Category: Miscellaneous

Fear

The day was sunny and warm, the grass fresh, birds circled overhead, and far up a long slope cows grazed in the field. The perfect time and perfect place to walk my two dogs, Mac and Ciara.[1] Mac was far behind, doggedly pursuing every smell in the hedgerows, but Ciara was keeping close to me.

A herd of cows was huddled towards a clump of trees. I glanced in their direction, and saw the largest cow toss his head violently, then start running down the hill. Other cows fell in behind him. In seconds the whole herd was racing towards me.

I thought nothing of it. I’d walked through fields beside and among benign cows since I was a child. I never did anything to upset those cows, and they stared but never bothered me. Not that day. Something had agitated the leader of the herd, and now he was leading a charge straight for me as fast as cows could run. I still didn’t feel concerned. They’d soon stop. They didn’t. I retreated to the edge of the field, which put me against a barbed wire fence with no time to climb over. Surely my dogs would save me. Well, not Mac, still busy sniffing hundreds of yards away. So, Ciara then. No, not Ciara either. I glanced down and she was cowering behind my legs, terrified by the herd thundering towards us.

Those cows had to stop. They must stop. Stomping, snorting, they galloped down the slope, closing in on one man and his dog. They were not going to stop. With no way to escape or power to resist them, I was about to be crushed under their hooves. Then – when the charging cows were literally no more than 10 feet (3 metres) away – like a traffic cop, I shot my right arm forward, palm facing the cows, and very loudly roared STOP! Instantly, the charge ended. Hooves dug into the grass, heads tilted backwards and each cow juddered to a halt.

Sudden stillness. I looked at them, and 12 breathless but still adrenaline fuelled cows looked at me. The lead cow, still angry but now motionless, stood in the centre, the others on each side of him. I didn’t move. The cows didn’t move. I was scared to take a step in case I revived their man-trampling ambitions. But every staring match, including cow versus man, has to end. Slowly, heart thumping, I edged a little to my right. Then a full step. The bovine semi-circle was near complete, leaving little space for me to squeeze between the end cow and the fence. But, with Ciara held tightly by her lead, I made my way quietly past all of them. I didn’t run, just kept going. With me gone, gradually the herd dispersed, and Mac returned. I’m sure he was thinking ‘Did anything interesting happen while I was away…?’ Yes, my friend, we nearly died.

When those cows charged down the hill and I realised they were coming for me, I was terrified. In any situation when you believe you could be seriously hurt, possibly killed, it’s impossible not to be very, very frightened.

In this blog post I’ll share a few points about fear. But fear takes many forms, and people react to frightening situations in very different ways. What makes you afraid may not trouble someone else. And how you might cope with your fear may not at all be how someone else copes.

In a single post (and with limited wisdom) I cannot write comprehensively about fear. But I can share a few obvious truths. I hope they will be helpful.

And, for my amusement and hopefully yours, I’ve put photos of cows I’ve met on the same hill but at other times. Some look fierce; thankfully the majority were not.

One extra note: I know that these ‘cows’ are all bullocks. But Occasionally Wise is read in countries all around the world, including some which likely don’t use the word ‘bullock’ so, inaccurately I realise, I’ve used the word cows. My apologies to bullocks everywhere!

1. Fear is not always bad – in fact, sometimes very necessary

      There is no question that my fear of stampeding cows was entirely reasonable. Cows rarely attack people, but if they do they could inflict serious harm. So, not only was it understandable that I was afraid, it was necessary. I couldn’t just stand still waiting to be knocked to the ground and likely trampled. I had to do something. Thankfully that ‘something’ worked.

      Fear is often a useful primal emotion, similar to the warning pain gives us. Pain makes us recoil from a flame, or pull back when we’re being hurt by thorns. People who do not feel pain – suffering from the rare genetic disorder called ‘congenital insensitivity to pain’ (CIP), or ‘congenital analgesia’ – are at risk.[2] Children with analgesia can bite off parts of their tongue; hikers may break an ankle bone and then inflict further damage because they keep walking. An inability to feel pain is more of a curse than a blessing. Failure to feel fear is similar. We taught our children to be afraid when near a cliff edge, not to be brave about walking home alone late at night, and to realise the danger if they did not fasten their car safety belts.

