Decadence Training.

At eleven I was a failure. I flunked my ‘eleven plus’ and went to a secondary modern school. By fourteen I had grasped something and became a success. I don’t think I thought in those terms and have no idea what that something was. It may have been falling in love with the landlady’s daughter on holiday at thirteen, cycling to Windsor and back, playing in a skiffle group or a hundred little incidentals, but somewhere along the line I found I could do stuff and it felt good. I’m mentioning this to explore, ‘what if I hadn’t?’ What if, as in the tale of Sisyphus, I had learnt that rolling a boulder up hill would only result in having to watch it roll back down and my efforts come to nothing? What if I’d embedded deep in my psyche that, rather than success, it was failure just around the corner waiting to meet me? These are truly frightening questions for me, but I’ll persist. I would expect failure, engender it, and almost welcome it as a constant if not good friend. My efforts would be half hearted, no reason to accelerate towards the inevitable car crash. I would in a sense be absent from intent and present in illusions of success just as Sisyphus might dream of some well placed dynamite whilst pushing his boulder. It would all be a process of dreaming not learning. And all the time my mother would be on my back wanting some return on her life’s investment. Not some trite currency but my achievement of life itself, bright eyed lusty life in a fair wind heading for the Azores. If she berated me I would blame her, if she supported me I would abuse her sanctuary, if she left me to drift I may or may not find some territory. If she encouraged me it would disgust me and if she believed in me I would disagree with that belief. But not just mothers, fathers, friends, siblings, teachers and employers would all meet this same no-win situation. In my case my father helped me learn, he infected me with his own enthusiasms and supported me in mine with his skills. I learnt I could be successful so I was. All this was prompted by a neighbour and her son but I’m finding it strangely relating to Thatcher and her Britain. She had that same matriarchal commitment; she must get it right as the first mother of this country. She knew what was best for us and recalcitrance was not an option. The good sons would be praised and the bad chastised. Maggie wasn’t a witch just a political mother trying to do her best, and our current reaction is as teenagers not wanting to be her children anymore. To do that we must learn to be successful on our own account.