The Manliness of the Long-distance Runner

Don’t talk to me about jogging. Jogging is for memories, not for bodies. Jogging is to running as slow-walking with ski poles is to hiking. Jogging says, ‘I could do more than this, but I’m lazy’. It’s not about speed – everyone needs to find their pace – it’s about attitude. Tarting yourself up in go-faster stripes and prancing around the streets bespeaks a wilful vanity. Jogging is plainly ridiculous.

Running is about intent. At a minimum, it is about health maintenance. After that one can imagine all kinds of goals, from the 5k race for charity to some Herculean super marathon. But running is also about process, discipline, and mental fortitude. Anybody who runs invariably spends a good deal of time with himself, listening to his body’s complaints and overruling them; wading through memories, plans, conversations, and scenarios real and invented. If you were to appear alongside a me in full flow and say hello, chances are this would seriously disturb my concentration, like waking me from a dream, alerting me to the screaming in my calves and the pounding in my chest. I would seriously resent you for that, and that’s why I don’t run with other people.

But it’s never lonely. In order to push through the barriers set by our bodies – bodies that are weak and sedentary and accustomed to Western decadence – one must involve the mind in a dialogue, or a war, with the corporeal self. For every runner you see, there is another inside. The body always wants to stop. The mind either capitulates or it defies. The true runner defies.

One definition of manliness might be ‘mind over matter’. When the task at hand causes an instinctive bodily response that tells the brain ‘I can’t’, the response ‘wanna bet?’ bespeaks manliness. It calls forth a deeper reserve, an extra gear, an iron will. And once this is habitual then the mind finds a new level of freedom. Ask any serious runner and they’ll tell you that they sort out the world in their minds on long runs. Ten miles into a marathon, a man really begins to think. The body, docile and servile, functions by itself.

To joggers: stop it and get real.

The World, if not the Worm, doth turn

My presence here has been patchy of late, but I want to let you know that the ride didn’t stop. It simply ran on other rails for a while.

I can’t recall a busier summer of travel and work, which both fly for me right now under the banner of ‘application’. In any case, the summer’s work is bearing fruit, as you might expect, and harvesting it is a labour. Yours truly is back in gainful employment, at least for the time being, and committing his energies to his professional calling. Callings are the best and worst of life, for they demand to be done whether they come with joy or otherwise. For many a moon, my calling came with a kind of grief, where the rewards were always tainted by the overarching feeling of being misapprehended and under-valued, and by the stink of failure. One puts it all down to paying one’s dues. Get your head down; grin and bear it; soldier on.

Since I can’t guarantee that the upturn will endure, I’m making the most of it. If you spend a winter rationing last summer’s meagre bounty, then it is no time to be lazy and nonchalant when it’s time to gather this summer’s plentiful crop. A measure of success is not a sign to sit back and enjoy the ride. A measure of success is a sign to put your foot down and bloody drive. You’ll understand, perhaps, that this has kept me from these pages of late. Once I figure out how to make everything balance again, you’ll hear from me more often. There is no shortage of things to say, after all.

A quick shout out to Lily Lemontree, who will be posting my guide to elegant places to visit in Berlin later today, so she tells me. Do enjoy it.

On Waiting; On Persevering

You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

I apologise for my patchy presence of late. Work rolls in unpredictable tides, and I can hardly complain about being up to my neck in the rising waters. At some point I expect to stop floundering and start floating. After that I’ll start thinking about navigation, but one mustn’t get ahead of oneself. In any case, professional obligations are impinging on the limited writing space my head will allow, and that accounts for the recent dearth. Normal service will, I am sure, be resumed anon.

Of course, in asking for your patience, I am mindful of my own waiting and persevering game. The world of the writer/scholar is not the jet-setting and exotic existence one might be forgiven for thinking it is. Travel is a blessing, yes, but when one is constantly in search of bread it is easy to forget the joyousness of it all. Being left to the contrivances of one’s own mind is a liberation, but often also a frustrating constraint. Nobody ever tells me what to do at work. Sometimes – and I immediately chide myself for so thinking – I wish somebody would tell me what to do. Working independently forces a man to confront the thing upon which he is never fully sure he can depend: himself. It is a constant battle of organisation, self-imposed dead lines, motivation, and crises of self-assurance and confidence. The structure provided by a regular job has to be provided entirely by the self. In short, it takes a good deal of will continually to make it work. Knowing that the intended goal is worthwhile is important. Persevering into the biting gale of procrastination is at least equally significant.

