‘dependability’, ‘endurance’, ‘steadfastness of mind under duress’, ‘quality of being unchanging’. In short, constancy describes the character of someone who sticks to their task, who can be depended on not to give up, who won’t be swayed by persuasion, problems, or even occasional failures. They will do what they said they will do.

Angie was like that. She wasn’t the brightest or the quickest, but give Angie a job to do and she’d work away quietly and steadily and produce good results. I never had to worry that she wouldn’t be thorough, or that she’d give up. Angie just kept going and did her work well. Colleagues like Angie were priceless.

I’ve had friends like that, people who were far more than just casual acquaintances. They supported me through the hardest of times, knew my mistakes but didn’t judge me, and they stuck with me for the long-term when others would have given up. I knew I could trust my life to friends like that. Constancy very well describes the quality I saw in them.

Sedulity

I admit I didn’t know the word ‘sedulity’ so I looked it up. The dictionary defines sedulity as ‘the quality or fact of being careful and using a lot of effort’. Two key aspects of perseverance are highlighted in that definition.

One is about being careful. Perseverance does not legitimise persisting with unwise or unrealistic projects. I know of someone who applied for a new line of work, and wrote that he knew the new role must be right for him because every career choice he’d made before had come to nothing. I can’t imagine why he thought writing that in his application would help. Maybe he imagined that his persistence in trying was a quality, or that by discovering what was not right for him, his latest choice must be the one that was right for him. Those considering his application did not agree. The applicant showed perseverance, but no evidence of being careful about either his career choices or his standard of work.  

Sedulity also means working hard. An oft-used phrase is ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. That’s clever but too trite. However, there is some truth in it. In my mid-20s, I was employed by a local council’s education department to organise school buses for children who lived beyond walking distance from their schools. (Note for North America friends: school bussing in the UK is done by contracts with private bus or coach firms, not by owning a fleet of buses.) I began by studying the established routes which for many years had been put out for bids to contractors. They made no sense to me. The most blatant nonsense was that no children lived on some of those routes. At one time they had, but not now. I talked to the bosses of the bus firms, and then understood what had happened over the years. Keeping track of children needing transport was problematic – new children moved into the area; around age 12 children switched from primary to secondary schools; older children finished schooling; some elected to go to other schools; others just moved out of our area. It was complex. So complex that my predecessors in the job just accepted it was a muddle, put out the same routes year after year and left the bus owners to make the best of the bad information. They did what they could, but the system wasn’t right and wasn’t efficient. Buses went down ‘empty’ routes, and other kids got no transport. That was no way to serve families or run a budget-hungry service. Working with the schools, I tracked who needed the service now, plotted routes on maps, and then sent out the detailed routes for tenders. The new system worked, much to the relief of parents, schools and (mostly) the contractors. Perseverance often requires digging in to complicated and awkward issues, and working for as long as it takes to sort them out.

Dedication 

This is another word I like. It carries meanings like devotedness, faithfulness, loyalty and commitment. No-one ‘keeps keeping on’ without those qualities.

The story of dedication I grew up with in Scotland, and also known around the world, is not about a person’s devotion but a dog’s – Greyfriars Bobby. Here’s a short version of Bobby’s story.

In the 1850s, in Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh, John Gray kept himself out of the workhouse by being hired as a night watchman with the city’s police force. His partner through cold winter nights was his small Skye Terrier, Bobby. Night after night, they were an inseparable pair as they walked Edinburgh’s cobbled streets together. But those hard nights damaged John’s health, and he died of tuberculosis in 1858, and was buried in the small cemetery surrounding Greyfriars Kirk (church). After the funeral service in the churchyard, everyone left. Except Bobby. From then on, day and night, and whatever the weather, Bobby stayed by his master’s grave. A graveyard gardener eventually put sacking between two adjacent ‘tablestones’ (gravestones mounted horizontally about 30 inches (76 cm) off the ground) so Bobby had shelter. And a local joiner persuaded Bobby to go with him to a coffee house each day where Bobby was given a meal. When a city law was passed that all dogs must have a licence or be destroyed, the Lord Provost paid for Bobby’s licence and gave him a unique collar attesting to that. For 14 years Bobby kept watch over his master’s grave, and then he died in 1872. The following year a granite fountain with a sculpture of Bobby was erected near the entrance to the Greyfriars Kirkyard. It is still there, and has this inscription: “A tribute to the affectionate fidelity of GREYFRIARS BOBBY. In 1858 this faithful dog followed the remains of his master to Greyfriars Churchyard and lingered near to the spot until his death in 1872”.[1]

The life size statue to Greyfriars Bobby.
Michael Reeve, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Bobby’s dedication to his master was remarkable. Similarly, people who persevere must be devoted, loyal, and committed. How dedication is shown depends on circumstances, but no-one will keep keeping on without it. Just these words in closing. Too often these days we want everything now or to get them without effort. Governments are supposed to deliver results from the day they’re elected. Employees are meant to plan and deliver projects without delay. Things we want to buy we buy now, whether or not we have the money. Relationships – including marriages – are supposed to be wonderful for ever without pain or strain. But reality is different. The best accomplishments require time and work. That means they require perseverance, which includes the qualities listed above. Keep on keeping on. It’s worth it.

