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Mar 25
2020
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Helen Whitten
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It’s day 10 of feeling totally pole-axed. I have never experienced such utter fatigue in my life before. But of course they are not testing you, unless you are Prince Charles or some celebrity, so I don’t know if I have Covid-19 or not. But I suspect I have.
It started with a cough and a relatively mild set of symptoms. After a few days I started to feel aches in my joints and muscles and my temperature went up. At that stage, though, I felt well enough to potter about the house, call friends and family, and do the ironing.
It was last Sunday when things turned for the worse with my temperature going up further, shivers, coughing, aches and dizziness. But I don’t mean sick enough for me to go to hospital. No, just to feel totally isolated from any kind of medical help because 111, whom we had phoned when David showed his first symptoms, told us just to stay at home. Then when I tried to call just to check out my own worsening symptoms, I hung on for nearly 2 hours but gave up. Our GP surgery just refers us to 111 so there is no back-up. This leaves one feeling alone in more ways than one, with far less medical support than one would normally have. I don’t envy those who have conditions that need attention.
But of course I see that it is those who have major breathing difficulties who must get priority. The rest of us who are merely staggering from bed to bathroom with no energy even to even pick up the phone to a friend, must wait to get better. Hopefully. And I am one of the lucky ones as I have a doctor in the house. He can’t cure my symptoms but he does a good job of bringing me soup and cups of tea. My heart goes out to those in the NHS caring for the critically sick.
What has been marvellous, though, has been the kindness and care of our sons. We have six between us! Every day there is a call asking for a progress report on our symptoms, how we are doing, whether we have enough food, whether we are going nuts yet. As a parent it is such a special feeling to experience the tide turning as the young look after us and ensure our wellbeing.
When the self-isolation factor first started to hit home I felt incredibly sad. My son called and I sobbed down the line about how much I would miss my lovely cosy times with them and with the grandchildren, the school runs, the bath times, the outings, the sleepovers. Patiently and kindly he talked me through it “Mum we want you there for their 16th birthdays… this is just a few weeks. Try to think long-term.” It’s lovely to feel that they really don’t want us to peg out, even though several of my own generation feel we would sacrifice our own lives for the financial wellbeing of our offspring.
Atal Guwande in his book Being Mortal said that it helps to have daughters as one gets older. I feel much comforted by the care our sons have shown us in these last few days, including delightful bouquets for Mother’s Day, dropping off soup and bread and tasty delights on our doorstep. Daily calls and FaceTime with the children. It’s like receiving a giant hug from both our families.
Neighbours also have been extraordinarily kind and generous. Our immediate neighbour dropped off homemade pasta sauce, muffins and fruit, another friend some delicious cake, other friends ask frequently whether we need any provisions at the shops. We are blessed to live in Layton Place where there is such a strong sense of community.
Luckily Ocado has delivered for us and will be doing so again this Friday. Not sure how it will go after that as when they first started their online queuing system, I would find myself at the end of a queue of 6500 but when I looked today the queue was 27,500! But hopefully some of those people who have been laid off in the hospitality industry can now be redeployed to help with deliveries.
It is those who live alone who most concern me. It takes a lot of determination and creativity to amuse oneself and not allow spirits to drop into despondency and loneliness. I hope friends and family will keep calling them as we are, indeed, so very unfamiliar with our own company in a world where we have been able to pop out for a coffee, a sandwich, a walk, a gallery, a movie… and now we have none of those things to call on.
I thought David and I might amuse ourselves with a jigsaw puzzle – little did I realize that most of the jigsaw puzzles on Amazon would already be sold out. Great minds! I just long to have enough energy even to do a bit of adult colouring. Right now I can do nothing but sleep and cough.
The annoying thing is that I had just joined the Vitality Health policy which includes incentives to keep fit via points towards an Apple watch, special discounts at Virgin Active. For the first time since we moved to Kew I was really enjoying going to Virgin Active in Chiswick Park and working out and swimming. And now I am ill and can hardly move. How frustrating. However, as this bug removes all hint of an appetite then at least I should not be putting on weight. Hopefully once it lifts David and I will be able to revert to some home exercising.
I may feel sorry for myself right now because I am ill but it is the young I really worry about. Their careers and financial wellbeing have been thrown into complete disarray as the world comes to a halt. Thank heaven for technology and all it can do to keep companies operational, for teams to continue to meet online and carry out their work remotely. We shall need everyone to be ready to get up and running again once this period is over.
I wonder how my grandchildren will remember this time. They are used to such an active life of friends and activities in comparison to our own childhood. And I certainly don’t envy parents trying to encourage their children to sit down and home school. What a task!
We shall get through it all, no doubt, but there will be loss and tragedy in the midst of survival. And we shall be changed at the end of it. It makes our world even smaller and more integrated. Now, as well as a butterfly flapping its wing in Brazil potentially causing a hurricane in Florida, we shall also have to watch out for unsavoury practices in any small market of the world and be aware that it could wipe us all out. Each one of us as individuals holds a responsibility for the wellbeing of others throughout the world. We shall, I think, learn more about global love, compassion and care, hopefully. And about grit and determination. And probably creativity. Keep well everyone.