      Of course there is a risk of exaggerating danger. Gary, with his wife and children, were visiting for a day, so, after lunch, Gary and I took the children to a play area  where there were swings made out of tyres, logs to walk along, slides, and small playhouses accessed by climbing up short ladders, and so on. My children rushed ahead and clambered over everything. Gary’s children held back. Dad had to be present. Once Gary was, they were allowed to climb slowly, but only when Gary was holding on to them. The same happened with the slide; Dad had to have a tight grip on their hands. The swings were almost fine but Gary had to be right beside them. The builders of that playground had installed soft matting underfoot to cushion any fall, and none of the ‘apparatus’ was high off the ground. But Gary had instilled so much fear of accidents in his children they simply couldn’t play there like other kids. Fear is a natural, healthy emotion, warning us of possible danger, but it will paralyse us if it controls us excessively.

      2. Some fears are needless

      I had to fetch a tool from the far end of our garden. I took two steps, and stopped because of the thought: “I’ve left my phone in the house. What if something happens to me and I can’t call for help?” I could trip and break a leg. Or suddenly have a heart attack. Thankfully, common sense returned quickly. My journey out would take 30 seconds, as would my journey back. What were the odds of a catastrophe during a one minute journey to collect a garden tool? Very, very slim. Besides, when we first moved into our house, many years previous, I didn’t have a mobile phone. It didn’t bother me then about walking down that garden phone-less. So, bereft of any phone, I fetched the tool and returned safely. There was no need to fear that something dreadful would happen when my phone was not with me. Sometimes we should tell ourselves that if we were meant to have mobile phones with us always, God would have had us born with an extra umbilical cord attached to a phone.

      There are also some things we should fear but only a little. Suppose I go out without an umbrella and it rains. Well, I get wet, but I won’t drown. Or, I might be five minutes late for meeting a friend. But they’ll wait. They’re not much of a friend if a five minute delay is a disaster. Or, if the meal we’re preparing for guests is not one hundred per cent perfect. Well, no meals are one hundred per cent; almost certainly my guests won’t know the meal isn’t one hundred per cent right; and the only thing actually important is that they enjoy their time with us. Many things we are fearful about are not worth our anxiety. Relax. Keep a sense of proportion about what truly matters.

      3. Many things we fear are very unlikely to occur

      Should I avoid walking in open spaces in case debris from a meteorite shower kills me? After all, one person was killed that way. Yes, one person was, but that was in 1888 (according to National Geographic). Apparently no-one else has ever died because of meteor debris, and, when we see meteor showers we’re seeing tiny pebbles or specks the size of grains of sand which burn up in the atmosphere.

      Okay, so we shouldn’t fear death by meteor. But I know many who are afraid of spiders. Why? In the UK, where I live, there are no native spiders that can cause death to humans. In some countries there are a few spider species which are dangerous, most notably the Sydney Funnel-web spider found in eastern parts of Australia. Its bite can cause serious illness or death, but, even then, few if any deaths have occurred since antivenom was available from 1980. In general, spiders have no reason to attack humans; if a spider bites you it’s because it’s defending itself.

      Well, what about mice? Some people climb on desks or stand on chairs if there’s any suspicion that a mouse is on the loose. Why do that? Mice are tiny and we are not, so who would win if you engaged in head to head warfare with a mouse? It’s understandable that we don’t like tiny creatures scurrying around, especially if they eat our food. But not liking need not be fearing.

      It’s unfortunately true that we are frightened even when the chances of a seriously bad event are very slight. Or when we are confronted by something which can do us little or no harm. Another time to keep a sense of perspective.