Bear with me, dear friends. I’ll be with you soon.

On Purpose

Oh how easy to drift along allowing things external to ourselves to determine what we do. People will become agitated if you tell them they lack agency, for we all wish to be our own masters; and yet common-or-garden frustration is borne precisely from a feeling that matters are beyond our control. Whether it be work, geography, money, relationships, family, friends, dependencies, or just the bloody weather, a moment’s self-reflection often leads to feeling of smallness and futility, immediately followed by a kind of fatalism. We are but small boats on a big ocean, and we daily curse the moon.

I’m not about to turn around and tell you that all of this is not the case. But I do maintain that the feeling can be managed, and that what we identify as the fates can be defied, at least in spirit. Fundamentally, each individual needs a purpose: a reason to go through life. It might be a duty of care. It could be a pursuit intellectual or physical, or perhaps political. It is probably not reducible to the acquisition of money, for mere accumulation still begs the question ‘what for?’. Likewise, ambitions are not purposeful, for what happens if you realise them? The process itself must be the reward. For many men out there, the process of self-betterment is their purpose. Whatever comes their way, this resolve steers them straight. But whatever be your purpose, if you hold fast to it you will be able to endure and surmount the circumstantial obstacles that seem to block your way. The challenge is part of the actualisation of self. Capitulation, after all, is never partial. To give in is to abnegate the self.

Illustration by Bill Ross

My purpose is to write, for to write is to engage. It is an end and a means to other ends: discussion, education, learning, entertainment. The where, what and how of the writing process is up for negotiation, but the object is constant. Of late there have been many obstacles to pursuing my purpose – funding being not the least – but to hell with them. My wants are, after all, meagre. Consider this a re-statement of intent, albeit with many of the details omitted.

What is your purpose? What keeps you going? And by what means do your steer your craft, in defiance of the tide?

Working Lunch; Or, Where There’s A Will There’s A Way

A kindly American professor once told me over lunch of his struggles through the system, finally to reach a place of security, contentment, and intellectual fulfilment. Having escaped the Eastern Bloc when a youngster, he had sought enrichment – of the mind, principally – in America. He found the going hard; money difficult to come by; basic expectations unexplained (for we tend not to explain to outsiders that which is normal to us). He set his sights on becoming a professor, making a promise to himself not to sell out to the first offer, but to cultivate his mind even if it meant going hungry. He had constructed for himself an end. As for the means, he was open to anything. A year without pay, but in the right academic environment, ultimately paid off. Encountering the best minds of his generation, he conquered his intellectual fears, and thereafter soared.

We live in difficult times, but then, everyone has always said such things. At times the things we want to do seem improbable, if not impossible. The temptation is to give in, let it go, raise the white flag. But let us wax Churchillian for a moment and consider the merits of declaring, ‘we shall never surrender’. Giving up and giving in to fear are much the same, and we are the worse for capitulation. Lying down to be walked upon, the invited footprints will slowly bruise the spirit and crush the soul. That job you are chasing; that girl, or boy; the feelings of security and contentment, for us and for our families; the escape from boredom: these are wants with which most of us can identify. They are worthy pursuits. A level higher, our ways of life; our freedom, to speak and to act; and our beliefs: these things we may not think about so directly, but they are given tangible form in the material and emotional desires of the former list. To give up on the one set because they are too hard or too expensive, the process too fearful, or too risky, is to jeopardize the latter. To give up is to let down the guard of vigilance that is the basis of freedom. When we give in to fear we are weak; when we are weak we are vulnerable; and when we are vulnerable the strong will smash us. It is precisely when we sense our weakness that we should muster courage. This is virtue. It is fortitude in the face of our own perceived limitations, or at the risk of our bodies and minds.