Mar 16
2020
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Helen Whitten
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David has been ill over the last few days with a temperature and a bit of a cough. We called 111 and they say that those with mild symptoms are not being tested, so we don’t know if he has Coronavirus or just a winter bug.
It makes sense to me that the NHS should not be swamped by people suffering from mild symptoms. Nor should A&E departments be inundated by the worried reasonably-well. The time to act is when symptoms are severe. Other policies taken by countries responding to the Coronavirus make less sense to me.
I had an email from a friend in Montreal yesterday saying that she and her nearly 80-year old husband are taking care of their grandchildren every day now because the Montreal schools are closed. However much they love their grandchildren, they are exhausted! You have children at a younger age for a good reason – we have less energy as we age. Asking elderly grandparents (the ones most at risk), to take care of their grandchildren doesn’t make much sense to me.
I don’t see the point of closing schools when parents would have to take time out of work to take care of them. We need working-age adults to continue working. School closures will cost this country billions and would also play with young people’s futures. After all, it is peak time for GCSE and A level revision, for degree exams. These exams are of key importance to future careers and university entry. Talk of sending children home for four months is putting a huge amount of pressure on already anxious young people. The majority of the young and middle-aged who get the virus only experience mild symptoms
I do worry that measures that bring the global economy to a standstill will result in far greater damage to an even larger number of people than the virus will affect. If major companies, and global airlines like British Airways, SAS and Virgin, are near collapse, this will be the experience of businesses worldwide. Thousands of people could lose their jobs. That means no National Insurance, no PAYE, no VAT winging its way into government coffers. In fact, the opposite. Governments are making extraordinary promises to compensate small and large businesses for their losses and will then potentially end up with large numbers of people on benefits. How can they make these promises when the potential sums involved are so huge? And what is the human cost of allowing companies to go broke? Many more people living in poverty, which has its own health risks.
It makes sense to me to keep younger and middle-aged adults working. How else are shelves going to be stacked with medicines and food, how else are public services going to function, banks going to care for our money, pension companies protect our savings, insurance companies continue to cover risk, factories going to provide us with necessities? In a complete lock-down nothing gets made, nothing gets distributed, supplies dry up. Surely many more people are going to die from lack, and those who have chronic illnesses or are receiving other medical treatment are going to be unable to receive help?
Coronavirus is an old people’s illness. It has apparently been nicknamed the “boomer remover”. Well great, as a Baby Boomer myself that doesn’t exactly cheer me up, inevitably. Much as I dislike the thought, I can see that there is some sense in asking the over 70s to self-isolate. After all it is us who are most at risk, specifically those over 65 with underlying health conditions. But four months? This seems excessive.
We Boomers have never been a particularly compliant generation and I do wonder how this will impact our mental health. What will governments do when we all go stir-crazy, stuck with our own company? For those living alone, to be forced to isolate can cause desolation and loneliness. For those in care homes not to receive visitors is like torture, and several care residents have written to say they would rather die earlier than be forced to end their days without seeing their families. Maybe it’s a strategy. After all, if we kill ourselves, or those with whom we are confined to barracks, it will relieve the need for our social care!
On the other hand, I do question why Italy, Spain and other countries are in such severe lock-down, preventing the younger generations going to work, children stuck at home away from friends, parents cooped up with irritable teenagers. Locking we oldies up does make more sense to me than stopping the world and jeopardising hundreds of thousands of people’s businesses, livelihoods and incomes. And at least we can finally clear out the garage, and deal with that enormous pile of filing that has been sitting there for two years. But then what …?
To keep people indoors is going to require a great deal of bureaucracy. Who will decide whether a trip to the shops or to a relative is valid? How on earth will the already stretched police force monitor movement? Will we get visas to travel to the next street or town? It will surely require a huge amount of administration.
It seems the question of whether we can build herd immunity for the future is unproven, as is so much about the Coronavirus. It is only a few months since the first case, and no-one really knows precisely what will happen. Will those quarantined go on to get it later? Will those who have suffered from Covid-19 now have immunity? In a world where people travel all the time it will probably be well into 2021 before we can understand the statistics and know which policy really worked best.
I am not in Government, thank heaven, having to make these very difficult decisions. I listen to the epidemiologists and respect their diverse opinions, but the decisions that are having to be made go way beyond public health. The impact on the economy, on supplies of food and medicine, on infrastructure, transport, on people’s families and friendship support systems, all need to be taken into consideration and all, ultimately, influence our health and wellbeing in both the short and long-term.
A university professor advised that the government should treat the population as adults. That those who are vulnerable can choose not to travel on public transport, go to the theatre or to a football match. That those who are vulnerable can choose to stay at home or work from home and self-isolate. Individually we need to step up and act considerately and responsibly. Sadly, of course, not all of us behave like adults, as we have seen from the bulk-buying of toilet paper etc.