[1] A favourite of mine is Rilla of Ingleside, a story centred on Rilla (a short form of Marilla), the youngest child of Anne. The book is the eighth and last in the Anne of Green Gables series.

[2] It is interesting that both Montgomery and Rowling used initials and not first names for their books. Montgomery had adopted that practice with short stories she wrote before ‘Anne’. It was a common custom at the time for women writers to hide their gender. Rowling was born Joanne Rowling. But her publisher urged her to have a gender-neutral pen name, so she added Kathleen as a middle name and used the initials J.K. She was working for Amnesty International in London when she began writing the Harry Potter series.

[3] Though I’ve known the story of Greyfriars Bobby since childhood, my summary here is based on the record made by Historic UK: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Greyfriars-Bobby/

When others are better than you

I heard this recently. An ostrich rolls one of its eggs into the hen house. She tells the hens, “Take a good look. Compare my egg with your eggs, and realise this is what your competitors are doing”. I guess the hens weren’t excited. All of us can feel like that when others are doing better than we are.

I had so much to feel good about as a church minister. The churches I pastored grew, not just numerically but in their commitment to the faith. But – here’s my confession – I was so thrilled with our church, I struggled to be pleased if nearby churches grew faster. Usually I told myself ‘We’re all on the same side’, and ‘It’s great God’s work is prospering anywhere’. But too often I didn’t feel thrilled about the success of others.

Most of us feel that sometimes. Their house is immaculate compared to mine. Their car is shinier, faster, more luxurious than mine. They are ahead of me in moving up the career ladder. They are a better writer than I am. Their singing is enchanting while mine is doleful. Their children are reading more advanced books than mine. Their dogs are more obedient than my wanderers. And so on. It’s often true that others are doing better than we are, and, if we’re honest, we’re not glad about that.

That’s a common reaction, but not an inevitable one. In fact we can turn it to our advantage.  Here’s how.

Recognise envy for the unhelpful emotion it is

The dictionary definition of ‘envy’ reads: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck. Wikipedia quotes an ancient and a more modern view about envy: Aristotle defined envy as pain at the sight of another’s good fortune, stirred by “those who have what we ought to have”. Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness.[1]

None of these comments state anything good or satisfying about envy. The truth is that envy makes us miserable.

Why is that true?

First, if you have to be the best of the best, and you’re not, then you can’t be content. You will always be disappointed that you don’t have more or that you are not doing better. Being the best, having the most, is a cruel goal, because you will never satisfy that longing. No matter how well you’ve done, if anyone has exceeded that, you cannot be at peace. You’re restless, never satisfied with what you have achieved. That is a miserable way to live.

Second, you start looking at friends in one of two ways. Either you see them as inferior to you, because you’re doing better than they are. Or you resent the ways in which their achievements are superior to yours. At some point those attitudes turn your friends into enemies. That ruins friendships. Always wanting to be the best results in a lonely existence.

Third, our attitude, perhaps our ego, is fundamentally flawed when we think the purpose of our lives is to be the best or have the best. When we think like that, we’re guilty of extreme arrogance. We demean others, and our ambitions overstretch our minds, our bodies, our finances and our relationships. With no likelihood we’ll be the best of the best, it’s also an approach to life which is doomed to disappointment. A false goal never brings happiness.

Recognise there will always be someone better than you

Some people so appreciate any pleasant or positive remark that it elevates how they view themselves. Jill loves it when someone says, “Wow, that painting is amazing. It’s world-class.” Bill has a warm glow when he’s told, “Your report on the meeting was the best I’ve ever read.” Such words may be sincere, or maybe just flattery. Whichever they are, Jill and Bill take the compliments as if literally true. They’re truly the best. How they see themselves changes, and they’re always on the lookout for further evidence to reinforce their own superiority.

That’s a fool’s errand. It’s near certain neither Jill or Bill are actually better than everyone else. One day they’ll find their work or their skill beaten comprehensively by an even better artist or report writer. And they’ll feel crushed.