Another way of saying this is ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’. The will, much less the phrase, does not ward off failure. Rather, it suggests that failure should not be an act of volition. Moreover, the way is often not the along the intended route, but we might well resolve that come hell or high water we shall get where we are going in any case. The important part is not to resign before material difficulties. If our object is realistic, our nerve should hold steady. We may not be able to conjure up a job that isn’t there, or persuade a love that doesn’t care. But should the job, or the love, come along, we shall not have ourselves to blame if we do not prevail.

Man of the Year, 2010

The calendar is close enough to its terminal date to make the announcement of the first annual Being Manly Man of the Year. The decision process has been entirely personal and wholly undemocratic, but still it is more reliable than FIFA. The award, which conveys as much honour as its recipient would care to mention, comes with no formal prize. Nevertheless, the winner’s name will adorn this website for as long as it lasts, and I trust that the links to his endeavours will do him, and his causes, some good.

So, without further ado, the Being Manly Man of the Year is Australia’s own crazy runner, Tristan Miller, or ‘T-Bone’, if you will. Mr. Miller was implicitly introduced to you back in September, after I had met him on the Montreal Marathon course. I have followed his exploits on an almost daily basis since then, and can safely say that his is a rare spirit. A man of character if ever there was one, Mr. Miller is, at this moment, on the southern tip of Chile, preparing for a flight to Antarctica to run his 51st marathon this year, with one more to complete the set following shortly afterwards in Melbourne, Australia. 52 marathons in 52 weeks! The feat is superhuman, and has taken him to races on every continent. From a physical point of view alone, this is extraordinary, as anyone who has run 26 miles once will tell you. Then there is the mental factor : to remain focused and motivated, and to put mind over matter, through pain and illness, day after day, week after week, all in the name of seeing the extent of human possibilities – all this makes me believe Mr. Miller to be a man of singular strength of mind.

You will not need to know ‘T-Bone’ for long to catch his infectious humanity. I shared a meagre eight miles with the man, and can safely say it was the easiest eight miles of that race. Thereafter he sped away, as is his wont. Mr. Miller runs his marathons generally in the range of three to three-and-a-half hours. Sometimes he does that on consecutive days. With flu. If one wasn’t convinced, through personal association, of his flesh-and-blood constitution and his vivacious spirit, one might suspect him of being mechanical.

Although so much of Mr. Miller’s endeavour has been personal – a voyage into his own unknown – and a deeply moving individual story, he has never lost sight of things bigger than himself. In his mining of the limits of what it is to be a human being, he has helped us all to an understanding of our collective humanity, and of the social injustices that abide in this world. He has never stopped campaigning for those of us inspired by his exploits to donate to one of two charities – Facing Africa and Unicef – and he gives a very good account of why we should.

There is a nobility in his cause, and an old-fashioned sense of adventure in his swashbuckling run around the globe. Join me in wishing him well for the last two races, and salute your Being Manly Man of the Year 2010!



Mr. Miller’s website: Run Like Crazy
Mr. Miller on Facebook

Back on Track; or, the Five-minute Mile

For better or for worse, I am incurably goal oriented; without challenges I would sit and fester. Once I set my own targets I am stubbornly fierce about meeting them. I am much more pragmatic about goals set by others. After all, one might think one’s boss or, in the case of academics, one’s peer reviewers, to be ridiculous. Meeting arbitrary conditions is soul sapping. And even if you think the third-party goal worthwhile, the satisfaction is never quite fulfilling. Then again, hitting my own marks does not so much satisfy as stave off the worst kind of disappointment. How does that adage from school teachers go? ‘You’ve let the school down, you’ve let me down, but most of all you’ve let yourself down’. And there it is: I hate to disappoint myself. Therefore if I set out to do something, it had better get done. You might think this a bizarre masochistic streak, but I call it manliness. My intentions are to cultivate and enact self-reliance, determination (grit and pluck), organisation, resolve and purpose. As I said, I call it manliness (or part thereof). It can be plied back into a world full of things bigger and more important than I, and, with any luck, to everyone’s benefit.