The Government must listen to its advisors, and issue regulations that we are not necessarily going to like. I wouldn’t wish to be Boris Johnson or any other leader right now. He is under pressure to change tack as UK policies are out of line with the rest of the world. Personally, I am not convinced by the world-in-complete-lockdown strategy. The trouble is that politicians need to be seen to act and I just hope that if he changes the approach, he doesn’t bend to pressure for purely political reasons. We shall see.
In the meantime, wherever you are, I hope you keep well.
Feb 18
2020
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Helen Whitten
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This is what a friend of mine told me when he introduced me to Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. It takes quite a bit to shut me up but I did what I was told and shall be forever grateful. For listening, truly listening, is an art and a focus of sensory attention that transports one into a far deeper place. I had always found Wagner difficult to enjoy but another friend explained how to listen beyond the voices and again it transformed my experience of hearing it. I shall always remember listening to Beethoven’s Emperor piano concerto, followed by Thomas Tallis’ sacred choral music, in the quiet of a room overlooking the sea, and an evening when a jazz pianist played me Debussy’s Clair de Lune on his grand piano. There are some moments one never forgets and I think I have been fortunate to have friends who taught me to stop talking and just listen!
We have become so used to muzak, hearing it in lifts and shops. I remember what I used to call “aircraft landing music” that was piped through the speakers on take-off and landing. A ghastly tinny sound designed to calm us down. Nowadays we play music on hifi, iPhones, Alexa or Sonos but people tend to have it playing on in the background rather than really hearing it. In previous eras, without such technology, people played live music to a small audience of family and friends after dinner. All that has changed and unless one is at a concert it is too easy, in my experience, to only half-hear the subtleties and complexities of a piece.
Why am I thinking about this? Because I have been reading a book called The Music Store by Rachel Joyce, who wrote The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. This is another quirky and whimsical book that has deep undertones of emotion, relationships and human responses to life’s challenges. It features a man who runs a music store stocked only with vinyl records. He has a gift for intuitively knowing what piece of music a customer needs to hear – a little like the concept of prescribing a poem to heal an illness, whether emotional or physical.
Funnily enough this reminded me of a period of my life when I used to wake up in the mornings with a different song in my head that seemed to be giving me a message about which direction to go in my life, what to do. It was rather like a psychic juke box and often would give me a wise intuitive message. Sounds weird, I know, but it did happen. After all, the unconscious works in mysterious ways!
And so, as I have travelled over the last fortnight through some childhood haunts in Portugal and then on to sunny Marrakesh I have been allowing my mind to wander over the pieces of music that have changed me or marked a moment of my life. I shall share with you some of my musical moments in case your mind might wander back and be stirred to do the same…
The songs of our childhood
The songs my mother used to sing around the house were influenced, certainly, by our years living in Estoril. “Uma casa Portuguesa” sang my Mama, along with her records of Amalia Rodrigues, queen of the Fado, which skips between mournful and joyful with little in between. Not everyone’s taste, I know, but, being sentimental souls, the moment either my sister or I hear the first chords we start to cry. I heard Amalia Rodrigues once, in the Algarve, many years later and had tears running down my cheeks all evening as it reminded me of my parents and their happy times in Portugal and their sadness at leaving to return to England.
My mother would also sing Oh my Papa, Somewhere over the Rainbow and Oh my darling Clementine. I find it interesting that although she suffered from a nervous breakdown for several years of my childhood my abiding memory of our home was of her singing as she cooked or tidied. My sister remembers her singing Put another Nickel in … Music, Music, Music. With my father it was Nat King Cole, or the Missa Criolla which used to bring tears to his eyes. I wonder what songs your parents sang or played?
I am reminded of my brother when I hear the Searchers’ Needles and Pins as he used to sing it around the house when we were in our early teens, emphasizing the Needles and Pins-a. And I remember him playing a record over and over on the turntable in his bedroom when he first fell in love in his teens. Well, I expect we have all been there, haven’t we?
The 60s and onwards
My first 45rpm was Little White Bull by Tommy Steele bought with my pocket money when I was about 9 years old. The second was Rawhide. I had a crush on Clint Eastwood! But I quickly followed my older sister into Elvis Presley, Billy Fury, Dusty Springfield and later, when she returned from a few months in Madrid, to Spanish, Mexican, French café songs and Tom Lehrer. Until we both found the Beatles of course and my proud claim to fame is that I was number 36 of the Beatles fan club aged about 12 years old – ah, what a talent-spotter! I saw them live at the Finsbury Park Astoria in January 1964 – couldn’t hear a word of the music but it was so exciting. Then ran away to see the Rolling Stones in Weymouth. Never to be forgotten.
The 60s was full of fabulous songs. When I imagine being on Desert Island Discs I try to pick out what I would choose and What a Day for a Daydream and Waterloo Sunset would have to be included. It was such an amazing time for music. It would be incredibly difficult to choose just 8 pieces of music and have space to include the classical and sacred too.
