I Was Lost But Now I Am Found

This is my blog now. After all the years of all the others - nameless; faceless - I’ve finally put my name on a place to spew out all my thoughts and have an output directly connected to me and not to a pseudonym. It feels liberating.

If years have themes - and looking back, they so often do - then for me this year’s theme is about finding myself. I wrote a series of poems last summer about the strange sense I have every year, as a teacher, during the six week holiday, of rediscovering who I really am when freed from the everyday pressures of marking, planning, and running a successful RE and Philosophy department and given that gift of time, only to be forced back into that suit and tie again every September and feel buried alive.

As September crawled towards January, those poems became the focus and theme of some new songs I decided would make a thematic EP for Strangely Shaped By Fathers - exploring different aspects of myself and the quest we all have to find authenticity and sanity while being pulled in different directions and having to make the everyday compromises we make to pay the bills. As well as public blogs, I also have a personal, handwritten, journal I write. The 2020 one is full of much introspection about who I am and what I want to do with my life.

There are few positive things we can say about Covid 19, but if there is any silver lining to this ever-blackening cloud it is that the world being forced to stop for a few months gave everyone who was able to take advantage of it the opportunity to reflect. As the prospect of plague and ever-rising numbers of infection and death highlighted the gift of every day we stayed alive, we were also cut off from everything deemed “inessential” and able to see what we truly missed from our old lives and what had merely become habit.

For me, it was amazing to see how much better I could function each day now I no longer had to wake up at 5:45am to commute into work. Getting an extra few hours of sleep every day made a real difference. As did being able to be more flexible with how work was set for my students, and with how and when it was handed in. I was fascinated by seeing our entire flawed arsenal of coercive and threat-based behaviour management strategies taken from us and being forced to adapt to something kinder and better. I enjoyed the creativity of having to rethink our entire curriculum for remote delivery, and the satisfaction of seeing elements of my teaching that had been in place for years suddenly come into their own, such as the comprehensive resources we’d created for all students in my department and long-time commitment we’d already had to online platforms for learning which made moving entirely online far easier. I enjoyed not having to wear a suit and tie to teach; being able to listen to music and feel at ease as I delivered lessons and spent my working day free from the antiquated disciplines and behavioural expectations of British schooling.

I enjoyed the end of the day being marked by coffee and a chat with my wife rather than a lengthy commute home, and evenings freed up because the days of students learning more independently than they do in the classroom and lack of unnecessary marking gave time to get on top of meaningful assessment during the hours of the actual working day.

Of course there were things that I missed, but as I missed them, I found ways to reclaim them digitally, from making time for classroom banter during live online lessons, to Zoom meetings with colleagues during the time we would usually break for recess to share a coffee and a chat.

I strongly believe mindset is the make or break to how we experience the world and if you go into something as profoundly world-shaking as a pandemic lockdown with the mindset that this is awful, this is prison, it will feel like prison. If you go into it determined to make the most of the cards life has dealt, then it becomes only an opportunity.

The damage done to many students’ education these last few months, if any damage has been done, will ultimately be down to two social failings: 1) living in a system which has denied them equal access to good internet and IT; and 2) the constant messaging from government, parents and schools that their time away from the classroom was a bad thing instead of a good thing. If the physical closure of schools and move to remote learning had been framed as an opportunity instead of a detriment, then who knows how differently students and teachers might have approached it?

The Finding Me EP details a journey - beginning with the sense of something lost in order to pay the bills; a sense of never quite fitting in anywhere I find myself; of searching for some imaginary scene that doesn’t really exist; then finding myself, in spite of everything, just in time to be buried alive and lose myself again…only now I have my secret power - my power to say “no” to the bullshit - which will enable me to find myself again and again. The EP ends with a reprise of a song I previously released a super-fast version of as the b-side of a single: “Congratulations” shows that double-edged sword of employment again - “hey, what happened to you? You got a job! Congratulations…”

I began writing it in January, recorded it by April, and released it in June, but the journey of the lyrics also marked my own strange inner journey through the thoughts which began last summer and through Covid 19. The pitfalls of employment, the clash between the demands of a job and the demands of your soul; but then, as businesses closed their doors and people were furloughed if they were lucky, laid off if they were not, how lucky those of us were who still had one. How privileged. And this glimpse into another world: the same old jobs so many of us had now re-imagined into something less intrusive. Working from home. Much of the unnecessary bullshit exposed for what it was and removed from the equation, cutting the crap and keeping only what was important. Congratulations! You got a job!