It will be just like this

I suppose it has been long enough since my marathon exploits of September to let you in on the next goal. I confess that the long run, and the hundreds of miles that went into its preparation, took a toll on the legs. One particular ligament at the top of the fibula did not want to settle down for about a month, and then I took another month very easily so as not to aggravate anything. But for the last couple of weeks I’ve slowly been upping the intensity, and nothing has snapped, so I’m comfortable with stating my intentions. I timed a mile yesterday and clocked 6:45, which is somewhere near my pace as a 14-year old. Sigh. The target is 5 minutes, and I’m giving myself a year to do it. Oh, and I’ll run the Berlin half marathon in April, aiming for something under 1.40:00. As per the last challenge, I won’t bore you with the details, however gruesomely and deliciously they would read, until the deeds are done.

Mr. Keuner and the Flood

Mr. Keuner went through a valley, when he suddenly noticed that his feet were in water. He realised that the valley was actually an estuary, and that the flood tide was coming. He stopped immediately and looked around for a boat, and so long as he hoped for a boat he stood still. But when no boat came in sight, he gave up this hope and hoped instead that the water would like not to rise any more. Once the water was up to his chin, he also gave up this hope and swam. He had realised that he was himself a boat (Bertolt Brecht, Herr Keuner und die Flut).

With apologies for the undoubted looseness of my translation, I nevertheless offer this little morsel as a weekend reminder to be active and self-reliant. If we stand and wait for what we desire, the chances are we shall fail. We must assert ourselves and make the most of our resources, for the helping hand we desire is no farther away than the end of our own arm.

Keep Calm and Carry On

The manly man is never timid. Timidity is like living half a life, or less, for it inhibits action, and men must act. It also clouds thinking with trifles and obsessions, cluttering up the intellect: men must also think. Timidity is a euphemism for fear. It requires the euphemism because timidity is fear of life itself. It is a bedfellow of shame.

Naturally, one must not ride roughshod over politeness. All those moments of inaction and indecisiveness in Jane Austen’s corpus occur for good reason. But they do not ultimately put permanent hindrances before her heroes, for where they do, it amounts to character flaw. The impolite man acts without thinking, and duly makes trouble. He is the opposite of timid: the bull at the gate; the Tuppy Glossop, if you will. The bookish man thinks without acting, and is duly ignored. He does not enter the world sufficiently to be concerned with such things. A well-measured dose each of consideration and execution, laced with a healthy portion of confidence, makes for the ideal type.

I am given pause to reflect on such things as I re-immerse into a culture that is, to be absolutely exact, strangely familiar. Like the jarring dissonance caused by two musical notes whose harmony is only out of alignment by the slightest fraction, we are caught off guard most precisely when we are closest to comfort. In many respects I am at home: I know where I am, with whom I am dealing, and what to expect. But just as car crashes tend to happen close to home, all the securities accompanying knowledge of the where, the who and the what can be lost in an instant when, say, exiting from the wrong end of a station; finding construction on your route home; meeting someone with whom you have no common language; or being told by Telekom to buy your own bloody modem. You get the picture.

Some years ago, these kinds of things might have affected me. Uncertainty, if not met with resolve, is met only with withdrawal or with alcohol, and these do not make for safe ports in stormy weather. I have, in my years of emotional maturity, come to realise that awkward situations do not become less awkward for being ignored. Internal upheaval can only be redressed by coming to terms with it. It has become a cliché to invoke the spirit of the Blitz, and some may find it belittling to that spirit to print the words ‘keep calm and carry on’ on everything from t-shirts to coffee mugs. Still, it is precisely this will to continue that should activate us, under all circumstances. Life is not to be feared, nor to be passively observed. Live is to be embraced, and to be lived.

Indefatigability

Mrs. VB’s parents just finished moving house. They experienced all the usual stresses and strains to be expected of this kind of endeavour, but last night was something of a singular marathon. An unfortunate series of events conspiring against them, and despite advanced planning, the entire abode had to be sorted, packed and moved in twenty-four hours. Earnest son-in-law and spouse answered the call, working for twenty-two hours, straight through the night, to get the job done. Along the way: thunder and lightening; plenty of heavy lifting; three close encounters with the neighbourhood skunks (some of whom were lustily engaged); and bacon and eggs. The result: a more than usually fatigued VB; two very sore hands; a number of bruises; one place empty, another full. My other work waited, and suffered little. The job at hand got done.