      4. Overcoming deep rooted fears takes time and effort

      Frances suffered from ‘arachnophobia’ – an intense, irrational fear of spiders, affecting about 3% to 5% of the population.[3] Many people dislike spiders but, for Frances, even thinking about spiders could trigger a panic attack. Her heart rate would soar and she’d feel sick and dizzy. Her fear was so intense she struggled to enter any building where there might be spiders. Visiting countries with larger and stranger spiders was impossible for Frances.

      So she found a therapist who listened carefully while Frances described her fear. Then he told her to buy a book with large photos of spiders and bring it to their next session. Frances visited a large bookshop, and explained to the assistant what she wanted. He pointed her towards a shelf which had such a book. “I can’t pick it up,” Frances said. The assistant realised she was serious, and fetched the book for her. “Please wrap it in several bags,” Frances asked, He did and held it out for her to take. “Sorry, I can’t hold it; please just drop it into my shopping bag.”

      It never came out of Frances’s bag before her next therapy session. Her counsellor put the book on the opposite side of the room and asked Frances to walk towards it. She could not get closer than several yards . At later sessions she gradually got nearer and nearer, and eventually managed to pick up the book. Two weeks later, she was able to look at the photos of spiders, and finally actually touch the spider photos. All of that took a long time and great determination. Mostly it worked. Frances was never comfortable around spiders, but she coped with them. Her intense fear was gone; she could lead a normal life and even travel abroad.

      We may never have such a dramatic fear of anything, but milder forms are common. My wife Alison and I had to deal with a mouse-in-the-house problem recently. Actually, more than one mouse. After hearing scratching, we reckoned at least two rodent residents were behind a panel of wood we could remove. As we prised it off, we held our breath. We were nervous. Why? Why is anyone frightened of tiny creatures? One or two little mice do not amount to an army. They could do nothing which could hurt us directly. As the panel came away we held our breath… And nothing. There were signs mice had been there, but they’d run off. We didn’t invite them back by blocking off their point of entry. Mouse problem solved. But it was strange how nervous, probably afraid, we’d felt. That may always be true. We are certainly not planning on welcoming more mice as house guests; just accepting that we’ll always be a little fearful of them coming back.

      5. What is not happening to us can still make us afraid

      One of the most competent and sensible women I’ve known told me she never watched or listened to news bulletins. Nor did she read newspapers. “They make me afraid, even depressed,” she said. “There’s so much that’s bad happening in the world,” Of course there is an abundance of accidents, murders, unrest, wars and rumours of wars. But none of those were happening anywhere near that young woman.

      It is worth remembering that news reports don’t reflect how the world is most of the time and in most places. When I was being trained as a journalist, I recall the maxim: “Dog bites man is not newsworthy; man bites dog is newsworthy.” In other words, what makes headlines is the unusual and the uncommon.

      I’m not suggesting we shrug off terrible events, wherever they occur, but it’s important not to have our lives controlled by fear of being caught up in them.

      We can be so bombarded by stories of stranger-danger – such as attacks on little children by bad people lurking in dark corners – we imagine our neighbourhood is filled with malicious assailants. Your local crime statistics may not support that, but in the UK, more than 90 per cent of sexual assaults, including rapes, are not committed by strangers but by people known to the victim. A higher percentage of other forms of violent attacks are committed by strangers, but 56 per cent are people known to the person assaulted. Since attacks by close associates, especially family members, are often under-reported, that may exaggerate the impression that the greatest danger is stranger-attacks.

      I have no wish to minimise the potential for harm in the world around us. But how we view the world and absorb information can amplify the risk. Shock headlines on news stories are unhelpful. Social media often does not help, and the same is true of local gossip about so-and-so being knocked to the ground by someone stealing their handbag. Be careful, but try not to be afraid of everything in the world around you.

      6. The more uncertain we are about what’s happening or what we might have to do, the more fearful we get.

      During an immense thunder and lightning storm I hugged one of our children as massive explosions of noise and flashes of light shot across the sky. To a child less than two  years old it was terrifying. Why wasn’t I afraid? Well, for one thing we were indoors. For another I’d experienced storms like that before and come to no harm. And, lastly, I knew what caused the storm and that it would soon pass. In other words, I understood what was happening in a way our young child could not. Fear is heightened by what we don’t understand.

