Direction

Yesterday I was sitting in the British Council reading ‘Hello’ Magazine and I came across a quote that leapt off the page, as quotes from celebrities seldom do.

It was by Cate Blanchett, and it went like this:

“My career hasn’t had any sense of direction..There’s been no philosophy or ambition except to deal with whatever comes up.”

I thought this was highly cool. No doubt I saw a lot of myself in her words. Of course, unlike her, I am not a rich and famous, successful thespian. Whatever. I warmed to her apparent embracing of worldly directionlessness.

One of the first questions I was asked when I was young was “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I remember that I never found this question remotely interesting. Yet since it was so universally asked and answered, and so entirely without irony, I didn’t question outright its legitimacy. Usually, I would just shrug my shoulders non-commitally or say something helpful like “I don’t know”. I do remember when I was about five I used to reply with the single word ‘doctor’. Indeed I even remember saying this while we were driving in our car (probably Dad’s dark blue navy Volvo Estate but possibly Mum’s Morris Minor) along Queens Road, Cambridge, towards Newnham. I don’t remember why I said this, why I wanted to become a doctor. Conceivably, I just said it to shut people up; but apparently I said it with some finality and conviction. The thing is, I knew no doctors when I was a child (apart from the family GP, Dr Buchanan). None of my Mum’s or Dad’s close friends were doctors, none of my aunts or uncles, or as far as I knew any of my ancestors. Later in life, I had no particular interest in biology, no fascination for the white coated sterility of the operating theatre, nor any curiosity, as a pre-teen or teen, about the medical basis behind the ailments that would sometimes –fairly rarely as it happened- arise in my body and happily keep me from going to school, thereby allowing me to enjoy more than otherwise, Children’s TV and the pleasures of eating in bed.

Unsurprisingly, then, I did not become a doctor. Yet I have always wanted people to be healed, so perhaps that’s why I answered as I did. Healed from what though? This is a question. If I meant merely physical sicknesses and ailments in a conventional sense, I'd be a doctor right now and not, as I am, a ‘mere’ teacher of English language; one of those working in a profession that Hanif Kureishi referred to hilariously as the ‘last refuge of the directionless’, and which Noam Chomsky –for reasons I can guess at but do not know for sure- said anybody could do as long as they knew how to operate a photocopier.

But then it is not as if, in being a language teacher, I have found my perfect meaning and direction. The job is eminently sane and ethically sound. Thought is crucial to life, and language to thought. Teaching a facility with language therefore serves life.

Could I think of a superior job? More to the point, could you? Whatever could I do, whatever should I do?

Hmmm..well I can envisage for myself nothing perhaps that might sound sensible and reasonable. So I’ll just have to carry on getting by, tying to be myself in a world alien to my instincts, a world in which I feel an outsider- albeit one who sometimes finds himself unreasonably happy- for one living so far from home.

As Jacob Marley says, humanity should be our business, not making money for self-gain. I seek to understand this mystery that surrounds me, this mystery called humanity. I seek to serve it, to love it, and to see it transformed into light and joy. This is the only true direction I have ever sought to have. At times I have lost the plot and spiralled, perhaps, into Satan’s underpants. But I never wanted to go there, and wasn’t happy when I did. Any time that I felt my life possessed meaning and purpose, it was because I felt oriented to the higher light and desirous of its company. Desirous too, that it be made manifest for all, and turn all this dross metal into gold...that life might become, for the first time ever, truly interesting.