But what about those who have truly become number one in the world, perhaps in sport? Didn’t Tiger Woods top the world golf rankings for 281 consecutive weeks and 683 weeks in total? Yes, he did. But he’s not number one now. Michael Schumacher seemed to set an unbeatable total of Formula 1 wins until Lewis Hamilton won more, and possibly Hamilton will be beaten some day by Max Verstappen.[2] What’s true in sport is true throughout life, that very few really are the best, and even those who earn that accolade don’t keep it forever.

It’s wise to be humble. Be grateful when you’re good at something, but recognise others are very good too, perhaps better, and be at peace about that.

Even when others are better than you at something, they’re not better than you at everything

Our friend Sally was cheerful, positive and gifted. Only one thing got her down – her home was never tidy. There were dishes not yet washed, magazines and books not yet put away, clothes not yet ironed or folded, and toys not yet cleared from when the children played with them two days ago. Sally knew how her home looked to others, and she felt bad about that. But why was it like that? Only because Sally always prioritised her children, her neighbours, and her friends. “What matters most to me is having time for my kids while they’re young,” she’d say. And she dedicated herself to stimulating her children’s imaginations with reading and games, encouraging them with their schoolwork, involving them in sport and other activities. She was a brilliant mum, a brilliant friend, and a brilliant help to anyone in time of need.

So, Sally didn’t manage to present her home as if ready to be photographed for a ‘Beautiful Homes’ magazine. And she felt a bit of a failure when she visited houses where everything was exactly in its place. But Sally excelled at caring for family and neighbours. Maybe she’d never win awards for keeping everything neat, but she deserved to be in first place as a mum and friend. And that mattered far more.

Don’t notice only the areas where others are better than you; recognise where you’re so much better than them.

Maximise being the best at things at which you’re specially gifted and which matter most

I know that heading sounds, in part, like a repeat of the one just before, but my emphasis now is about being better in areas where your passion and your skills lie.

The famous preacher in London of the late Victorian era, C.H. Spurgeon, founded a college to train future pastors. Early on, he handled all student applications himself. Years later he wrote that he always rejected those who said (in essence): “I know I’m meant to be a pastor because nothing else I’ve tried has worked out”. Spurgeon believed that anyone suited to be a pastor would do very well in at least six other professions. He was right.

But being multi-talented can be a problem. With many things we could do, how do we decide which we should do? Usually the bad choice is to give attention to everything. That always results in doing nothing especially well and running ourselves into the ground trying to do better. Those are not good outcomes.

I’ve encouraged people not just to think about what they can do, but ask: ‘What can I do that most others can’t do?’ Often one thing in particular stands out. And there’s a strong possibility that thing will be the right area to which we direct our energies.

Balancing that, of course, is the importance of concentrating on things that really matter. Some people are proud they can drink more beer in a night than anyone else. Someone else is able to solve the Rubik’s cube in under ten seconds.[3] But that doesn’t mean beer-drinking or speedcubing should be anyone’s life purpose, or even a major investment of their leisure time.

Not everyone can have a career which directly does good for others. But everyone can do good for others, perhaps as a neighbour, a volunteer helper, a parent, a sports coach, or through support for any of the many organisations whose work is geared to tackling causes such as poverty, illiteracy, and injustice.

Focus on goals where you especially can make an impact, and ensure those are truly worthwhile causes.

You can use someone else’s performance to motivate yourself

During my earliest school years (from age 5), classes were run on old-fashioned lines. Literally in lines. With 42 in the class, we were all seated in straight rows, our teacher Miss McHardy standing at the front. She was experienced and liked, which was just as well because even then that was a large class size to manage. Miss McHardy kept us in order with a kind but firm hand, and by using a technique common at the time. All 42 of us were ranked according to our ability, and then seated accordingly. The top pupil was put in the far left corner, with number two next, then three, and so on along the back row, and the same done with nearer rows until those judged less able were seated at the front. It sounds dreadful, but that seating plan wasn’t only to maintain discipline but to ensure the teacher was near to those who most needed her help. So, where did she place me? It wasn’t at the back left! But I did well enough to be seated about the middle of the back row. I was okay about that because even at a young age, I knew others were brighter than me at school work. But I still had ambition. With hard work, I reckoned I could move further up the row. Sometimes I was placed higher, actually getting to second place. That lasted for all of two weeks, and then I was back to fourth, or maybe it was sixth.

Here’s my point. Yes, it’s near certain there will always be people who are better at us in many ways. But it’s possible we don’t need to settle for that. Maybe we could stop being lazy, and push ourselves to work harder, learn more, master new skills, and so on. Many of us can almost certainly do better than we’ve ever done before.