      Similarly, it can be very frightening to be in a situation where you don’t know what to do, or where to go, or what’s expected of you. I’ve often felt anxious like that, especially in a country where I couldn’t speak or understand the language. I flew into Karachi on my first-ever visit to Pakistan or any Asian country. As I headed towards a different section of the airport for a connecting flight, my suitcase was pulled from my hand and a young man walked off briskly. For a moment I panicked. But my bag wasn’t being stolen. The man gestured me to follow. We got to the other section of the airport. He released my case and held out his hand. Of course, he now wanted payment for his baggage carrying service. I handed over some dollars, and he went off smiling. I had not been smiling when I saw a stranger going off with my luggage. I had been afraid because I hadn’t understood what was happening. (Ever since, I’ve kept a firm grip on the handle of my baggage.)

      There are other forms of uncertainty. Several times I’ve been delayed or lost while on my way to a speaking engagement, with no phone number to call and explain I was late but still coming. And I’ve sat in meetings wondering if there’s something I should have done in preparation, or would be required to speak about during the meeting but no-one had pre-warned me.

      But I’ve learned these key thoughts for those times:

      • This is not a disaster. I will survive this.
      • I can’t fix this now, but it will be sorted soon.
      • If no-one told me what I would need to do, that’s not my fault.
      • A time is coming when I’ll look back on this situation, and probably smile about it.

      Uncertainty is a common human feeling. It unsettles us. But, instead of being fearful, we can treat our uncertainty as a puzzle that will eventually be solved. And the world and our lives will be just fine.

      7. We are fearful when we’re unprepared

      In my school days I remember asking fellow students how they felt about the exam we were all about to take. “Pretty confident,” some said. “I’m sure I’ll do well.” I never felt like that. Not once. Usually I was mildly terrified. Sometimes that was simply an unnecessary lack of confidence. But, at other times, I simply hadn’t studied enough. I hadn’t re-read the course materials, or planned how I’d write about key issues. Being unprepared creates fear of under-performance.

      That’s true in several contexts. If we’ve invited guests for a meal and we’re running out of time with preparations, our heart rate increases. The same happens if we’ve a flight to catch and we still haven’t packed our suitcase. If we’re facing an interview and hardly know what the job is about. If we’re invited to an event, and at the last minute realise we don’t have the right clothes to wear.

      One of my more dramatic unpreparedness experiences occurred when my rather beat-up old car was due that day for its roadworthiness check (in the UK, that’s referred to as the MOT test). My appointment with a testing centre was at 10.00, and the car wasn’t ready. It was spectacularly not ready. I had been respraying the car’s bodywork and welding the sills. That work was all fine. But then I’d decided I should repaint the inside floor of the car, which meant taking out every seat to access the floor pan. It was all done by the day before the car’s test. Only then did I realise the paint would not dry for several hours. I had to leave the car with no seats in place overnight. Next morning – the day of the test – it took me longer than expected just to re-install the driver’s seat. There was no time for any more. So I took the car for its 10.00 test with no seats other than the one in which I sat. I handed the car over to the tester, and explained what had happened. He looked into the car, raised his eyebrows, and drily said, “Well, you’re certainly not hiding anything.” It turned out that having seats in the car wasn’t an essential element for the test, so my car passed. But it took a long time until I recovered. Being unprepared – as I was – is a self-created cause of fear.

      Peaceful, content cows. My favourite kind.

      In this blog post I’ve tried to identify certain kinds of everyday fear. (The kind of fear experienced in warfare is very different.) I’m aware that fear takes many other forms, and that fear as a subject is complex. But to write in more detail would take me even further away from my expertise. If nothing else, I hope you go through life meeting only friendly cows.

