It turns out that writing pages and pages about my students have done me a world of good; I cannot help but slip a sentence or two of personal narrative into all that discourse about lives and potential. And every line is an inadvertent, subconscious exclamation on my part, at times a cry for help, at others a wry observation, a sarcastic jibe at my apathy and indeterminate, manic efforts at nothing. But above all, it reminds me of the importance of narrative and why I treasure it above all else.
Evolutionary biologists might seek to elucidate some adaptive advantage in understanding narratives, and more often than not we take it to its extreme and are exceedingly thrilled by poesy or alliteration produced in conjunction with some withering insight into the human condition, a mish-mash of aesthetics and Darwinian selection, or we guiltily hoard puns and allusions, the thrill of insight obscuring the superficiality of our thinking. I am tempted, like Dawkins, to step up and launch into a tirade against thinking and intelligence as we apply it in schools, a useless amalgam of ranking, pragmatic affirmation and pseudo-meritocracy that works all too well. Of course, I will not; knowing all too well that if I am not willing to offer up a name, I have no right of comment. Even thinking out loud has a price.
But no, there is nothing here, except the vague, semi-autobiographical thoughts of one who has no other outlet; there are not even revelations or facts, except those which can be read between the lines, made or unmade with a careless phrase, or look. One imagines that my gratuitous use of personal observations and anecdotes will bemuse more than convince; that admissions tutors all over the world will fleetingly think, well, here’s a teacher that hasn’t yet lost the plot, and what else is there to know about this…candidate? Next!
It serves me right, I suppose, to be an afterthought, after all, I would rather be a coward than a hypocrite, as I am, without hope or confidence in a future which defies my touch. After all, are we not all navel-gazing big babies, smaller than we think we are, insignificant, only drifting consciously through time because we make the effort to think so? What more would one need besides breakfast, children, a million narratives to vicariously live in, and the occasional excursion to the park, and the guilty pleasure of a double entendre when evenings are slow? At my age, in my place, dare I think that I would come home to secretly stashed Eric Rohmer boxsets and walls splashed with red paint, and shredded novels floating in the bathtub?
No, of course not. When I moved earlier this year, I found myself picking out a place for an armchair even before I knew how many rooms I had; old habits die hard, and I have spent too long out in the cold, dabbling and visiting, but never staying long enough to understand how one could live absolutely. A dastardly pragmatist, able to fly but unable to hope. And so I continue, this year, like the next, the winter months filled with stacks of books, narratives, discourses and soon, brilliant boxsets and Korean dramas, all in strident resonance with the tragedy of my life. If I must close doors and tighten hatches, it is only because I cannot being myself to destroy another life, while mine lies in shreds. Coward!