Category: Life’s challenges

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.

Skills worth having, part two

In my last blog post I wrote about Skills worth having and listed six: touch typing, spelling, writing an essay or report, giving a short talk, basic DIY skills, learning from mistakes. (You can find it post here: https://occasionallywise.com/2024/02/23/skills-worth-having/)

While writing that post, I realised I’d made notes on more ‘skills worth having’. So, here goes with another three.

Being a good driver/rider

I was near the end of my advanced motorcycle test. It was an ‘advanced’ test because this was a test to a standard beyond the normal government requirement. I wanted to be the best motorcyclist I could be, so I read up on advanced motorcycling and applied to the body who administered the advanced test.

Keith was appointed as my examiner. He was a brilliant motorcyclist, a police Class A rider who escorted royalty and trained new police motorcyclists. He explained the route we’d follow, and that he’d ride close behind to watch my use of brakes, clutch, mirrors, line through bends and, of course, my speed.

All went well, and we were on the final stretch. Ahead I saw traffic lights. They were green, so I accelerated. Then green changed to amber (yellow), about to show red. The Highway Code said amber meant stop, providing you could do so safely. My near instantaneous thoughts were: ‘I should stop’ then ‘I’m on a test, I have to stop!’ So I did. Except Keith couldn’t.

He’d assumed I would keep going, and was still accelerating when I braked. His bike hit mine just inches from my ankle. Both of us crashed to the ground, bikes on their sides spinning beside us. Slowly, not sure if I was hurt, I stood up. Keith did the same, asking “Are you okay?”  Still checking my body for injuries, I answered that I seemed to be all right. Keith said, “That was my fault – I’ll just pass you for the test”. Instantly the accident was forgotten. My bike was buckled and broken, but I’d passed the test! And, oddly, Keith and I became great friends, and went on to set up an organisation to train others in advanced motorcycling skills. Well over 100 bikers joined because they realised they needed better skills than they had already.

Needing better skills sums up why I took that advanced motorcycling test. Motorbike riding has become more dangerous because modern-day traffic is not friendly to bikers. On a five mile ride to my office, on average I was forced to take avoiding action at least once every day, almost always because a car driver did not recognise my existence as a road user. Surviving on today’s roads needed all the skills I could get. Others were experiencing the same. A typical story from those who joined our advanced motorcycling group was: “I rode bikes in my late teens and early twenties, but then moved to cars. Now I’m in my 50s I’ve bought a motorbike again for fun. But the bikes are much more powerful now, and the roads much more risky. I need help to ride safely.”

A few years earlier I’d realised it was not only motorcycling skills that I needed to improve. I caused a minor car accident which motivated me to do advanced driver training. Here’s how I described that in an earlier blog post:

I became an Advanced Driver and later an Advanced Motorcyclist, in each case passing a police-observed test of driving skills well beyond those needed for the government-run test. What motivated me to train and do those tests? It began with a stupid accident. My car was behind another car waiting to turn right. As traffic cleared the one in front moved off. I followed, accelerating through the junction. But the car just ahead of me braked sharply when a pedestrian stepped into the road. I was accelerating from behind, and I crashed into the rear of the car. My speed was still low – no-one was hurt – and the damage was only what my American friends would call a ‘fender bender’. But the accident was clearly my fault. I should have been paying more attention to what was ahead, and keeping further back from the vehicle in front. I was so annoyed with myself I signed up for training as an advanced driver, passed the test, and I’ve never had an accident since. I really wanted to become the best driver I could be.

‘To be the best or the very best?’ https://occasionallywise.com/2021/08/15/to-be-the-best-or-the-very-best/

Driving a car or riding a motorbike can be dangerous, and can also be thrilling. For both those reasons, it became important to me to become skilled at driving and riding – to be the best I could be. (Advanced Driver and Rider tests are administered in the UK by IAM RoadSmart – https://www.iamroadsmart.com/)

Swimming

I grew up in a small town where the nearest to swimming facilities was either the toddlers’ paddling pool in the park, or the broad and deep river that flowed past our home. Neither offered realistic chances to learn to swim. But I wouldn’t let those challenges stop me.

During my youngest years, my aunt Milla lived in Aberdeen, a city on the north east coast of Scotland. That meant budget holidays for our family. Her flat, two floors up in a tenement, was very modest. It consisted only of a kitchen/living room, bedroom, and a toilet, enough for a single person but overcrowded with my parents, brother and me. But we squeezed in, and made sure we went out every day, no matter the weather. And every day included trips to the beach or one of Aberdeen’s two swimming pools. The sun did little to warm up the sea, nor did the swimming pool beside the shore heat its water. Swimming in either was a bracing experience. But the sea and the pool were ideal places to learn to swim because both had salt water. Since salt water is more buoyant than fresh water, I didn’t drown despite my feeble early attempts at swimming.