Finally, decades ago I gave up striving to be better than everyone else. Instead I worked hard to be the best that I can be

I’ve written before that I’d dread having a gravestone epitaph which reads, ‘He had potential’. I’d like it to say, ‘He fulfilled his potential’.

We are not all world-beaters, and we can exhaust and disappoint ourselves by forever trying to beat others. Instead, we can examine our own abilities fairly, recognise our under-developed skills, and, perhaps with help, bring our dormant talents to life. And thus achieve so much more than we once thought possible.

Others are better than you? So what? The real issue is what you’ll do to make yourself the best you can ever be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy

[2] Here is a link to a fascinating record of Grand Prix and F1 driver stats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_driver_records For example, do you know the name of the British driver who won a Grand Prix from 22nd place on the starting grid?

[3] Apparently the world record is 3.13 seconds. Bizarre.

Almost

My golf match wasn’t going well. Shots missed the green, and putts skimmed past the hole. Doing badly on the first four or five means you won’t win a tournament of just 18 holes. Conditions weren’t easy but neither were they difficult enough to prevent others turning in great scores. I wouldn’t be one of them. I kept trying, but it was hard to focus. What was the point? My last hole was better, but that couldn’t improve my overall total. I handed my card to the scorers knowing I’d be well down the field. I wasn’t. The winners were announced. I wasn’t one, but I was only one place, one shot, away from getting a prize. If I’d holed just one more putt, I could have won. ‘Why did I not concentrate more, and try to give every shot my very best?’ I asked myself. But I hadn’t, and had to accept the hard fact that I almost won.

Everyone has almost moments. They almost passed their driving test. They almost got a promotion. They almost proposed to the girl of their dreams. They almost ran the whole marathon distance. They almost caught the bus. They almost won the lottery. They almost completed the crossword. They almost got the grades for university admission. They almost bought the best mobile phone. You could say there’s almost no end to a list of almosts.

I’ve been reflecting on how common and how significant almost moments are in our lives. Some of those moments (even a golf match) are not really a big deal, but others have a deep and long-lasting effect on our lives. Here are some of my reflections around the word almost.

Almost can torture us

I heard a talk recently from an athlete who’d placed fourth in the Olympics. For years she’d prepared for those Olympics. She’d trained hard every day, sacrificed greatly, given her best, and she almost got a medal. But she never made it to the podium, nor are laurels hung round the neck of the person coming fourth. The pain of being so near and yet so far from recognised success hurt that athlete deeply.

Almost achieving does that to us. A friend almost finished his PhD, and for the rest of his professional life regretted his failure to complete. When my brother and I were very young our parents nearly signed up for a special deal for us all to emigrate to Australia or New Zealand. They almost signed up, but doubts brought the process to a halt. Though we had a good life in the UK, the ‘what if?’ questions never completely disappeared.

I see two lessons to counter those kinds of regret.

One is that plainly not everyone can come first (or second or third). Being near to success, but not winning, is everyone’s experience in some sphere. And not being first does not mean we’re failures. To come fourth in the Olympics proves you’re better than the vast majority of athletes, and you’re fitter and faster than 99.9% of the population. (More on not being first in a moment.)

The second lesson is that we mustn’t live life constantly looking over our shoulder to the past. Whatever we once did was based on the facts and feelings we had then. Now we must move on. Hindsight is cruel, tempting us to believe some other path would have been better. But we don’t know that. The only thing certain is the path actually followed through our lives. It’s important we make the best of that.

Life will always have almost moments

All we need is logic and modesty to realise we’ll never be first in everything on every occasion. Jack Nicklaus was a brilliant golfer from his youth onwards. Over his career he won 18 major championships, three more than Tiger Woods. Almost more remarkably, he was runner-up in 19 major championships, in five of which he lost only by one stroke or in a playoff (which takes place after a tied tournament). Nicklaus almost won twice as many majors than his enduring record total. How did he cope with so many disappointments? The answer is that he’d learned early on, before he turned professional, that he’d lose far more golf matches than he’d win. He was ready for those almost wins.

I’ve known people controlled by a deep need to come first. Some become bullies. Some become cheats. Most end up disappointed, frustrated, and sad that they haven’t fulfilled their potential. But very likely they did fulfil their potential; it’s just that ‘potential’ cannot be equated with being perfect, or better than everyone else.

No-one succeeds in everything. Many times we’ll do well, but just short of our very best or someone else’s very best. Life is filled with almost moments, and we must come to terms with that.