The minute you hear a tune you are right back where you first heard it. Perhaps a first holiday or disco. That makes me think of Creedance Clearwater Revival playing in a disco on my first holiday with a girlfriend to the Algarve when I was 18. Music is so evocative. I can still picture the place and the feeling.
I went to a very musical school, Cranborne Chase in Wiltshire. Harrison Birtwhistle was our musical director. Of course he then went on to great things but my recollection of him was putting on some music for our school orchestra to play which consisted (in my ignorant head anyway) of clashing chords followed by silence followed by more clashing chords. Sorry, Sir Harrison, as he is now, I am afraid your compositions went right over my head. I tended to look forward to nights in the dormitory listening to Radio Luxembourg or Radio Caroline under the pillow, philistine that I am!
Where the music takes you
Music can take you to joy or to tears. Whenever I hear Roberta Flack’s Killing me Softly with his Song I am reminded of a broken heart. Your Song by Elton John reminds me of getting married in 1971. Did you have a tune you both sang? Shortly after our son Daniel died of a cot death in 1976 a good friend took me to see A Little Night Music and I sobbed my heart out to Send in the Clowns. Then Elton John sang “Daniel”.
Classical music paints pictures in my mind, transporting me to imagined landscapes that are not only visual but also emotional.
The words never die
I am rather horrified by how many pathetic lyrics I can remember in my head. If only my addled brain could remember as many relevant and current facts, figures, names and dates instead! But no, I have the lyrics of almost every single pop song I ever sang along to, stored in some neural pathway or other so whether it was the 1950s or the 60s, 70s or later I can still sing along to Magic FM or my Spotify Playlists.
I hate the sound and lyrics of rap, hip-hop. Drill music fills me with fear. These seem alien to me, somehow so different to the seeming innocence of the songs of my youth. And children’s programmes are frenetic – worlds apart from dear old Uncle Mac and the Teddy Bears Picnic! However, I can still sing along to the nursery rhymes I heard on Children’s Favourites and my grandchildren seem to tolerate my efforts.
I do still remember the words, also, to all those hymns, carols, prayers and psalms we sang at school and beyond. I love sacred music – Allegri’s Miserere, Vivaldi’s Gloria take me to a spiritual place somewhere inside. I have requested that these to be played to me in my last days, whenever that may be. And then there’s the music of nature – birds, wind in the trees, rain on the grass.
Music to enjoy as we get older
Nowadays I love songs like I’m Still Standing by Elton John or Let it Be from Frozen as they remind me of times with my grandchildren, singing along or dancing whilst sharing a holiday with them.
T’Pau’s China in my Hand reminds me of my older son going to his first pop concert at Wembley aged about 12. My younger son enjoyed Bon Jovi as a teenager. Later we ended up, my two sons and I, at the Hotel California in Mexico – another of our favourite songs.
As I get older I like to play Brian Adams’ The Summer of ‘69 as that reminds me of being 19 and full of youthful optimism. I still can’t sit still and hear that song. I have to get up and dance.
I have just enjoyed one of the best evenings of my life at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville listening to country music. David and I saw Leonard Cohen on his last tour. It was an outdoor venue, the Mercedes centre in Surrey, and it poured all night but he sang his heart out and the band were eclectic and brilliant. We had rain dripping down our faces but Leonard kept on singing. Dance me to the End of Love is our song.
So keep playing those old records that make you feel young – the medics have proven that it is good for us. But we don’t need them to tell us that, do we?!
All this inspired by reading this book The Music Store. So thankyou Rachel Joyce! Over nearly 70 years there have been endless moments of music but I hope this might have taken you back, maybe reminded you to stop talking, listen more, and remember which songs and pieces of music have made a difference in your lives. Or made you think that you might encourage a partner, child or grandchild to delve into the wonders of silently listening to music – whether it’s Beethoven or Taylor Swift. I would love to hear your experiences of music if you feel like writing to me about them…
Jan 28
2020
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Helen Whitten
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As humans we define ourselves and our lives by the stories we tell ourselves. But those stories are often constructed from a faulty memory and aren’t always true. They can be helpful or unhelpful. For example, I used to say “I had a really happy childhood” and I think I did, in the main. But then friends would point out that it can’t have been that easy, necessarily, to move from sunny Portugal to the grey North of England when I was 4, change schools frequently, nor can it have been easy that my mother had a depression for several years. So how happy was my childhood really, I wonder? Was it a story or the truth?
Thinking about it now, I believe that this story was, in fact, quite a helpful one to me. Whether by nature or nurture I am someone who prefers to look on the bright side of life and if I embellished a little of my happiness in early years then I think this has been more useful than me dwelling on all the aspects of life that were missing or could have been better.
On the other hand, creating a fantasy can just equal a denial of reality, so I am grateful to those friends who made me delve a little deeper into my feelings about my past and helped me to put it in context.