This was merely a night – two days, really – and something achievable, tangible, in the grand scheme of things, something easy. But to talk of moving house in such circumstances is rather a good way of conjuring the kind of attitude that facilitates good living, even where the goal is more nebulous, the intention less concrete, the outcomes not known for certain. We have, or should have, aims in life. How keenly do we pursue them? Do we invest our whole hearts into our relationships, jobs, sports, interests, the Thesis, the Book, the Opus; in short, do we take the reigns of our futures? Do we call it a day when the going is rough? Do we follow the path of least resistance, settling for less for the sake of ease and comfort? Or do we push through the thorns, the rocks, the landslides, and the rain, aiming for what we really want, risking failure for the sake of greater success? It is, I aver, better to get there late, battered and bruised, bleeding, hungry and thirsty, than not to get there at all.

We all tire, and, pushed to the limit, we wish to resign. Sleep envelopes us; we come to terms with defeat, fatalism, a panoply of failure. Our slumbers recharge us, but, on awakening, we must come to terms with chances lost, moments missed, regrets accrued. To pursue relentlessly; never to lose sight of one’s aims; to pay no heed to physical and mental exhaustion for the sake of a goal – such are the rare qualities of the indefatigable man.

Signs of the Times

Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. (Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times, 1829).

Never a more eloquent carpe diem was yet uttered, and yet, in the same breath as the exhortation to get up and do, Carlyle bade us to stop awhile and reflect; a look, if you will, before the proverbial leap:

We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer.

What Carlyle found on closer inspection was a mechanised world that had buried all traces of the finer points of character, the magic of genius, the mystery of faith, and the dynamism of humanity, swapping it all instead for a balance sheet of pleasure and pain, some scientific instruments, bank statements, and an unedifying tendency to want to know how things were before anybody had asked what they were. A surfeit of facts buzzed around the institutions of late-Georgian England, at the expense of imagination. It was only to get worse. Carlyle thought that all the steam being blown off would ultimately reduce the noise of the fanatics to a whimper. In this estimation, history sits as grim judge.

We, therefore, are the inheritors of the mechanised world, and through its ever more efficient operations we have grown lazy and fat, greedy and insatiable. Carlyle’s judgement on his own times rings true for ours, but the sentence carries the added weight of offences oft repeated:

The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable.

What then, is to be done? Well, tarnished as we are by failings similar to those of our forebears, we would be foolish to look, as they did, to governments, institutions, and charities (now all subsumed under the title of ‘the internet’) for our solutions. These, so saith Carlyle, are merely the accursed machines. I can think of nothing better than Carlyle’s original solution, a project close to my own heart:

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

Man Flu

With good reason my posting frequency has dropped of late. Principally, I have been busy adopting another nationality, which has been a long time in coming and not without heart ache. That taken care of, I was duly welcomed to Canada by an official procession of microbial Mounties, doing their best to bring my immigrant immune system to book. My red nose looks vintage wintery Quebec, and I cling to dignity by a tenuous thread.

Lest it be thought I complain, I hasten to proclaim my stoic resolve. I will admit to not always being the best patient, but I try to bear illness with fortitude. All that whining and complaining over sniffles is really unbecoming and merits little sympathy. I have been making myself my own-recipe hot toddy (lemon, ginger, honey, cinnamon and scotch), and have otherwise partaken of all my pre-planned Quebecois social engagements, minus the double-kiss greetings. Business as usual has been speeding my recovery, not least because it is a distraction. Taking to a sick bed of self pity is not for me, unless I’m really at death’s door.

Tomorrow I will hop on a Greyhound and, in the best tradition of the finest Canadians, go back to the US. It is a long and boring ride, and no doubt will not be improved by congested sinuses. But I have an objectionable book to read, which will keep my blood pumping. Normal service will be resumed in due course.

Emulating Pheidippides

It’s 490 B.C. The story goes that having run 150 miles in two days, Pheidippides ran back from Marathon to Athens (over a distance uncannily similar to a modern Marathon race) to announce the Greek victory over Persia, at which point his heart called it a day and Pheidippides died on the spot. It’s hard to believe this has become a popular feat to emulate, but then I figure most people who attempt it do not reckon on it being their last act. And probably nobody does the 150 mile run in the two days prior to a race.