Nevertheless we should not easily settle for almost

After an almost moment, there’s no harm in asking ‘Why did I come up short?’ Perhaps you went for a job interview but you weren’t selected. It was an almost moment, and you’re disappointed and perhaps angry. Now you have three main options:

  1. Blame the interviewers for being mean or stupid. You know you were their perfect candidate, and they blew it. They asked the wrong questions. They misinterpreted your answers. They didn’t give you a chance to shine. They reached the wrong conclusion. Blame-casting like that is always a temptation because surely what happened couldn’t have been your fault. Think like that and you learn nothing. It’s utterly unproductive.
  2. Of course doing the opposite with blame – blaming yourself – isn’t productive either. We think: ‘I was too nervous; I stumbled over my words; I didn’t really answer their questions; I never put over my best qualities.’ Constructive self-criticism, recognising shortcomings or learning points is fine, but getting down on yourself generates negativity and pessimism which does nothing to improve performance next time.
  3. Recognise the almost moment as a near-success. You got an interview! That’s something many others did not get. You were close to being appointed. Okay, so what professional skill do you need to improve? Or what could someone teach you about interview performance? Or how might you prepare yourself better for next time? An almost experience is evidence of needing just one more step to reach the top of the stair.  

There’s much to be said for an almost moment providing we don’t see it as a disaster. Almost does not mean the world is against us, or that we’ve failed. Rather almost can be just birth pains before we emerge into an amazing new future.

Sometimes almost is actually good enough.

Perfect isn’t always necessary, and we can waste time and energy striving for it.

I was preparing a report for church members, and decided it would help to present it in a more attractive layout. Using my Apple IIe computer and Epson dot matrix printer[1] I set out text in column width. Step two was to cut out headlines from newspapers that seemed to fit each part of my report (‘Bold new start’, ‘Exciting possibilities’, ‘Better future’ and so on). I pasted the text and then the headlines on sheets of paper, making it look like a news report. Then I had all the pages photocopied. Though dot matrix printing could never look elegant, at least my report was better than plain text. Except it wasn’t really. I had taken about a day and a half to create that layout, and the church members just shrugged. They were only interested in what the report said. A neatly presented traditional report would have been almost as good, and certainly just as acceptable to the readership. And the almost as good would have saved me a mountain of work.

Perfection is not the only acceptable goal. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

Almost can mean we’re near to achieving our goals

Sticking to a healthy diet is an obvious requirement for maintaining the right weight. Those trying to lose weight will often adopt a severely restricted diet to shed weight quickly. The problem is that crash diets can leave people feeling hungry, and hunger tempts them to cheat on the diet. And once they’ve slipped, many give up, saying “I can’t do this”.

I’ve done the equivalent when resolving to tidy everything in my home office. For several days I put everything away neatly. Then comes a super busy day, and perhaps another two after that. I didn’t tidy up and now I think I’ll never keep up so I give up, and settle for muddling along.

But the reality is that what we can almost achieve is evidence that we’re not far off from what we want to achieve. We shouldn’t be discouraged. We may have to change our approach, but we can get there. Yes, we slip up, but coming close shows those goals are possible for us. The exasperated phrase “I can never do this” isn’t true. We can. The best things in life require perseverance, and our almost achievements are evidence that we’re not far away from those best things.

Almost can be a good miss

Most of us will remember times when we almost made a bad mistake, but we didn’t. I almost added on two years of university study in my twenties because I’d become fascinated by philosophy, and was sorely tempted to catch up on philosophy courses I’d missed. Thankfully a friend counselled me to stick to my core studies and not lose time. He was right. If I’d deviated, I would have given myself big problems, some financial, some relational, some affecting my career.

Other people have stories about almost investing in a scheme which turned out to be a scam. Or almost reaching a road junction where a driver coming from a side road failed to stop; being at the junction just one or two seconds earlier would have meant a collision. Or almost buying something they found much cheaper later in the day. Or almost marrying someone, realising later what a mistake that would have been.

There are countless times a decision almost made would have been the wrong decision. We should be very thankful for what we almost did, but in fact didn’t.

Almost too late moments are, happily, just in time moments

On the spur of the moment, I put a question to my 79-year-old Dad: “Is there anywhere you’ve always wanted to go?” His immediate answer was “I’ve always wanted to see the Canadian Rockies”. “Then let’s do it” I said. Three months later we were on a plane to Canada.

My Dad’s only previous experience of air travel was the one hour flight from Edinburgh to London. Now we had begun our long journey over the Atlantic. We were half an hour into the flight when he asked, “Are we nearly there yet?” I had to explain that there were several hours to go. But – in mid-Atlantic – we had a happy interruption. One of the cabin crew leaned forward and whispered, “Would you two gentlemen like to visit the Captain on the flight deck?”[2] Of course we said yes, and a minute later we were standing right behind the pilot and co-pilot. We stared out through the cockpit to the clouds, and felt almost overwhelmed by the array of dials and controls before us. I was thrilled, and my Dad doubly so because he had been in the Royal Signals regiment during World War II so understood the fundamentals of radio traffic. He enjoyed a conversation with both pilots about how messages were transmitted, and about how navigation worked.

