NEWS:
My second programme in the series One To One is on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday November 3rd at 9.30am. It was supposed to be next week but there is a special programme instead. Anyway, on November 3rd I have a wonderful conversation with the distinguished novelist Dame Penelope Lively about her ideas on what ‘Home’ means.
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Now for this week’s wise words:
‘It will not always be summer: build barns.’
Hesiod (Greek poet, active around 700 BC)
I chose this sentence as the week’s wise thought for my Daily Mail advice column because… well, obviously it’s good advice! Looking at my diary I noticed, with a mixture of gloom and panic, those dreaded words ‘European Summer Time ends.’ My Autumnal thoughts would not have echoed Keats’s rhapsodic, ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ at all. Autumn is very beautiful, in fact my favourite season – probably because my birthday falls on October 8th. But as I write this I stare out at a rain swept garden, peppered with sodden yellow leaves swirling from drooping trees, twirling in damp gusts of wind. Everything looks so sad. Fin de siècle describes my mood, although of course it is not the end of a century. No, this is the end of the summer and the beginning of the dark season.
But we have to be prepared for things that will test us. This was often my advice to my teenaged children, when warning them gently about this or that which was likely to happen (a falling out with a dodgy friend, for example. I’d say (in effect), ‘You’d better realise that the scary thing is just round the corner – then you won’t be surprised by it. ‘ These days I sometimes cheerily remind a friend with kids approaching puberty that teenagers can be such a pain they make you miserable – as you yearn for the lost sweetness of their childhood. ‘Expect them to be horrid!’- I say merrily, ‘…then you won’t be surprised, but forewarned and able to shrug it off.’
That may sound pessimistic, but it’s good advice too.
The connection with building barns may not at first be obvious. But it is. Rural people know that you have to make ready for winter. The other day my husband and I were talking about it – although of course the jobs (clearing gutters, for example) fall to him, not me! Last Sunday in church it was harvest festival, and of course the old favourite hymn ‘We plough the fields and scatter) carries this idea too, with the line, ‘All is safely gathered in / ‘Ere the winter storms begin.’
‘Gathered in’…to a barn, naturally. Historically, country folk always needed to store up good fortune for times of need, but this can provide a good metaphor for our emotional lives too. In my advice column I sometimes suggest that people make a conscious effort to summon to mind happier memories they have stored up in their brain. So when a marriage enters difficult times (as marriages will) I might counsel getting out their wedding pictures, talking about when they first met and focussing on happy memories of how they felt and what they said and did. This can be a positive experience – and can work too, between friends and between parents and children. Dig out an old photograph and send it with a warm letter full of the happy reminiscences you have treasured. This can cut through negativity like a laser in the darkness.
But it means, of course, that you have to work on what you have stored up in that mental and emotional ‘barn.’ Daily gratitude is one way: even if you feel low, try to note down (I often suggest keeping a notebook as an excellent idea) one thing each day that makes you feel grateful. The pink petunias still cascading from somebody’s window box raised your spirts? The girl in the sweetshop was pretty and smiling? Well, such are joys that must be noticed – and noted. And you see, we can perhaps reassure ourselves by reminding Hesiod: ‘It will not always be winter.’ No – the Spring will come round again, and the store of good thoughts replenished.
PS: Who was Hesiod? This Greek poet wrote at the same time as Homer. His magnum opus ‘Works and Days’ is about human life and how to get by – by hard work and good husbandry. In other words, it is full of good advice…and the miracle of ancient literature is that so much of its wisdom is relevant to day.