      [1] Mac died a few years after the event described here. I wrote about his passing at the time: https://occasionallywise.com/2025/12/13/mac-has-died/

      [2] More information on the condition can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK481553/

      [3] Here is a useful description of arachnophobia: “People with arachnophobia tend to feel uneasy in any area they believe could harbour spiders or that has visible signs of their presence, such as webs. If arachnophobes see a spider, they may not enter the general vicinity until they have overcome the panic attack that is often associated with their phobia. Some people scream, cry, have emotional outbursts, experience trouble breathing, sweat and experience increased heart rates when they come in contact with an area near spiders or their webs. In some extreme cases, even a picture, a toy, or a realistic drawing of a spider can trigger intense fear.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnophobia

      Mac has died

      Just over a week ago, our dog Mac died. His breathing became difficult the previous evening, and Alison and I sat with him through the night. As soon as possible the next morning we rushed him to our vet. Just after we arrived at the surgery, Mac’s heart stopped. A brilliant team brought him back, but he was too far gone. We stroked Mac and told him we loved him, and then he died. A few days later we laid Mac to rest in a place which was a favourite for him.

      Part of the reason I am writing this is because Mac was mentioned in past blog posts, one very recently. (See https://occasionallywise.com/2025/11/06/a-life-that-is-centred/ and https://occasionallywise.com/2021/01/23/unconditional-love/.) But I’m honest enough to admit there may be another reason – sometimes grief just has to be shared.

      I’ve had dogs before, but never one like Mac. In the post on Unconditional Love, I wrote this:

      Mac is my dog. We have two dogs, but Mac is my follower. If I walk across the room, he comes too. When I sit down, he lies nearby. If I go to my home office, Mac joins me. (He’s here right now.) When I go to the bathroom, Mac would be there too, except I refuse him entry. But he’ll wait just outside for me.

      I’ve no idea why he’s so devoted. He just is. My companion, day after day after day.

      Mac’s devotion to me never wavered, and I became devoted to him. Hence how much I miss him. He was loyal, gentle, gritty, affectionate, and fun.

      Perhaps only those who have loved a pet can understand the grief that follows their passing. It can’t be compared with losing a person, but it is real grief.

      Some day – maybe – I’ll write more about things like that. At present my emotions are too raw. But perhaps it’ll always be too hard to reflect on losing my friend.

      Alison has been my strength through these day, while all the time needing strength from me for her own sense of loss. Our family have supported us wonderfully, and friends have helped too. We still have Ciara, a beautiful blend of German Shepherd, retriever and collie. It’s hard to tell, but she seems lonely, which would be understandable.

      We are deeply thankful that for eight years we were privileged to share life with Mac. There are many, many wonderful memories which we will treasure. The Bible says there is “a time to be born and a time to die” (Ecclesiastes 3: 2). What happens between these two ‘times’ matters greatly, and Mac gave us his best years. For that we will always be grateful.

      The perils of being thoughtless

      No-one is literally ‘thoughtless’. We all have thoughts, though not always the right ones at the right time.

      I was only 14 when guilty of a serious moment of thoughtlessness. I was just a spoonful or two into my morning porridge when struck by a sudden, dreadful realisation. It was February 18th – my mum’s birthday – and I had neither wished her Happy Birthday, nor given her a card or gift. In tears I apologised over and over again to mum, and she assured me it didn’t matter. I think she was more upset about me being upset than she cared that I had forgotten her birthday. Later that day I did buy her a card and chocolates. But a late gift hardly made up for my thoughtlessness.

      Thoughtlessness can be divided into roughly two kinds. The first is culpable forgetfulness,  the kind that’s blameworthy because it needn’t happen and can cause hurt. Forgetting your mother’s birthday comes into that category. The second kind of thoughtlessness is a failure to think clearly. It happens when we don’t consider the effect our words or actions will have, or we fail to prepare properly for something important.

      I’ll give four causes and effects of thoughtlessness, and then hints on how we might do better.

      Thoughtlessness is connected with being in a hurry. When I wrote about forgetfulness in a previous blog post (https://occasionallywise.com/2022/01/22/have-you-forgotten-something/), I described rushing five miles to get home after a Sunday evening church service to watch the conclusion of The Masters golf tournament on TV. No sooner had I settled down to watch the golf than the phone rang. The caller was still at church. She asked if I’d forgotten anything. I didn’t think so. ‘What about your daughter?’ Aagh! In my haste to get home, I’d completely forgotten I’d taken Rachel to the service with me. Being a good friend, my caller brought Rachel home for me.