We arrived safely in Toronto, and our few days there included a visit to the nearby Niagara Falls. Then we were back in a plane, this time flying right across Canada to Vancouver. There we rented a car and I drove Dad on a lengthy but thrilling trip through the Rocky Mountains. We were dazzled by high snow-covered mountains, amazed to stand on a glacier, impressed by the dark waters of deep lakes, and watchful for bears crossing our path. Dad returned home excited and full of stories to tell his pals. Three months later I got the phone call no-one wants. Dad had been found dead. He hadn’t turned up for his regular golf game, so his friends, with police help, broke into Dad’s house and found him on the floor. He’d suffered a massive heart attack. It was so sad to lose him. But I had one very special comfort. The trip to the Rockies was almost too late, but in fact we’d done it just in time.

It’s often true that almost too late is not too late. To tell someone you love them. To mend a relationship. To live an experience. To achieve a goal. To accomplish a long-cherished goal. While you still can, don’t settle for almost but go ahead and achieve what you’ve always wanted.

[1] For younger readers, here’s how dot matrix printers work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix_printing),

[2] An invitation that would never be offered to anyone now.

Skills worth having, part three

The younger Alistair in our family (our son) had an odd but impressive ability when he was just two years old. It involved a ‘shapes ball’.[1] Around its circumference were geometric shaped slots, into which a child was challenged to insert the matching shape.

Here is the game we played with Alistair. We would lay out the shapes in front of him, and name one to put in the ball. For example, we’d say: “Put the parallelogram into the ball”. He’d pick out the parallelogram, find its slot, and in it went. Then we’d ask him to insert the triangle, and after that was inside the ball, we’d ask for the circle, the hexagon, the pentagon, the star, the square, the cross and so on. Ten shapes in total, each placed into the correct slot. We knew that if we named shapes in the same order every time, he would simply learn the sequence. So we made every game different. Alistair was not simply putting the correct shape in the correct hole, he was recognising the name of each shape and then slotting that one into its correct place.

Children like to move on to new things, so after a while we stopped playing that game. About six months later we brought out the shapes ball again, only to find Alistair had forgotten which shape was which. His impressive skill was gone. But perhaps not entirely gone, because Alistair later became remarkably proficient at maths, science and then electronics. I am not suggesting our son owes his later career to a Tupperware toy, only making the point that skills learned early may have their greatest benefit later. I will reinforce that statement shortly.

In the preceding two blog posts I’ve described skills which I’ve found particularly useful. Of course, what’s helped me may be unnecessary for someone else, and they will have skills which I have never needed. We’re all different.

The first post in this short series described the skills of touch typing, spelling, report writing, giving a talk, basic DIY skills, and learning from mistakes. (https://occasionallywise.com/2024/02/23/skills-worth-having/) The second post covered skills related to being an advanced driver or motorcyclist, swimming, and playing a musical instrument. (https://occasionallywise.com/2024/04/06/skills-worth-having-part-two/) This blog post carries the third set of skills which I’ve valued. I have four to share.

Riding a bicycle

Cycling was a skill I learned early on but – like the shapes ball was for our son – perhaps its greatest benefit came later in my life. I’ll explain.

In my youngest years there was no money in our household for me or my brother to have bicycles, but when we were eight or nine my Dad found us second hand bikes. Those first two-wheelers had no gears, which made them hard work up hills. Later bikes we rode were fitted with Sturmey-Archer three speed gears,[2] which helped considerably. Despite passing a Cycling Proficiency Test, I fell off my bike several times, Thankfully these old bikes were nearly indestructible, other than needing the handlebars twisted back into alignment. I am not indestructible, but happily suffered little more than scrapes and bruises from my unexpected and unwelcome impacts with road surfaces.

From the age of eleven I cycled to and from school. During the summer months, my brother, Alan, and I would head off down quiet country lanes to explore whatever we could find. We’d ride for miles, sometimes forgetting a) what the time was, including when we were meant to be home for the evening meal; b) that as many miles as we’d ridden away, we’d have to ride those miles again to get home. We exhausted ourselves, but we loved it.

The skill of cycling and those years of pedalling here, there and everywhere, gave me three main gains.