In any case, my Dad made sure I would not sink. He couldn’t swim, but was determined that his two sons would be good swimmers. He’d say: “Let’s try the breast stroke today, and you won’t drown because I’ll always have one hand underneath you”. When my uncoordinated stroke failed, there was his hand underneath to support. Eventually my thrashing around turned into a useful breast stroke, back stroke, and front crawl, none of which needed his help. I’d learned to swim.

My older brother Alan and I kept swimming as we moved through our teens. Our home town of Cupar, Fife, had no swimming pool, but we’d catch the Saturday morning train to Dundee for no reason other than to swim in the pool there. Neither of us became super-competent, but we could swim length after length without difficulty. We were good enough to be able to save our lives if we ever fell into water.

Safety is one of the reasons Alison and I agreed that swimming was a skill we wanted each of our four children to have. Therefore, for many years they belonged to swimming clubs and became much more skilled than we ever were.

Swimming can save your life, or make it possible for you to save someone else’s life. It’s been a life skill I’ve always been glad to have.

Playing a musical instrument

Swimming was the most important skill we wanted all our children to have, but understanding music and being able to play music mattered too. Over time they all learned an instrument, resulting in a quartet of keyboard, flute, trumpet and violin. Outside the home they never gave concert performances, but they learned to appreciate music, and that lifelong skill and pleasure was worth all the effort.

When I was growing up, there was a piano in our home which my mother could play, but hardly ever did. For no reason I can recall, when I was aged about 9 I begged my parents to allow me to take violin lessons. What may have helped was that lessons took place in a basement gymnasium of the school, an area rumoured to have been dungeons during the building’s ancient history as a castle. There was certainly a strange atmosphere about the place. That atmosphere didn’t inspire great music from me, but I did okay and played in annual concerts in Cupar and nearby villages. For me, the hardest part of violin playing was the rapid fingering movements needed when playing Scottish jigs. I simply could not get my fingers to move as fast as the conductor’s baton. But, I got better by the time I attended my senior school. I joined the high school orchestra and played in concerts before fairly large audiences. Those were important learning experiences which may have helped me later in life when speaking before sizeable crowds.

One of the odd lessons I learned from being in orchestras was how to focus on two things at once. I had to concentrate hard on reading the music and yet also see how the conductor was directing us with his baton. I’m not sure that qualifies as multi-tasking, but it encouraged me that I could read music, play the fiddle, and keep an eye on the conductor, all at the same time.

The skill of playing a musical instrument has several benefits in addition to those already mentioned. It can be a life-long activity; there is friendship with fellow players; public performances develop nerve and provide affirmation; and it is always an impressive entry to include on a résumé or CV!

My life has been enriched by each of the skills described here. I’ve enjoyed driving well. I’ve felt safe because I can swim strongly. And, though my violin has long-since been passed down the generations of my family, I’ve never lost my appreciation of music.

Next time, the final collection of skills worth having…

An overwhelming longing

I burst into my house. Breathless – for I’d run all the way home from school – I asked: “Has it come yet?”

“Sorry, nothing has come.” My Mum looked so sorry for me. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

Upset, disappointed, hurt, sad. Another frustrating day. I’d entered a national competition, knew I’d won the prize of a great camera, and I so wanted it to arrive. Today’s conversation as I ran into the kitchen was exactly the same as it had been for two months, ever since the competition finished.

The hard truth, though, was that I didn’t know that I’d won. As much as a ten-year-old boy could be, I was sure that my entry was the best, and, the more I told myself that, the more I was certain I’d won the prize.

After another two weeks of her boy running home only to be disappointed, my mother cracked. She wrote to the company who’d run the competition, saying her son was waiting anxiously to know if he’d won. The reply came just a day or two later. They were grateful for my entry but, no, I hadn’t won the top prize. In fact, I hadn’t won any prize. I was devastated. I had so longed for that camera.

Since that time, I don’t think I’ve ever been consumed about any prize or product. But I have known numerous people with overwhelming longings of many kinds.

I’ll describe some of those I’ve known who so longed for something it was almost crushing.