The stories we hear from our parents can shape our sense of ourselves should they categorise us as siblings. My older sister was always referred to as “the intelligent one”, my brother mad about cricket and me mad about ponies. It’s too easy for parents to label siblings in ways that box them into a story that may simply reflect a passing phase. But those stories one picks up from parents about religion, politics, the way things should or should not be done, linger on into our adult years. I suspect I am not alone in catching myself checking whether I am still, years after their deaths, trying to gain my parents’ approval! And, therefore, I continue to re-define what was fact and what was opinion, what was theirs and what is mine.
There was a period in the 80s and 90s when therapists tended to focus their clients’ attention on what was wrong in their childhood, to find something to be angry about or someone to whom to direct blame. Whilst it is helpful to understand one’s childhood patterns, I fear this has led to the tendency to focus on the negative, the sense of victimhood and offence that we witness today. Being a victim of an event or experience deserves compassion and understanding. But it can disempower us and will not change whatever experience we have had in our past. How can we change or right wrongs for ourselves or others if we continue to adopt a helpless-hopeless perspective? And we need to be honest with ourselves that adopting the role of victim does have a pay-off in that it may well gain us special attention. It can also mean that others treat us more gently. But it may silence those around us from speaking the truth, which may be less helpful.
The habit I notice when listening to stories on the radio recently is the way people begin their sentences with “as a single mother”, “as a black person”, “as a trans…” “as someone from a poor background” and I wonder what their purpose is in mentioning these statements. Are they asking for special treatment? Or are they proud of the way they are identifying themselves? It’s a question.
I have been wondering what stories Harry and Meghan have been telling themselves. It seems they have decided that the world is against them in the UK, that the grass is greener and quieter in Canada, although I gather they are already encountering paparazzi in the woods around their house. It’s a valid decision, of course, though I feel it is a shame. A few unpleasant media stories or tweets do not add up to the opinion of a whole country. If politicians, celebrities or journalists took the trolls and criticism too seriously we would silence a whole population.
Harry has done such good work with his Invictus and other projects, Meghan was welcomed and, as an intelligent, articulate, successful and beautiful woman could have been an amazing role model for black, mixed-race and ethnic women growing up in the UK. She could have done so much to aid integration in our country, which, when you look at the far-right movements developing across Europe and the world, is, after all, a pretty tolerant place. And so I wish they had told themselves a different story.
As I enter my 70th year, I become aware of the stories I have been telling myself about ageing. I listen to the stories my friends are describing of what it means to get older and be reminded on a daily basis that one’s body is not what it was! I remember how, when I was in my early 40s and much slimmer than I am now, I decided I was too old to wear jeans. Where did that come from? I chose to open a new chapter and still happily wear jeans today.
There have been times when I have felt older than I do today, despite a younger body. That has reminded me that age is, in fact, a number and the stories we tell ourselves about what it might be like to reach a particular age can often be totally inaccurate. We have a delightful neighbour, Jack, of 90 who is lively and great company and looks about 70 years old. I am a colleague of Shirley Conran and, in her 88th year, she is still full of life, ideas and energy. And so I am having to re-adjust my expectations and associations of age and be open to the possibility (but not certainty) that it could be better than I had feared.
The stories we tell ourselves shape our daily existence, our mental and physical health. We need constantly to reflect on what scripts are running through our minds, stop and check whether they originated in our own hearts and minds or elsewhere, and whether they are useful or damaging.
I heard a few examples this week that made me think further about this:
When discussing a rugby player who had sadly died young, his team were putting on a match, saying “it’s what he would have wanted”. Of course, they don’t know what he would have wanted but it was a useful story as it brought the team together to comfort one another and to celebrate their lost friend.
The son of a friend of mine who had recently started a new job had an accident and broke both elbows. He comforted himself by saying it was a sign that he needed thinking time.
A friend broke their ankle on the ice the first day of their skiing holiday but rather than moan about how unlucky they were, they told themselves that they were lucky that they had not broken their neck!
We shape our identity around these stories of whether we are a lucky person, whether a meeting with a spouse was destiny, whether what we have achieved in our lives has been successful enough or not, whether our lives have been good enough. The important message, I feel, is to listen to what is in our mind, challenge outdated stories and create a narrative that helps us live well today, in the moment, and supports us in facing our future, whatever that may be.
I wonder what stories have you told yourself? And whether you have had cause to question and alter them over the years?
Dec 31
2019
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Helen Whitten
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What shall we hope for in 2020 and the new decade? I feel sure that many of us will share similar positive outcomes of good health, world peace and more, if not the precise approaches of achieving them.
Right now I am wondering where all the self-help gurus have gone? The ones who told us to visualise a better future and act as if we had it? Deepak Chopra and his message of the universe being pure potentiality from which we could create matter from the ideas we formulate in our mind? Wayne Dyer who told us “you will see it when you believe it” or Anthony Robbins and his encouragement to “awaken the giant within”? I couldn’t have made the changes I did in my life in 1992 without their messages.