  1. It got me to school and home quickly. I also delivered morning newspapers all over town, a round so spread out that walking wasn’t an option. Cycling was the answer, though it was hard work going uphill with a full bag of newspapers. In general, then, getting places promptly by bike was the initial benefit of cycling.
  2. A second benefit – useful at the time and also for later life – was that I learned to read traffic. Cyclists know they won’t win in a collision with a motorised vehicle. You might be in the right, but that’ll do you little good. One of the saddest things I saw at age 11 happened in our town’s main street. A lad of similar age cycled past a slow moving lorry, but he wobbled and fell in front of the lorry. The driver couldn’t stop in time, and the boy died under the vehicle’s wheels. No-one did anything wrong, though the lad would have been wise to have taken a wider route past the lorry, or not to try overtaking it at all. At a young age I learned that and similar road safety lessons, and they stood me in good stead for my own cycling and, for later when I’d moved on to motorised transport. That was an important later benefit.
  3. Using my bike constantly also did a lot of good for my long-term health. I rode to school, parks, sports fields, shops, and for miles with my brother and friends around the hilly countryside nearby. That was so valuable for me. I was always overweight, yet relatively fit and strong. Throughout my adult life I have had enviable ‘vitals’ – my heart rate and blood pressure numbers are impressively good. Some of that is because I had so much cycling exercise at a young age. That has to be one of the most important later benefits from my cycling.

My point is that some skills are nice-to-have at an early stage, but their greatest benefit comes later. That’s true even if the initial activity has ceased but lessons were learned, and other advantages laid down giving life-long gains. The skill of riding a bicycle was, for me, multi-beneficial.

Proficiency with software

In the dark ages, long before desktop computers, I worked in a newspaper office where journalists wrote their stories on typewriters. For the uninitiated, a typewriter works in a similar way to a traditional piano – you press a key which moves an arm which strikes its target. In the case of a piano pressing a key causes a string to be struck with a ‘hammer’. With a typewriter, the end of its small arm is a piece of ‘type’ (which, in most cases, is a letter of the alphabet) which hits hard against an inked ribbon leaving an impression on the paper behind it.[3] A typewriter is a remarkable mechanical object.

But, though ribbons move fractionally between each strike, and then reverse their direction to allow several passes, eventually the ink is used and it’s time for a new ribbon. All bar one of the people in that newspaper office were men. And not one of them knew how to change a typewriter ribbon. Rather than learn, those incompetent male journalists would require the one female in the office – a secretary – to leave her work and change their typewriter ribbons. I would not do that. I studied my typewriter, saw how the ribbon was threaded round small posts and between a guiding mechanism in the striking area, and worked out how to change my ribbon. There was an inevitable consequence – I was soon in demand! Different models of typewriter had their own ways of securing their ribbon, but they all worked on similar principles so I could see how the ribbon should be threaded on each one.

Time and technology have moved on, but the inability to understand and use computer software matches the ignorance I once saw about changing typewriter ribbons.

Do a search for ‘How much of Microsoft Word is actually used?’ and you won’t get an answer, other than ‘no-one really knows’. But all the sources of information agree that only a tiny percentage of a word processor’s features are put to work. Some functions exist only for specialist use, but the larger explanation for why certain features are redundant is that many people have no idea they exist, never mind how to use them. That includes relatively basic matters like changing margins, creating columns, inserting and formatting pictures or using function key shortcuts. The same is true with programs like PowerPoint. Just recently, someone setting up a PowerPoint presentation said to me, ‘I don’t know how to make the screen go blank’. I told him, ‘Press B’. He did. ‘Wow,’ he said, ‘it’s gone blank’. I got him to press B again, and back his presentation came. Then I showed him the alternative of pressing W which also blanked the screen but left it white. ‘B’ for black; ‘W’ for white. Not difficult. But he didn’t know, despite having used PowerPoint for years.

I’m not a highly skilled user of software, but from early days I took the time to learn how to do everything I needed, thus producing some relatively sophisticated looking Word documents and relatively complex PowerPoint presentations.

Because I bothered to learn, my work became quicker, easier, better, and I never had to panic because I had no idea what to do next.

What’s true about learning key features of software is equally important for other areas of life. Some feel failures with gardening, but they‘ve never taken the trouble to learn about putting the right plant in the right place. They’re annoyed that they can’t control their dog, but they’ve never gone to a training class. There are golfers who have never read any of the rules of the game, but then are surprised when they’re penalised for doing the wrong thing. We’ve met people who ate out seven days a week, or brought home ‘take away’ food for every meal. Some had convinced themselves they’d no time to prepare meals. Others had never learned even the basics of preparing ingredients.

Getting the skills you need for the tools you use and tasks you face is worth every minute.