It has long been my intention to run a marathon. I watched the various degrees of insanity in the London marathon every year when I was growing up, and always vicariously felt the sense of achievement when the amateurs with ‘respectable times’ were finishing. I don’t much see the point in being a professional runner – I can’t access that psychology – and I’ve no desire to put on a monkey suit and schlep about in public like an idiot. I respect those who do it for charity, although I suspect that for many this is an after thought. 26 miles is a long way. People aren’t generally given to putting themselves out too much unless they are somehow directly implicated in the cause. But the truth is that it’s pretty difficult to get a place in the London marathon without signing up with a charity. The fund-raising obligation is not small.

The primary mentality, therefore, is that which wonders if I can. It is not dissimilar to those climbers who are plagued by the mountains simply being there. All kinds of qualities are at stake, but they can be boiled down to two: physical fitness and mental toughness. In an age of obesity and apathy, to be athletic and focussed sets one apart. There is, in addition, the not inconsiderable sense of achievement inherent in completing such a venture. Fortitude, self-reliance, endurance. How many know, for certain, that they possess these qualities? When the dial says empty, can you keep going?

I will be running the Montreal marathon this September. I promise not to bore you all with a training diary. I am not, after all, doing it for anyone else.*

*But I might raise some cash all the same, since people seem determined to give it.

It's Snow, Not the Blitz

9 a.m. Departmental email informs everyone to leave by 3 p.m. because of the impending Great Storm. I’m bravely heading downtown. Total snow accumulation: 0.

10 a.m. After an entirely precipitation-free commute, I arrive downtown, only to be informed that the building is closing at 1 p.m. because of the Great Storm. Total snow accumulation: 0.

Noon: Daycare centres close as a precautionary measure, causing anxious parents further worry. Total snow accumulation: 0.

12.30 p.m. Forced out early, I consume a beery lunch, where I chat with a Canadian about the mysterious extent of the Great Storm. On the way to the pub, I notice several gigantic snow ploughs touring the streets, assured that the white stuff is there, somewhere. Total snow accumulation: 0. Some drizzle.

2 p.m. Bussed back to Cambridge in remarkably English rain. Streets eerily quiet. Stores emptied by panic buyers. Total snow accumulation: 0.

3 p.m. Light snow! Melting into the puddles. Am assured by great authorities that the Great Storm is still pending. Weather forecasters are predicting something like 4 inches in the night. The horror! Total snow accumulation: 0.

5.15 p.m. I give up for the day. As I leave the library, I see that Harvard Yard is barely visible under an immense white carpet that has completely obscured the footpaths. Or rather:

Total snow accumulation: a dusting.

7.30 p.m. Everyone is no doubt safely at home, having left four to six hours previously. Snow turned to sleet and washed away the dusting. Total snow accumulation: 0.

I know everyone has been watching the scenes from D.C. recently, but the hysteria over the weather here is in poor taste. It is true that even Londoners are slowed down by an inch of snow, but at least they do not stop in advance of its occurrence. I hear in D.C. that it costs $100 million per day when government offices are closed. I wonder how much has been lost today for no good reason? All of this complaining, scare-mongering and, frankly, workshy malingering, makes me wonder about the resolve of Bostonians. It is, after all, winter. Snow is to be expected. Why all the fuss? For God’s sake, put your wellies on and get back to work.

On Disappointment

I remember when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in; and, I believe, it was the type of all my future disappointments (Swift to Bolingbroke).

Does this not describe the nature of most, if not all disappointments? For who has not felt, with good reason, that a positive outcome in some affair or other was likely, only to have expectation summarily dashed against the rocks? To be consistent with my previous animadversions on this head, I shall resist invoking hope and luck, but I feel we may safely identify with the man who feels he has been done an injustice. In these times of difficulty and dearth – I say this with a vagueness such that anyone may identify with it – a fish on the line causes a greater anticipation of its being landed securely on the bank than it might in times of ease and plenty. To lose the fish through, say, a fault in the hook, might be thought by the fisherman to be an injustice, especially if he paid good money for a properly functioning hook. A certain ire is wont to arise under such circumstances, and who could fault it?

