Category: Golden Rule

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Tolerance and Judgement

What am I going to write about today? Every day it’s like this – well, maybe not every day, but most days, I don’t really have an idea and something gradually appears, but by that time I’ve almost used up my 500 words – sometimes I go back over the drivel and edit out chunks so I can squeeze in what I want to say, but I don’t go over the limit. And I don’t go back and read what I’ve written previously before I start again.

But I remember that yesterday I’d got as far as wondering about how we learn to relate to other people, what advice our parents give us – specifically, what advice mine gave me – and by implication, what we pass on to our children. Thinking back, it seems to me that most training of that kind came either through example and observation, or through being told off for breaches of some rule that I might or might not have been aware of. Come to think of it, those methods were often in conflict – following what the grown-ups did was not always appreciated, and neither did they always follow the rules they laid down for us. There’s another layer of complexity to unravel.

Something I will say for my parents, which wasn’t typical of the time, class and place in which I grew up, was they were very opposed to racism. Not that we encountered many non-white people living in Scunthorpe in the 60s, but in the abstract, all men deserved the same respect and opportunities and the Apartheid regime was an abomination – actually, it went beyond race, to class, to a very deep-seated chapel socialism and republicanism (Dad was raised a Methodist), a belief in fairness and equality that has also always underlain my own personal and political values – to this day, my party loyalties may have wandered over the years, but I have never voted Tory (god forbid any party further to the right) and never will.

But what I was going to say was that this universal respect for the brotherhood of man in the abstract (and I use that terminology deliberately, because I think the attitude towards women was more problematic) didn’t necessarily extend to individuals – I’m not talking about racism now, but a lack of tolerance when it came to other people’s behaviour and what we might now call ‘lifestyle choices’. Maybe that’s not so contradictory, I’m not sure now. What I mean is that although my parents were opposed to prejudice and intolerance of groups of people in the abstract, they could be extremely judgemental about the people we knew, whether family, neighbours or workmates, and they would quite happily exchange gossip and criticism for any minor infractions of ‘the rules’. Maybe that also came from Methodism, but there was certainly no truck with: ‘hate the sin but love the sinner’ in our house.

Well, I thought today I was going to write about my inability write fiction, but that will keep.

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Human Relations

I opened the kitchen door for Miko, and she stood on the steps, sniffing the air for a couple of minutes, had a drink from her outside water bowl, then turned and came back in. I left the door open for her while I went upstairs for my morning practice, but when I returned she was curled up in her bed. I went to shut the door, and realised it was raining, very faint and light, but definitely there. And a good thing too. My improvised water butt (an obsolete plastic dustbin) is almost empty of the collected autumn and winter rains, and I’ve been anticipating a hosepipe ban (not that I use one anyway.) I checked the camping chair that’s been on the lawn and there were spots visible on it already, so I folded it up and put it in what’s still left of the shed.

Why do I try to share my feelings, when I know no one likes to read about them? Maybe it’s because I can’t talk about them – although I’ve had someone to talk to regularly for two years now, it’s still quite difficult. It’s hard to get beyond the banal – some days that’s true of writing too, but in general it’s easier and much less stressful to write than to speak, to engage with an unpredictable human being, to have to think about their responses and respond in turn. Easier to be honest in writing, when you don’t have to be constantly on guard for the pitfalls of conversation.

I’ve spent most of my life hiding behind masks, trying to pretend to be someone I’m not, or rather, letting other people make their own assumptions about what kind of person I am, and not bothering to correct them, trusting that I won’t get caught out too often. There again, ‘hiding behind masks’ is just a rather glib metaphor, because for most of the time I don’t know myself what it is that I’m trying to hide, or what I’m pretending to be, for that matter.

I want to think of something to say in the next 150 words, not necessarily something profound, not even particularly interesting, just something… what? Have to stop and think about that. Honest, maybe? Today I’ve done my morning practice before I sat down to write, unlike the last two days, so this isn’t unmediated early-rising stuff.

Human relationships baffle me. They say no one is taught to be a parent, but is anyone ever taught how to interact with other people? I’m sure I never was, or only on the level of: be polite; don’t say that; if you can’t think of anything nice to say, say nothing. I more or less picked up the Golden Rule: ‘treat others as you’d like to be treated’ and I try to stick to it, though it’s occurred to me in recent years that the way I’d like to be treated may not be what other people want, and vice versa.