Top equal in my list are those who couldn’t imagine life without being married. Most were women, but men too. I felt for all of them. I’m married, so I knew to be careful with anything I said to those who were unwillingly single. Once – just once – I was bolder with a young lady who told me almost any man would do, because she just wanted a husband. That was so unwise, I said gently that it was better not to be married than married to a bad person. She didn’t agree. “If I was married, I’d at least be able to change him.” She was wrong, but I didn’t tell her. She wouldn’t have believed me, and there was nothing to gain.

Just as passionate were those who longed for children. Some were never in a lasting relationship, married or not, but wanted children. Others were married but remained childless. Since I had four children, I never claimed to know how they felt. But I was certainly aware of their overwhelming desire to have children. For example, in my church tradition, we don’t baptise children but do have a thanksgiving/dedication ceremony for little ones. One lady asked me to stop referring to those babies as ‘gifts from God’ because God wasn’t giving that gift to her. Another requested that we gave advance notice of child dedication events “so I can avoid coming to church that Sunday”. Another young woman had more of a longing for children than for a husband – if she hadn’t got married before she was 30, she told me, she wouldn’t wait any longer but find a man willing to impregnate her. I didn’t scold her. She needed a listening ear and only a few gentle words, not a judging voice.

The passion for some is to reach the top in their career. A lawyer, by then in his early thirties, told me he was utterly bored with contract law. It was a safe and profitable line of legal work, but neither exciting nor satisfying for him. “Why stick with it?” I asked, for he could retrain for other legal areas or even change careers completely. “Because, if I keep devising lucrative contracts I’ll soon be a partner, eventually a senior partner, and could get right to the top by the time I’m 50.” Was career tedium a price worth paying for that goal? An oil company executive realised when he was 45 he’d never achieve the top job. “If you aren’t on the second highest rung by your mid-40s” he said, “you know you’ll never be chief executive”. In his case he was right, but had to keep working knowing he’d fallen short of his ultimate ambition.

There have been many more with deep longings. I’ve spoken with athletes who, despite years of sacrifice and iron discipline with diet and exercise, know they’ll never get to the Olympics or win a world record. Other people have always wanted to own a luxury car like a Porsche or Ferrari, but have never had nearly enough wealth. Some simply long to be famous, but have no idea what they’d be famous for. Others want to tour the world but – though possible – they never get round to saving the money or reserving the time for such a venture.

Ambition is good. So is the passion necessary to fulfil ambition. But when a longing becomes overwhelming there are dangers. At one level that’s disappointment; at a deeper level it can mean damage to our inner self.

So, some care is needed. Here’s why.

First, being realistic, not all goals can be attained by everyone. Everyone can’t win the prize, or hold the world record, or get the top job. That’s just simple logic. And, sadly, not everyone will find a life partner or be able to conceive children. “Why am I the unlucky one?” is the obvious question. Sadly the only answer may be “Why anyone?”. Some things are not about deserving. Other things are not about achieving no matter how hard we try. In a whole variety of ways, this is a tough world.

Second, not all goals are worthy of extreme passion. My desire as a ten-year-old to win that camera had got blown out of all proportion. There was nothing wrong with my hope to get the prize, but that hope had become a longing that was affecting everything else I did. Whenever any longing consumes us, we’d be wise to stop and consider what’s happening. The deeper the longing, the harder that is to do. Ideally, we’d all have a good friend whose wisdom we’d listen to.

The deeper the desire, the harder it is to cope with disappointment. That sentence is not an argument against sincerely longing for something good. It’s only a caution that the greater our desire to achieve a goal, the more difficult it is if we don’t achieve it. For some, that failure can overwhelm the rest of their lives. When, as a late teenager, I started a career in journalism, my ambition was to reach the very top in the newspaper or broadcasting worlds. With the brashness of youth, I had no doubt I could achieve that. But I was able to let that ambition go because an even greater goal came along, one central to my growing faith. But what if that other goal had never happened? What if I’d got stuck in a routine journalism career? How would I have coped? I’ll never know, but I did see journalists weary with their work, never progressing, never fulfilling the ambitions they’d had as teenagers. They were not happy people.

We need caution about what drives our lives. How realistic is that ambition for us? Are we passionate about something truly worthwhile? Can we cope if our dreams are never more than dreams? An overwhelming longing can be a great asset. It can also become an unbearable burden. Be careful.

When less is more and more is less

I sat opposite ten sober-faced interviewers who would decide whether I should be the next minister for their church. They asked their questions; I answered as best I could. Remarkably that committee recommended me for appointment. Why was that remarkable? Because they probably didn’t hear most of what I said. Earlier that day I’d developed a serious throat infection, and almost lost my voice. My answers to that committee were a near-inaudible whisper.