The question is, what to do about it? Alcohol provides temporary relief but quickly magnifies the hurt; breaking something in a fit of violence only leads to regret, and does nothing for the problem. The bottom line is that the only cure for missing that fish is to catch another one, and better still to ensnare it on a hook of one’s own fashioning. There is a reason for the platitude “there are plenty more fish in the sea” (although its factual status is increasingly in doubt). Where a chance goes begging, another can be engineered. Perseverance and indefatigability are laudable qualities. Ingenuity and entrepreneurialism, when superadded to the former qualities, make for a formidable character, resistant to setbacks and resolute about the chosen path. Not everyone is blessed with equal amounts of these qualities. But they are to a large extent to be defined in terms of spirit, which can be cultivated, trained, even incanted.

Somebody wise once said, ‘don’t let the bastards grind you down’. That seems to be a sound enough maxim for the disappointed among us.

Where's Wallet? Or, Luck Out!

I lost my wallet yesterday. I didn’t actually, but for ten minutes it felt like I did. And then it showed up, in the sleeve of my jacket, having made its way there somehow from my inside pocket. Lucky I found it. Lucky.

I don’t believe in luck. The worst thing a man can do is to believe in luck. It shortcuts work, fastens his attention on false hope, makes him complacent, slack-minded, and liable to curse everything but himself when luck does not last. Luck is for losers, as George Eliot knew well:

She had begun to believe in her luck, others had begun to believe in it: she had visions of being followed by a cortège who would worship her as a goddess of luck and watch her play as a directing augury. Such things had been known of male gamblers; why should not a woman have a like supremacy? (George Eliot, Daniel Deronda).

Gwendolen, the subject of this passage, proceeded to lose everything by the next chapter. And if you care to show me a male gambler who is a talisman of good fortune, I will show you a highly skilled practitioner of this or that game, or a cheat. One can have occasional good fortune – nothing ventured, nothing gained – but nobody is lucky per se; lucky to the core. My luck today was merely relief. And had I lost my wallet, or anything in it, it would have been through my own complacency. Trifles, you say; yet the rule holds good. There is no substitute for hard work. As Jefferson is thought to have said: ‘I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it’. If you are in the right place at the right time, it is invariably because you, and the world you live in, have set a million things in motion to put you there and then. And if you have a rotten streak, then you can find real causes, out of which you may derive real solutions.

Even the things that affect us most deeply cannot be ascribed to luck. Redundancy is not bad luck: it is economy, and so is redundancy’s cure; illness is not bad luck: it is pathological. Its cure is medicine or not, but that is the nature of being a being. We may explain these things by luck, for it makes them easier to handle, and we may be forgiven for it. But in the day-to-day, I hate to see a man rueing his luck. It is not reasonable, and a man should above all else be reasonable.

New York Inspirations: I Believe

Since I’m in New York for a few days, I thought it would be germane to offer some words inspired by the history of this great city, or rather, by one of its great men. I presume John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s ‘I Believe’ speech is well-enough known so as to require no extra exegesis from me. The lines typically quoted, and which sit at the foot of the Rockefeller (GE) building in New York City (pictured), can still serve as a guide for young men in a world which hardly ever stops to think about what a man is:

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every
possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man’s word should be as good as his bond; that character – not wealth or power or position – is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual’s highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.

The words were spoken in a radio broadcast in 1941, in support of the Selective Service Parents’ and Neighbors’ Committee (of the United Service Organizations), of which Rockefeller was Honorary Chairman. They are extraordinary words, in and of themselves, but I might take the opportunity to dwell upon another part of the speech, which I presume to be much less well-known. In times of war and fear, it strikes me that these words are needed as much now as they were in 1941:

Those who say that the man who is tough makes the best soldier, know little of human nature. He who carries on when physical forces are exhausted is the man who is buoyed up by the spiritual force called morale, who is fighting, not for the lust of killing, but for a principle, a great cause, dearer than life itself. I certainly do not want my son made tough by his military training, nor do you. I do not want my son just because he is a soldier, to be abandoned by those influences that make for character. I want him to come back home, whatever his military experiences may be, still a man with ideals, holding duty and honor above life.

