Monthly Archives: June 2016

MOVING ON

The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are going.

                                    Oliver Wendell Homes (American writer, 1809 – 1894)

June 18th 2016

I don’t have the time or the space to list all the achievements of this remarkable American, Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I do suggest you Google him, to learn some more about a remarkable life. He was a novelist and Professor as well as a poet and a doctor, and a man of great wisdom and foresight whose innovative thinking saved the lives of many patients. But don’t just believe me, look him up!

The quotation (the origin of which I haven’t been able to trace, as he wrote so much) is about the personal – and also (this week) the political.

In the introduction to my last book, ‘Lifelines,’ I talk about change and how essential it is that we see our lives as a series of changes. Paradoxically, I (like many people) dislike change and in that sense I am a classic conservative – with a small ‘c’. Yet that doesn’t stop me realising that we have to embrace the stages in our life, and even if we regret change (the end of a marriage, the children growing up, retirement…) we should realise that it can often herald a new and very exciting challenge in our lives. So we are constantly going forward, constantly becoming, constantly changing – and although this process can be very frightening it is inevitable and should be grasped as such. If you don’t…well….that way madness lies.

So Holmes invites us to look forward – and seems to imply we can choose a direction, although that isn’t always the case. Sometimes we are faced by two roads (like Robert Frost) and have to make a decision, but sometimes there isn’t a choice – apart from what mood to embrace. There I believe we DO have a choice. You can choose to be negative or reach forward with both hands to accept the future, determined to make it good.

So to the political – and that’s how I feel about the EU Referendum. Many people will vote for the status quo because they are persuaded it is the best thing (although their hearts are heavy) and because they are afraid of change. They choose to stay exactly where we ARE. Other people will say, ‘No’ to that, and welcome the chance to vote for a new direction.

I am one of those people. Call me a rebel if you like, but I am voting to leave the costive, overpaid, arrogant fat cat club of the EU and to branch out in a new direction for Great Britain.