Perhaps they did hear a little and they liked that. And perhaps they never heard the rest, which they might not have liked. It turned out that less was more, and more would have been less.

Less is more and more is less in many areas of life. Below are six examples to explain my point.

When saying more might complicate matters

Near the end of an important hearing in front of a government body, I was about to speak again when I was dug sharply in the ribs by the lawyer alongside me. “Don’t say another word!” he whispered. The ruling was going in our favour, and the lawyer knew I might add information that could cause hesitation. I shut up. Minutes later the verdict we wanted was announced, and the meeting ended. “No-one ever objects to what you don’t say,” the lawyer told me later.

That is not a licence to omit vital information; just advice not to add anything unnecessary. Less is more.

When staying longer might be unhelpful

I’ve been a hospital patient several times because of back problems. I enjoyed getting visitors, but often did not enjoy how long they stayed. More than one must have imagined that, since I was going nowhere, their company through most of an afternoon would cheer me up. It didn’t. Instead, those visitors wore me out. Once they’d stayed more than an hour, I learned to plead that I needed to sleep. Yet, all too often, as one long-staying visitor left, another would arrive. Visiting times did not improve my health. More time visiting was definitely less benefit.

The same would be true when visiting the elderly, or interrupting someone’s busy day. For many years I worked from home, and Arthur, who lived nearby, would call at the door, saying “I’ve nothing else to do this morning, so thought I’d chat with you”. Arthur was a good man, but his casual visits were not helpful. Less, not more, would have been better.

When talking longer might reveal ignorance

From time to time I would let someone else preach. But I wasn’t always wise about my choice of speaker. With some, the congregation’s interest was over ages before the sermon was over. The problem with others was that they preached beyond their knowledge, by which I mean their theological knowledge. Martin would start well into his subject, make some good points, but then progress to ideas for which he had no foundation. Listening from the pews, I’d start praying that Martin would not drift into outright heresy. Thankfully, he’d usually stop just short of a complete distortion of the Bible’s teaching. But the lesson for me was ‘Don’t ask people to do what they’re not capable or competent to do’. Martin needed to speak only on the safest of subjects, and even then impart less rather than more of his own thinking.

When talking more reduces impact

One of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War was at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July 1863. On November 19th, on the site of the battle, an official dedication ceremony took place at the Soldiers National Cemetery.[1] The main speaker was President Abraham Lincoln, and his speech is widely regarded as one of the most influential in American history. He began this way: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” [2]

From beginning to end Lincoln focused his listeners on what really mattered. But from that beginning to its end his speech was only two minutes. It consisted of just 272 words. Every phrase, though, was moving and significant. Another speaker addressed the crowd for two hours. Which speech was remembered? Which speech had more influence? Less really can have more impact.

When writing less might get an article or letter read

Britain’s World War II Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, frequently pleaded for “short-windedness”. In a written appeal to Cabinet colleagues he demanded “brevity”. That note had only 60 words. He complained that “Cabinet Minutes are much too long” and should concentrate only on decisions. He called “Whitehall jargon a waste of time”.[3]

A war-time leader like Churchill simply did not have time to read lengthy reports. That’s true for many today. People I know are so put off by a long article they don’t read it at all. My friend edited our church magazine, and consistently reproduced the entirety of lengthy letters from missionaries. Most church members never read them because paragraph after paragraph of text was off-putting. But the editor kept reproducing those letters, convinced every word from a missionary was valuable. Those letters were valuable, but valueless to those who wouldn’t read them.

When you’re writing a love letter, make it as long as you like. In most other cases, writing less, concentrating only on key points, is much more appreciated.

When eating less might be healthier

The National Library of Medicine advises that, on average, a woman will maintain her weight eating 2000 calories a day, and lose weight eating 1500 or less a day. For a man, the equivalent figures are 2500 and 2000.[4] Sticking to that allowance was impossible when I ate out at a steakhouse where several main dishes would each give me over 3000 calories. If I’d added a dessert and a speciality coffee, I could have gained over 4500 calories from just one meal. Would that meal have left me feeling content? More likely, I’d have been seriously uncomfortable and not slept well.

I don’t mean to rant about diet, only to make the point that excess in almost anything is neither healthy nor rewarding. Some have said the 11th Commandment should be ‘Thou shalt have balance’, but that can be as difficult as the first 10 commandments.

Having written this much about less is more, there’s only one thing to do. Stop.

[1] Now called the Gettysburg National Cemetery.

[2] The most accepted version of the whole speech can be read here: https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

[3] These examples and more can be found at: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/churchills-call-for-brevity/

[4] This and much more fascinating information about caloric intake available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499909/#