And for me, the specific job - teaching - doing it remotely since March and seeing the bare bones of the profession has reminded me exactly why I love it so much, even with all the bullshit that some days does its best to smother the good and show only the negatives. The joy of sharing my love of my subject with young people; the mutual journey of discovery; helping people wherever I can; being challenged by my students; thinking of innovative ways of bringing ideas and concepts to life… It is sometimes easy to forget all of that when it simply becomes routine. Having the routine completely thrown away leaves us having to pick up the pieces again and rebuild, and in the rebuilding comes rediscovery.

I now enter the summer, after ending last summer so profoundly lost, feeling very much found. My blog, Philosophy Unleashed, gave voice to my own philosophical thoughts, and those of students, beyond the limiting confines of the A-level exam specification; my book, Authentic Democracy, became an unexpected and deeply rewarding reality thanks to the unexpected generosity and support of Tippermuir Books, and has re-sparked in me a determination to continue working in academic philosophy in my spare time; my music in Strangely Shaped By Fathers continues to find a new audience and allow me to tap into parts of myself untouched by philosophy or teaching even as my old bands and releases receive a minor resurgence thanks to their re-release on digital platforms; and in my career, I have felt my passion for teaching rekindled and start this summer for the first time in a long time not jaded about the job and seeking to squeeze every minute of freedom out of the next six weeks but excited about plans for September and what can be achieved next academic year (albeit wary of the entire enterprise of teaching in a world where Covid 19 still rages on…but that is a different issue for a different time).

And then there is the most important thing of all: real life. For none of the above is actually the important stuff, even if it may help the days pass by with a smile instead of tears. Lockdown for many was a reckoning with the choices they had made in their lives. Suddenly forced to stay in your homes, many were forced to stare lives they had been avoiding in the face and see something very ugly indeed. Meanwhile for me, all I have seen is the face of contentment. Being forced to stay at home since March (my asthma has meant taking quarantine extreme seriously - I have only left the house four times since March; twice to the post box at the end of my street and twice for a socially distanced walks around different National Trust properties nearby. Luckily I have a garden and some gym equipment, so my hermit-life has not lacked fresh-air or exercise.) I have been delighted to see how little the isolation has bothered me or my wife. We have loved spending the time together. We have done things around the house we’ve been putting off for years; we’ve read books and watched movies we wouldn’t otherwise had had the time for. We’ve cooked and baked. We’ve spent lazy time in the garden. We’ve played with our cat. We’ve spent time apart to pursue our individual interests. We’ve had great catch up with friends online. We’ve spoken regularly to family on FaceTime. We’ve done some art together. Basically, we’ve felt like we’ve won the lottery of life. While others have complained about the enforced time at home with their loved ones, we have merely dreaded the inevitable day when it will all end. That is true success, and the real meaning of finding oneself: if you can be comfortable living with yourself and your life’s decisions for four months of enforced quarantine - happy with it; eager for more - then you not only know who you are, but you like yourself too, and that’s not nothing; not everybody does, and for some this lockdown has been hell.

As comedian, Larry Miller, always says, “If you walked out of bed today, and had a job to go to, and a home to come back to, and someone there who cares about you? Folks, the game’s over, and you’ve won.” During lockdown I didn’t even have to get out of bed to go to my job - it came to me - and the home I had to come back to, I never had to leave.

To not acknowledge that, to take it for granted, especially at a time when any day one of us - or both of us - could catch this terrible coronavirus and not make it to another summer holiday would be to miss an important opportunity for gratitude. The theme of this year has been finding myself, and what I have found, above all else, is that I am grateful.