Proofreading

Part of my early career in journalism was sub-editing for the Edinburgh Evening News. I liked that work for two reasons: a) there were fixed hours – once all the editions of the paper were on the street, you were done for the day; b) I dealt with a finished product – no-one would rewrite a story after I’d edited it. My work is what appeared in the paper.

But there was another benefit – I became skilled at proofreading. Reporters are all very good at writing. But they aren’t all equally good at reading, especially their own work. They might omit a word, misspell a name, or use the wrong term. They’d notice an error in someone else’s writing but not their own, because they’d see what they expected to see. One journalist meant to write ‘The Royal Family returned to Balmoral’. But what he wrote was ‘The Royal Infirmary returned to Balmoral’. The reporter was familiar with Edinburgh’s largest hospital, and its name sounded similar, so he’d written ‘Infirmary’ instead of ‘Family’, and hadn’t noticed his mistake. But I did, because it was my job to be super careful about such things.

The habit of proofreading[4] has lasted. I read news apps every day, and almost always find mistakes, perhaps because journalists post directly to the website without an editor’s scrutiny, or because the priority is to get a story online as soon as possible. That happens too with ‘ticker’ lines of text below news stories during live broadcasts. I also see errors on road signs, and, one of my favourites, a drain cover with a misspelling cast into the metal.

Small mistakes rarely matter, but becoming good at proofreading is a great skill to have. People do make negative judgments about misspellings and grammatical errors, so spotting and eliminating those helps a lot.

Coping with people I didn’t like

For 15 months during my twenties, I worked in the education department of a local authority. Counties in the UK don’t own their own school buses, but officials decide the transportation routes needed to get pupils to schools, and then grant contracts to private operators. My work was to define the routes and invite tenders from coach companies.

The people who worked near me in a large open-plan office had very different tasks, such as administering teacher appointments, handling applications for college bursaries, or dealing with school financial issues. My colleagues were a remarkable miscellany of characters. Some were great – very friendly and super helpful. Others were not great – they were grumpy, critical, and not at all open to offering support or advice.

But, nice or nasty, these were my colleagues. I’d never have chosen some of them, and they’d never have chosen me. Yet for eight hours every workday we had to sit in close proximity. Every conversation was overheard, so I’d get the daily instalment of someone’s family drama. There was endless gossip about romances or hoped-for romances. The less-than-polite way some responded to callers was disturbing, as was the snail-like pace at which they did their work. Others left their desks for 30 minutes for their 10 minute tea break, and then exited the office a quarter of an hour before their finishing time. They were not all like that, but more than a few were. And I found that difficult. During my years at school and university I’d chosen who I spent time with – mainly people I liked, people with whom I felt comfortable. In that office I couldn’t do that. My job put me alongside people who annoyed me and gave me no encouragement.

But there they were, and there I was. After a few months I made a choice. I could loathe them, which would make me miserable and probably them too. Or I could love them, which would benefit all of us. I might never know what lay behind their quirks and shortcomings. Perhaps a dysfunctional upbringing had damaged them. Maybe they were going through tough times in a relationship. Possibly someone they loved was desperately ill. Or, they’d never wanted the jobs they had, hated their work and were frustrated at not being promoted. So their dissatisfaction spilled over onto whoever was around, which included me.

I lacked any power to solve the causes of their unhappiness and awkwardness. But I did have power to determine my own behaviour. I decided I would be friendly and helpful no matter what. It is possible to love someone through gritted teeth. I wish I could report that my positive attitude turned those colleagues into great friends. It didn’t. They were still disagreeable. But there’s the test: are we willing to keep being kind and pleasant with difficult people even if they never change?

Perhaps this last skill – coping with those you can’t easily like – is one of the most important of all the skills I’ve listed. It’s fun and satisfying to ride a bicycle, drive well, go swimming, play music, touch type, give a presentation, repair something with DIY skills, and so on. But it’s hard to love those who give nothing good back, people embedded in their own sadness, bitterness, or lostness. To love them is a God-like attribute, one for which we will be remembered above any other skill or ability we’ve ever had.

[1] It was manufactured by Tupperware, and officially called the Shape-O. You can see images of the toy on Ebay, Etsy and similar sites, though not all adverts for the product seem to have the whole collection of shapes. Buyer beware!

[2] You can still buy Sturmey-Archer gears from many outlets. Here’s the manufacturer’s website: https://www.sturmey-archer.com/

[3] For a fuller and better explanation of how a typewriter works, here’s a helpful article: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/typewriter.html#gsc.tab=0

[4] If you’re proofreading this, and think proofreading should be two words or hyphenated, you’ll find Oxford dictionaries list it as one word, but some ‘experts’ divide it into two.