I put a request out via Facebook today, asking if anybody had any ideas what they would like for me to blog about, and as usual some of the ideas were very appealing. There will be another Room 101 for those who like the rants, there will be one on literature, one on films and plenty more on the things I observe in human nature.
However, one idea suggested to me really made we want to write immediately. I often talk about the morals and principles that guide me. I want to know why these things guide me to the extent they do, how they have shaped me and why they can also hinder me. I have not simply arrived at a point in my life, I have evolved and I wonder sometimes whether the transience of human nature will allow me to remain open to develop more moralistically, or have I reached a point where the stimuli around me will erode those tenets that I follow. Am I voluntarily a decent human, or is it a charade? By the time I have finished this blog I think I will know the answer, so for the first time ever, writing may not be a means to express my thoughts. It will be an autopsy of who I am and that scares me a little.
To do this objectively I will look at five key things that matter to me the most, trust, respect, humour, courage and passion. There are of course other areas, and many will overlap and intertwine, but those initial five matter resonate with me more than anything. So I will start with trust.
Trust can be simply placed into sub categories, trust of oneself, and trust of others. Do I trust myself? Yes, but only to an extent. I trust myself in the context that the moral compass that guides me will see me do the right thing by others, if you have my word then it is concrete. If I tell you something then it is because I mean it. I don’t waste emotion in lying, and I do not have the conscience for it. I am not saying that I never lie, because every day I lie to the one person that matters most I suppose, myself. Would I lie to you though? No, under no circumstance.
There may seem a degree of hypocrisy and even a lack of logic in the above statement for why would you believe that a man who would lie to himself could ever be honest with anyone else?
I have to lie to myself, if I didn’t I would simply cease to function. I know who I am. I am incredibly self aware. I am not a good looking man, though I was as a youth. I say that because it is true, not because I expect a counter argument that I actually am. I do not turn heads and I am thankful for that. I do not like to be the centre of attention, it is not your eye I ever aim to catch.
But I am human, I want to be attractive to someone. I guess we all do, but it matters more that the attraction is based on something far more substantial than my eyes, or my thighs, my chins or my ever expanding bald patch. I don’t really care about how I look, as many can testify to, but how I am perceived, that matters. It matters to me a lot. I don’t care what the ordinary person or casual acquaintance think, but those close to me, I want their trust because believe me, I give it back in spades. So where does the lie come in to things then? It is simple. My gut instincts have been incredibly well honed, through the very nature of who I am and the career paths I have chosen.
I have been beset by so many insecurities over the year, most notably because of my weight. Do I have reason to hold on to those insecurities? Yes and no. I am fat. It is a simple truth. I may be for the rest of my life, I may not. That is something that I cannot predict with anything other than wishful thinking. I hope not because there are many times I am embarrassed by my size. A case in point is the football coaching I do now. Can I become a good coach? Of course I can, I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game, a passion for it and am an excellent mentor. I absolutely trust myself to develop any player under my guidance into a better player. Where I have struggled before is getting out of the car in the first place. So I lie to myself, I pretend I am still an athlete, that I can still do things with a football that others can’t. This is a lie, I know it is, but it allows me to do something I love. I lie to myself as a defence mechanism, and it works, mostly.
Why do I feel I would be judged? Who am I to think I am important enough to matter to anyone to the degree that they would judge me? Because it is human nature. I do it to others and others do it to everyone else. We can deny that we do, but I simply cannot believe anyone can say they have never done so. I don’t just have feelings or intuition to back up my theoretical ponderings. I have cold, hard fact.
I have been abused about my weight for years, and often from the most incredible sources. An ex who rang ‘Extreme Makeover’ on my behalf. I was flattered. A woman I loved unrivalled in my life who claimed she would fancy me more if I lost a bit of weight. Well the thing is I can see that. But you know what, it hurt, and because it did I lied to myself. I would look my partner in the eye and tell her I couldn’t care what she weighed and I meant that, but I knew that I wasn;t enough for her as the person I was and that is a terrible feeling to take with you.
There are far too numerous other instances to list to be honest, but it has allowed me the clarity to see why I respect honesty, probably above all else. I also know that the more I look at it, the more introspective I become the more I realise why. The very fact I cannot be totally honest with myself, is the reason I can be with others, it is a balance.