A Valiant Draw

Cricket is thought a chivalrous activity, laden with codes and laws, courtesies and knightly grace. The copy-book drives and cuts evoke the thrusts and parries of expert swordplay; the mode of delivering the hard ball conjures the long-bow and the javelin at once; and the sound of leather on willow is deemed poetic, in and of itself. Spin, in this game at least, is honest. These things are true, but they are not the whole story. Those readers who come from non-cricketing nations, bear with me. For if you are stumped by talk of googlies and doosras, you will certainly be able to understand blood, sweat and grim determination. Cricket provides an object lesson in manliness: it presents the appearance of a dignified contest in good form, but is really a brutal encounter requiring courage, nerve, skill, stamina, and a high-tolerance for pain.

A cricket ball, fabricated from cork and leather, is hard as stone. It is bowled at speeds approaching 90mph from a distance of 22 yards at a man with nothing but some padded fabric and a blade of seasoned willow to defend himself. If it hits fingers, they break. If it hits thighs, they turn blue and purple. If it hits heads, not properly protected, then skulls fracture. Should it hit you in what cricket commentators politely call the ‘midriff’, all you can do is pray, and then hope to be able to count to two. Facing a lumbering, sweating, stinking confusion of arms and legs that is a fast bowler is akin to staring down an angry bull with nothing but a red rag for your defence. On the part of the bull, witness the sheer effort; on the part of the matador, regard the picture of concentration.

In a sequence of events that can last up to five days, this display of brute strength, violence and courage goes on, as one team determines to be victorious over another. Yet, strangely, the game often ends in a draw (not a tie, and not for merely semantic reasons). Honours are determined to be even. A concerted, protracted and genuine attempt to wear down the opposition, if not to hurt them acutely, frequently ends with a hand shake, a public appraisal of the other team’s character and moral qualities, and an affable statement that the indeterminate result is of no consequence, because the game is the true victor. What does this mean? It refers, I think, to the spirit in which the game is played. It is played to be won; it is played with no punches pulled, and with no apologies for its occasionally violent consequences; the endeavour employs great depths of character and resolve which, made manifest, display the measure of the men involved, and by which they are to be judged. Found to meet the mark, the result does not matter.

When Henry Newbolt penned the immortal lines extolling England’s youth to ‘Play up! And play the game’, he did not mean for us to forget the second verse, which defined his meaning of the word ‘play’. It is not in winning that cricket finds its importance, even if one endeavours to play to win. Nor is it in the taking part. Merely to take part is passive, and an insult to any game. The importance lies in the complete abandonment of other considerations – including one’s skin and bones – for the spirit of manly inclusion gained through whole-hearted commitment to a shared cause. Honour is just ‘a name’. Cricket is a proving ground of manly character, not to be gained through noble appearances alone, but through noble deeds.

The Face of Adversity

Last year was difficult for many, if not for most. Whatever has happened that shouldn’t have; whatever didn’t happen that should have; in whatever position you found yourself, prostrate and disquieted; whatever occurred, the trials of last year should not lead us into morbid depression. I do not suggest that a manly approach to adversity is to smile in its face, for if it is not a genuine smile I for one do not want to see it. Let us reserve that facial configuration for things that make us happy. Instead, I suggest that a manly approach is to set one’s jaw and meet the trials with grim determination. You have been knocked down; getting up and staying up will be all the more to your credit, not to mention your sense of satisfaction.

I will not bore you with my own trials, for harping on about hardship defines boring. I will not feed you platitudes about how hope was left in the jar (whichever way you see Hesiod’s myth about Pandora, I’m not convinced that hope is good for anything). Hope has no material effect, and leaves alive the prospect of hopes dashed. I will not tell of comforts found in superstitions; nor will I seek sympathy or, heaven forefend, pity. Suffice to say that the trials have been many and that they have been borne with difficulty. But they have been borne with the foreknowledge that they could be met. There are, in hard times, no substitutes for hard work, indefatigability, industry, creativity, and a determined idea of what the outcome will be.

Wherever we fall short, we stand tall. Wherever we are unexpectedly turned in the road, we find a new route. If injured, we mend. We do not mope into our milk, or trudge morosely into the wind. If you see the face of Adversity, slap it with all your might and march over its body. I do not advocate an abnegation of tenderness, for it has its place of importance in any manly life. Yet I doubt that your emotions will be up to scratch if you are soundly beaten down by circumstance. Lest it should be construed that I hereby advocate a positive attitude, I state clearly: I advocate defiance.