I feel we have lost some of their creative optimism and have just experienced a decade of too much negative focus. Don’t we need to get back on our horse of positive thinking and visualising? How else can we make positive changes in this world or in our own lives? Shaping the problem is helpful. But change cannot happen unless we develop ideas and solutions and imagine them happening.
So, with a new decade ahead, here are some of my own hopes for 2020 and beyond, perhaps to stir a few ideas of your own, whether you agree with them or not …
- I was never a great fan of John Bercow as I questioned his objectivity as a Speaker but I must say that I did find his Alternative Christmas Message echoed some of my own thoughts. That democracy needs to be valued and supported. That we need to be able to be friends with those who think differently to us. That many politicians are trying to do their best (and watching the Christine Keeler series demonstrates how sleazy they were in the 1960s). Either way, let’s not, in the next decade, feel we have to zip up if we disagree with someone. But let’s demand truth, honesty and ethical behaviour from our politicians and also politicians who have expertise and experience beyond being an MP.
- May Brexit go through with a pragmatic mutually-beneficial deal and may we forge new and strong alliances as friends and trading partners with Europe and the rest of the world through conversation, negotiation, and mutual respect.
- Wise world leaders – leaders who are intelligent, thoughtful and who seek the best for those they govern, maintaining peace, cooperation, stable economies, harmony and who spend time listening and shaping a future world that will benefit the majority.
- A revived and refreshed NHS where the investment is placed carefully into well-considered strategies that enable effective service, with staff who feel valued and fulfilled. Where those in senior positions recognise that systems need to be reviewed and revised to provide the services patients require in a changing world where younger staff are demanding flexibility. I suggest also that those who are trained in the NHS need to have a commitment to working within the service for a certain number of years – 5? – after being trained. And that the NHS becomes a learning organisation where the term ‘witchhunt’ becomes irrelevant.
- And on the subject of health, I pray for a breakthrough in the treatment of Type 1 diabetes to enable my beloved 8 year-old granddaughter to lead an easier life. And of course many other medical breakthroughs for cancer, Parkinson’s, MS, and other chronic or acute ailments that limit lives and quality of life.
- On that theme I hope for respectful and compassionate social care for all those who are needy or vulnerable, young and old. And for us oldies a care system of support in the home and in specialised homes that adapts to individual needs, perhaps with the assistance of AI. And, personally, I am all in favour of dignity in dying and would wish to decide the time of my own death without having to trot off to Switzerland.
- A demotion of the bureaucrats who seem to have ended up running our lives with their spreadsheets and tick-boxes. Yes, we need them but we don’t need them to lead every aspect of our lives. So often these people are young and think in administrative or politically correct ways, lacking creativity or strategic thinking. So often they have no real understanding of the context or running of the organisations they are regulating or assessing, and have never actually run a business or service – whether business, health, education, prison or police – themselves. They have therefore seldom had to be accountable in the way those they are assessing are responsible. Can we please put them in their rightful place as supporters of a service but not continue to allow them to be authoritarian dictators of how things should be run.
- Demote the voice of celebrities who express opinions on health or politics in order to attract brownie points to themselves rather than truly having the wellbeing of others in mind. If the young are relying on these people for their news and opinions then these influencers need to be accountable for getting their facts right and, when expressing opinions, make it clear that this is what they are doing and not describe those views as facts.
- Make everyone using the internet put their correct name rather than being able to hide behind some pseudonym like Mickey Mouse or Hercules from whence they can spout rubbish or be absolutely rude, bullying or horrible to others without being identified.
- A mature online society. It’s all so new and no-one imagined that the whole of society would be mirrored on the web, it’s darker aspects as well as higher aspirations. Who thought, when it was first considered, that the internet would be used to groom kids, sell drugs, radicalise ISIS followers, influence the young to watch porn at an ever earlier age? Let’s open our eyes to this and educate the young to know what to be aware of and what to avoid. The tech companies can do their bit but can’t be expected to police millions of uploads a day – it has to come back to individual responsibility and transparency.
- Teach everyone history – it’s a subject that has such bearing on the present and the future. Lessons within of patterns and repeats plus learning a discipline to read in depth, to analyse and think critically. How else do young people gain perspective on how good today is unless they realize that our yesterdays were often far worse?
- More young people reading newspapers. Apparently the numbers of young reading papers has reduced to 20%. I am afraid that strikes me as appalling. There’s so much you happen upon in a paper that you just don’t chance upon online. Plus comment and analysis by professional journalists who have expertise in their subjects, who you may or may not agree with. Of course it takes time to read a paper. So can we encourage them to slow down, read, reflect, think. Our future democracy depends on it.
- More talking, less screen-time. Developing empathy, courtesy and understanding of others and becoming mature enough to manage differences.
- Find solutions to Climate Change. I am all in favour of the young protesting but would personally prefer that they spend their Fridays at school rather than on the street. Make Fridays a laboratory day for STEM subjects and get them working on solutions. Please. And let’s envisage both corporate and government action plus also major changes of habits on an individual daily basis that maintains our environment.