      When we’re in too much of a hurry to achieve something, we blank out other priorities from our minds, often things that matter much more than our main goal.

      Thoughtlessness happens when we give something scant attention, and thus let others down. Imagine this. You delegate sections of a major project to staff who are fully competent for the task. But they don’t rate the work much of a priority, so when it is time for their feedback it becomes clear they’ve done very little. Their work was an essential element of a much larger project, so their neglect, their thoughtlessness, lets you down.

      My Aunt Milla was also let down. She had agreed, with four others, to perform a short play at a big conference. Hundreds watched as the five came on stage. The play began well, but then three of the cast forgot their lines – not just one line but almost every line from that point on. They had given nothing like enough time to learn their parts, and the performance became an embarrassment for all five. It was an example of neglectful thoughtlessness.

      Thoughtlessness lies behind a failure to realise how our words or actions will hurt others. I was in my late teens and a fairly new member of a church in Edinburgh. I made friends, and I was encouraged to take part in any church event. So I went to the church members’ (business) meeting, stood up and criticised the ‘dreary anthems’ the choir sang. There was a dreadful silence after I’d spoken. After the meeting the minister had a word with me! Quite a few words, in fact. Even if not all anthems were uplifting, the organist and choir leader, Mr Burnett, put in many hours each week finding music, rehearsing the choir, and playing at services. My words will have hurt him, and I should apologise. The minister was right, but sadly I don’t remember making that apology. Mr Burnett, however, was a gracious man, always friendly to me, and he very kindly agreed to play the organ when Alison and I got married several years later.

      Words said can never be unsaid, as many thoughtless people have discovered to their cost. 

      Thoughtlessness leads to mistaken assumptions and decisions. One of the worst examples of wrong assumptions relates to the World War II D-Day landings in France in early June 1944. The Nazis believed the landings would happen in the Pas-de-Calais region. That area of the French coastline is visible from the south of England, only about 21 miles across the English Channel. So that’s where Adolf Hitler put the bulk of his Panzer (tank) divisions. In contrast, Normandy, where the landings actually happened, was lightly defended, mainly by conscripts from Russia, Turkestan, and Mongolia who were badly equipped and not battle hardened. Finally, the poor weather of early June meant no-one expected landings anywhere soon, and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, responsible for the Normandy section of the German coastal defences (Hitler’s Atlantic Wall), had taken leave. He was in southern Germany to celebrate his wife’s 50th birthday. Though many died or were wounded, the landings of Allied forces in Normandy were a success, the beginning of the end for Nazi occupation of western Europe. Without the mistaken assumptions – thoughtlessness – about where and when the landings would happen, history might tell a different story.

      When we fail to think clearly, we act on assumptions that may be wildly inaccurate, and little good comes from that.

      So, what can we do to erase thoughtlessness? Since ‘thoughtlessness’, by definition, is lacking thought, we can’t just tell ourselves to start being thoughtful because that would require a level of thought we simply aren’t exercising.

      But there are background factors which help us stay in a thoughtful mode. Here are some.

      Think before we speak or act

      Spontaneity can be a good thing. But acting on impulse is usually a risky or bad thing. Too often we speak or act without considering the consequences, whether for ourselves or others.

      When other kids had a rope swing across a river, my thought was ‘I can do that too’. But I had neither studied the technique nor considered the risks. The result? I not only failed to reach the other bank, I failed to swing back to my take-off point, and was left holding on to a near-motionless rope exactly half way across the river. I couldn’t do that for long, so I had no option but to drop. Thankfully, I managed to land on my feet, but in water up to my waist. I waded to dry ground, and walked home soaking wet. That river bath didn’t need to happen. If only I’d taken a moment to think through what I planned to do.

