Thoughts at the End of a Long Year

This blog was first published in December 2017

Let me begin with Wendell Berry, because Wendell Berry almost always says it better than anyone else,

“Nothing in my education or experience prepared me even to expect the horror and anxiety and moral bewilderment that I have felt during these years of racism and disintegration at home and a war of unprecedented violence and senselessness abroad. The attempt to keep meaning in one’s life at such a time is a continuous strain, and perhaps ultimately futile: there is undoubtedly a limit to how long private integrity can hold out in the face of, and within, public disintegration.” 

Despite how this reads, Wendell Berry isn’t writing about the world in 2017. This is an extract from his essay, “Some Thoughts on Citizenship and Conscience in Honor of Don Pratt,” written in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War. Berry couldn’t possibly have foreseen just how prophetic his words would seem in 2017. I’ve not read anything he’s written recently. I’m sure it’s just as wise and humble and a little bit vitriolic.

It’s been a horrible year to be a human being. The world seems out of control and every day things appear to be getting worse. It’s hard to know how to be alive right now. I was drawn to Berry’s thoughts on maintaining meaning in your private life when the public world seems to be disintegrating. I’m old enough to remember what it was like to occasionally wake with a feeling of general dread related to the day ahead, all the time knowing it was only your day which might be ruined by a visit to the dentist, or a difficult conversation, or a particularly horrible meeting. Your own personal experience of the day’s events would rarely resonate beyond your immediate area of influence. These days most of us wake already bracing ourselves against events and happenings so far beyond our influence it can seem like we must stand helpless on the sidelines whilst the world goes hurtling over a precipice.

I’m sure many of you, like me, often feel utterly helpless and isolated in the face of it all. It’s not that there aren’t things we can do, (I was also recently drawn to Iris Murdoch’s closing remarks in The Sea The Sea, “one can live quietly and try to do tiny good things and harm no one. I cannot think of any tiny good thing to do at the moment, but perhaps I shall think of one tomorrow,”), and I’m constantly humbled and inspired to be surrounded by so many incredible people who are trying to do tiny, (and not so tiny), good things, who serve the city I call home week in, week out, without proper recompense, who challenge the status quo through acts of generosity and creativity, who put their collective feet down and say, “NO,” loudly and with tremendous tenacity when dissent is the best option available. It is a lot easier to face the unknown future as part of such a bold community. (I know Wendell Berry would agree because community is the beating heart of all his teachings). But there’s a tension at the core of all this, a reality I’m not exactly sure what to do with, something I’ve been wanting to write about for a little while. Reading Wendell Berry has tipped me into actually pulling some thoughts together, so before the year ends, I thought I’d try to write this out.

I have had a really fantastic year. The world has not. I feel like I need to apologise for having a great year. I’m not sure if it’s ok to be personally happy while humanity as a whole is so rightfully miserable. It feels smug. It feels self-centred. It feels like something to be talked about in a dark corner, out of the side of your mouth, in a whisper. This time last year I was working a job I hated. I was living in a cold, rambly house which made me feel lonely every time I came home. I was writing books for no money, with no idea who was going to publish them. I was coasting on the edge of broke. In the last year I’ve left my horrible job and gone freelance. I’ve been involved in some of the most wonderful arts projects ever. I’ve moved into a house I love in a neighbourhood where I’ve felt genuinely welcomed and part of a creative and restorative community that constantly amazes me. I’ve found a great home for my next few books and a wonderful advocate for my writing in the lovely Kate Johnston, (agent extraordinaire). I finally have the space and resources to give my writing the time I’ve always wanted to give it and it feels great. I’ve met more than my fair share of amazing, inspiring people, been able to travel a little and, after decades in transit, hoak all my books out of storage and surround myself with them, (arranged in alphabetical order of course).

It’s been one of the best years ever and yet, in my head there is always a kind of separation taking place: personal life equals great, rest of the world equals going to Hell in a hand basket, (with increasing speed). How can you be both very very happy and very very sad at the same time, all the time? I don’t have any real answers for what should be done with this dichotomy and yet I was heartened to read Wendell Berry struggled, (and no doubt is struggling still), with the same issue. He writes later, in the same essay,

“That many are cold and the world is full of hate does not mean that one should stand in the snow for shame or refrain from making love. To refuse to admit decent and harmless pleasures freely into one’s own life is as wrong as to deny them to someone else. It impoverishes and darkens the world.”

I love this. It gives me hope that it is indeed possible to live well and honestly during difficult times. It reminds me of the best conversation I had in 2017. I was visiting an arts project in a Belfast-based nursing home and, over tea and buns, got talking to a very elderly lady who told me, with an enormous smile on her face, that she was going through a wee rough patch and I told her I was going through a wee rough patch too. She took my hand in hers and told me that if she’d learnt anything in her eighty something years on this planet about the meaning of life and all that sort of stuff, then it was this. “Just bring joy,” she said. “Don’t make it any more complicated than that.” Later, I’d find out that this lady’s, “wee rough patch,” was a terminal cancer diagnosis and I’m reasonably sure she’s not with us any more. The fact that she knew her personal circumstances were pretty dire and the world wasn’t looking great either and she was still, in her own words, bringing joy, is most definitely the most heartening and probably the wisest thing I encountered this year. I wish I had even half this woman’s courage. I continue to try.

So here’s to 2018. I’m already a bit terrified. And hopeful. But mostly terrified. Good things will happen. Bad things are already happening. But I think I’ll just try to bring joy and not make it any more complicated than that. Anything more feels a little beyond me right now. I’ll leave you with a few lines of Hera Lindsay Bird who pretty much says the same thing. She’s just better with line breaks than me.

“Oh let us not be little bitches to one another

Life is hard enough as it is

Life is hard enough and fast enough

And there is nothing in this world worth doing

But shaking our heads in awe.”