- Abolish the concept and practice of fast fashion. Create materials that last and that can also be recycled easily. The young can’t blame us Baby Boomers for ruining the environment (which we certainly never meant to do) if they continue to do so themselves. Celebrities can model this by wearing the same clothes more often.
- Better rehabilitation procedures for the mentally sick, prisoners, the homeless, drug addicts, alcoholics. They all need, as we all do, to be given lifeskills to manage money, rent, interviews, work, as well as the specific therapies to move out of situations where they feel powerless.
- Debating LGBTQ issues in a calm and deliberate way so that all those involved in such decisions can have a chance to be heard. Making sure the rights that they obviously deserve do not infringe on the rights of others – whether in sport, prison or changing rooms. And ensuring young children are not persuaded into major chemical or surgical changes until they fully understand the consequences of what this might mean to their lives and relationships.
- Harsh punishments for organised crime gangs and their leaders whether in the field of drugs, migration, sex traffic, burglary, etc. We don’t want to end up like South America or the Mafia where the crime gangs run a parallel policing system of fear and brutality. Let’s get on it fast and recognise that there are criminals who bring a different type of crime into our country and that we have been naïve about this, to the detriment of many victims living here.
- But let’s move on from victimhood, misery memoir, the seeking of offence. Let’s encourage those who are quick to blame others to build resilience, to recognise that being offended is part of life, to have bad things happen to us is part of life, to be anxious and somewhat depressed as teenagers is actually a very natural and normal phenomenon, to worry about exams likewise. Let’s not over-pathologise these states. Share the stories, of course, but can we move away from gaining street cred for trying to be worse off than someone else? Keep hope in the equation. Self-esteem can be gained by working through challenges and creating a good-enough life for oneself. Help those who really need helping and encourage others to work through their fears and build resilience.
- Finally let’s all envisage a healthy and cooperative world, a more harmonious UK, the possibility that we can create success out of uncertainty. We are a nation of enterprise and innovation so let’s value that.
There’s so much more – reducing poverty, creating opportunity. What might you seek to create in your own life? What might you like to see or achieve in your life for yourself, your family, friends, clients or colleagues by the end of the year? Or by the end of the decade? If we don’t take time to imagine it we can’t create it.
Think about the inventions of science, medicine, design, music – they all came from an inspiration of someone’s thought or idea. It was all there in the potential of the universe, ready to be created once someone thought about it. We can do the same today, a collective optimistic and positive picture of our future.
I send you a heartfelt wish that we can, between us all, create a happy new year and new decade.
Dec 24
2019
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Helen Whitten
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Differ, debate but don’t demean
In this divided country of ours, where political parties are reviewing the recent election, I am returning to the writings of Jonathan Haidt (author of The Righteous Mind, Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion and The Coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure). The theme of why good people are divided by politics and religion is a particularly apt subject for the Christmas period, I think. And I really hope that in the decade to come we learn to listen more and be curious about other people’s opinions rather than judge or shame them for having an opinion different to our own.
People have rushed to label others. Those who voted Remain have labelled those who didn’t as either stupid or uneducated (which obviously can’t be true of millions of people), Leavers have labelled Remainers as arrogant and undemocratic. Those who voted Labour or LibDem have labelled those who did not vote like them as bad or nasty people (neither of which, again, is likely to be the whole truth). Those who voted Tory accused the others of being Marxist, etc. I don’t remember a time in my life where there was so much name-calling as in recent years.
Can we stop this mudslinging I wonder? All the parties claimed in their election campaigns to seek healing, though none of them explained how they would do it. Ultimately it is down to individual human behaviour as to whether we continue to box ourselves into corners.
These polarised attitudes can put us at odds with friends, family, colleagues and neighbours. Is it really what we want? Aren’t people entitled to approach problems from different perspectives? Isn’t that what makes the world go round (as well as love, of course)? On the whole I believe the majority of people in this country are basically good, hard working individuals doing their best for themselves and their families. There are, of course, bad and nasty people in any society in any part of the globe but I don’t believe they represent the majority of our fellow countryfolk. There are people who seek to kill others or steal but no one was voting for such a thing in either the Referendum or election.
There are always serious issues we must stand up for in life, sure, but might we begin to open our hearts more to those who have different views to our own? We don’t have to agree but we can differ, debate and not demean one another. We may discover that their intentions are as noble as yours.
I believe Jonathan Haidt’s model of 5 Moral Foundations could shed some light on the recent election result here in the UK. And I suspect he would not have been surprised by the election result last week. Despite being a Democrat, a speechwriter for John Kerry, and a man of liberal views, he came to the conclusion, through his research, that left-leaning liberals do not embrace as many value-sets as the centre or right. In what Haidt describes as ‘the conservative advantage’ he found that Republicans understood moral psychology better than the Democrats and therefore were elected more often. Could the same be said of Conservative and Labour here, I wonder? For sure both the Labour Party and LibDems need to have a good look at themselves and understand why the silent majority turned away from their liberal offerings because it is in all our interests to have three strong and functioning parties in Parliament.