      Nor did my unkind words about the choir’s anthems need to be said. Nor was forgetting my mum’s birthday inevitable.

      If I had just taken time

      • to check what date it was
      • to consider what effect my comments about the choir would have
      • to think through what was needed to succeed before grabbing that rope swing

      I would have acted differently.

      Engaging our brains before we speak or act is an essential key to thoughtfulness.

      Be better organised

      I have no excuses now for missing any of my family’s birthdays. Alison has all their dates entered into our electronic calendar, with alerts several days in advance. That level of organisation is all it takes to prevent us forgetting an upcoming birthday.

      Similarly, putting things away in their right place means I’m not stranded at the last minute without finding keys, or the right clothes to wear, or the report for the meeting I’m about to attend, or the new golf ball I mean to use, and so on. This is not rocket science.

      Organisation takes time and effort, but often it saves time and effort. I’m not scurrying around searching for my car key. Or wondering where I put my favourite sweater. Or desperately scanning through a document I should have read days ago. Nor am I guiltily sending a ‘Sorry it’s late’ card the week after someone’s birthday. There’s no need to become obsessive. Just reasonable organisation promotes thoughtfulness, diminishes mistakes and enhances relationships.


      Get enough sleep

      I am no sleep expert, but, unfortunately, I know what it’s like to study all night and then find my brain befuddled during an exam next day. Or to find it hard to concentrate during a meeting when you just want to lean back and snooze. Or how difficult it is to organise my plans, my words, my work when I’m super-tired.

      When we’re overtired our thinking slows, our words are not well chosen, and we’re unproductive with our activities. We’re thought-less, almost literally, unable to concentrate and organise our ideas.

      Some people have medical conditions which rob them of sleep. But, for others, the art of getting enough sleep is the art of getting out of a comfortable chair, switching off the TV and the lights, and then putting our heads on our pillows. Our brain will thank us. And so will other people when we show much more thoughtfulness the next day.

      Stop being self-centred

      The root of thoughtlessness towards others may lie in being overly thoughtful about ourselves. Josh’s world was almost entirely centred on Josh. His work day had to be exactly as he planned. Anyone who wanted to meet with him, or even call him, had to fit with what Josh was doing. If Josh was meeting someone for a business meal, it would be at the time and restaurant Josh chose. Josh thought he had friends, but he treated them as servants who supported his life agenda. Josh had no time for neighbours, or voluntary work, and no money for charities serving the needy, because Josh saw himself as needy of all his time and all his income.

      Of course, it’s right to care for ourselves. We have legitimate needs. But they’re not always as urgent or important as we think. And, more often than we may like, our highest priority is helping someone else. But we won’t ever recognise that as true, if ‘me’ is at the centre of our world.

      Act quickly when we can

      I am a long time sinner at letting emails that deserve a reply sink down my inbox, and once out of sight they’re also out of mind. My skills of apologising have been honed over many years, usually beginning with “I’m so sorry I didn’t reply to you until now…”.

      But many texts or emails can be dealt with almost immediately. A ‘yes I can come’ or ‘sorry I can’t make that date’ kind of message may be all that’s needed. Likewise, making a phone call can be a one or two minute event; there’s no need for it to become a lengthy conversation. There’s an art to finishing a call (graciously) when the business that matters is done.

      Many other things come into the ‘act now and it’s done’ category. Instead of taking off a sweater and leaving it on a chair, it takes me less than 30 seconds to fold and place it on its shelf. It doesn’t take much longer to tidy away papers on my desk. Just a few seconds stops disorganisation and untidiness ever developing. And the person who gets a quick email or phone response thinks I’m wonderfully thoughtful.

      Don’t give yourself time to forget or lose something.


      Finally, just ask one question One of the best guards against thoughtlessness is to pause and ask, ‘What would being thoughtful be like in this situation?’ Recognising what being thoughtful would mean holds you back from thoughtless words or actions. It takes very little time to define what being thoughtful would be like. Take that time, and you’ll be at least half way to thoughtfulness in what you say and do.

      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 that 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…