Haidt’s model of 5 Moral Foundations identifies values that influence thoughts and behaviours. These Morals were divided into
- Care
- Fairness
- Loyalty
- Authority
- Sanctity
Haidt discovered, through research surveys, that everyone – left, right and centre – reports being influenced by the first two of these values – Care and Fairness. Across the board, responders shared the belief that concerns about compassion, cruelty, fairness and injustice shaped their judgements about right and wrong.
The values of Care and Fairness are therefore shared by all. However, there has been an insinuation, through virtue-signalling, by left-liberal supporters that they are personally far more fair and caring than anyone of the centre-right. Yet his research would suggest this isn’t necessarily true. They may just hold a different set of solutions to the problems they face.
When it came to the three values of Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity the story was quite different. Haidt’s studies showed that Liberals largely reject these values and, in fact, can be quite derisory of those who hold them. Notice, if you will, how today’s commentators are referring to values such as patriotism – a form of loyalty – as “working class” or nationalistic. Notice how the immediate response to the Referendum outcome in 2016 was for liberal journalists and Remainers to downgrade the result by claiming it was “working class” views and demented pensioners that had led to this “stupid” outcome. Notice how the Tory landslide of 2019 is referred to as solely due to the “left behind” (“who obviously know nothing about the world”, being the implication) when of course it cannot have been just the left behind who voted in this way. Don’t these terms strike you as somewhat patronising?
An example of Loyalty is those who feel loyal to their country and community. This doesn’t make them stupid or nationalist. Those who enjoy living in a community and culture where they feel they belong are not necessarily racists. We see communities all over the world – Muslim, Hindu, Polish, Jewish – choosing to live within neighbourhoods where they can develop the social resources to feel at home. Those in the UK who feel unsettled that their communities have changed beyond recognition should surely not be pilloried as philistines. Especially not by those who can well afford to move elsewhere should they choose to do so.
The instinctive human need for a sense of belonging (loyalty) to place, land or a social community is human and actively supports our wellbeing.
Since my childhood there has been a dramatic shift in how people challenge Authority. Most of us would never have dared to tell a teacher, doctor or police office to “F-off”. It just wasn’t done. I accept that many of my generation have been responsible for challenging authority and especially the Establishment. Some of this has been successful – the Establishment is certainly more diverse than it was in the 1950s or 60s though I do wonder if we haven’t simply replaced the old Establishment with the new liberal metropolitan elite establishment, as it is called, who don’t truly understand the general population any more than the old one did.
However, today people reject the authority of science, biology, experts, politicians, medics, police and more. They seem to think it acceptable to make up facts about science or biology if they can convince enough people on social media to believe what they say. But this challenge to authority needs surely to be balanced within the context of law and order, facts, manners, and the need to respect others without being fundamentalist. Respecting authority may have motivated voters towards Boris Johnson but they may equally have done so for fear of the over-powering authority of a socialist state.
Living in an era that followed on to the terrible dictatorships of left and right in the 20th century we are no doubt wary of those who take authority and yet people seek and can benefit from a good leader, so we should surely not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We don’t want strong leadership or bullies but a family, organisation or country does benefit from a vision, sense of purpose and a set of morals by which to live. Creating an organised system that protects this vision can liberate people to be creative, to work together, aspire and achieve new inventions or services that can benefit all.
Research has shown that more liberals are drawn towards city life and towards change. Those who live in the countryside tend to value continuity and stability. I guess this isn’t surprising. These are generalisations but perhaps demonstrate, all the same, that we need all kinds to make a world and to make a society that functions well and where people get along with one another. Change is good but continuity and stability have value too.
A tolerant democratic structure should protect a flow of ideas through freedom of speech. Neither anarchy nor dictatorship protects the individual as well. Authority, in balance, has its place.
Sanctity does not necessarily equate to religion but can certainly refer to giving reverence to those around you, whether human, animal or a part of nature. We see it today in the trend towards vegetarianism, the sensitive treatment of animals, the protection of our environment against Climate Change, the protection of the vulnerable. Whether you have a religion or not there is something sacred and mysterious about this world of ours, is there not?
Proportionality is a word that Haidt uses and, in my view, needs to be raised to greater consciousness in the next decade. Perhaps, post the election, the Labour Party would do well to understand that loyalty, authority and a sense of sanctity are not ‘right-wing’ but human. Many, if not all people value loyalty to friends, family, colleagues and country. Many, if not all, have some sense that a social group of any kind, anywhere in the world, benefits from respecting authority, provided that the authority does not over-reach its powers. Many, if not all, hold some sense of sanctity either in terms of a religious belief, a belief in the wonder of nature, of science, of the need to respect those around us.
Whether we voted Leave or Remain, Tory, Labour, Green, LibDem or independent, we are not so different as humans, though we may well believe in different ways to approach the problems we face. Perhaps, as we come towards the Christian rituals of Christmas – which, incidentally, many peoples of different religions nonetheless celebrate – we can focus more on what connects us rather than on what divides us.
Happy Christmas.