Of course trust is far more complex than that. Five months ago a woman looked me in the eyes and told me she wanted to marry me, that I was the most amazing of men, the one who allowed her to be true to herself and free. Two weeks later it was over. This same woman had told me on several occasions the same thing or variations of it and left me every time. Every time I believed her and took her back. Was I a fool to believe her? There are many who would say yes but I wasn’t because I trusted her every word, even though her actions were often indicative of someone who didn’t mean what she said. Perhaps I am just allowing myself to believe another lie, or lying to myself, but I still trust her.
Why? Because I have to believe that there are other people in this world who place value in integrity and openness. There must be people who can look in the mirror and see that they are not perfect but strive for it. Not perfection in what they look like but who they are. To know that they can be counted on at any moment to be true to their own beliefs. In that sense I do not and will not ever lie to myself for I am as straight as a die. If I tell you I love you, it is because I do. If I tell you that I will be there for you, I will, and when I tell you I will fight for you, that means to the death, in the literal sense.
I understand that trust is something that can be earned but my nature is to trust somebody until they prove to me they aren’t worthy of it. It has bitten me on more than one occasion but I welcome anyone into my life with the sincerity I would expect reciprocated to me. I have got it right far more times than I have got it wrong.
I trust others because to not trust them is to actually not to trust yourself, to feel that your own experiences can impact negatively on your own judgement. Within a week I will know one way or the other. A tactic I often used as a manager was to ensure certain pieces of information would be released to individual members of my team. By doing so I was showing them that I trusted them. If that information ever got back to me through a third party I would know I was wrong but I was never naïve enough to give out anything important enough to upset the applecart, just enough to test their trustworthiness. It proved who was real and who was not, who was behind me as a manager and chased the same goals, those of the team, and who were maverick and interested only in their own advancement.
So there we go then, that is trust. You can trust me to your dying day, I will not lie, whether the truth be something that hurts or motivates, but only offer that opinion when asked. My ex-wife once asked me whether she looked good in a pair of trousers, she didn’t. I told her. It didn’t matter to me but I knew it mattered to her so why would I deliberately mislead her? In the same manner, should I ever ask you if I am looking fat, tired or happy, then I would expect an honest answer. If I don’t ask you and you choose to tell me then you may very well be extolling what is honest, but you are actually doing nothing more than removing a degree of trust I had for you, unless you are very, very close to me indeed.
Respect is the second fundamental belief that governs everything I do. As with trust it is a two way street, with respect being inwardly and outwardly played out. Do I respect myself? I’ve covered the obesity angle in depth both here and in another article and some will say an obese man who smokes can have no self-respect. If he did why would he choose a lifestyle that will most likely take ten years off his life? It is really very simple. I respect everything about me. I also know that whilst the things I do may have a negative impact on my life, they are not defining characteristics of who I am.
I don’t agree with anyone who declares that recreational drug use is acceptable, and I do not respect their choice, but I respect their right to make that choice for themselves. I have met many a stoner who I would trust my life to, and many a puritanical tree hugger who were simply vacuous delusionists. You see respect is not given to anyone on the manner in which they choose to treat themselves, rather on the reflection of who they actually are.
I find it comical that some people can choose to change their opinion on me because I am tattooed. My tattoos are hidden and inoffensive, and they are on my skin, not anybody else’s. If you would choose to respect me less for making a choice that has not, or ever will, have any influence on the course of your life then I am afraid respect is something I will struggle to hold for you.
It is the one thing with me that can never be regained. I talked of the fabled woman earlier who shaped so much of my life recently, and she once said that she had no respect for me. In fact it was one of the last things she ever said and even though I know it was born out of frustration at a situation beyond her control or understanding and can forgive that, there is nothing you can say that will hurt me more.
I do not possess great wealth, indeed any wealth, in terms of material value. I do not respect somebody because they drive around in a fifty thousand pound car or own a four bedroomed house that they cannot afford to pay for. I respect the person who owns the house that they worked for, whether that be a mansion or a hovel. I have a friend who has a beautiful house but he spends every other month five thousand miles away earning that right. I respect that massively. I know others who have never worked a day in their life and drive around in footballer’s cars and look down their nose at me. They have no respect from me.
Those I respect that have material wealth are genuine people, their hearts worn on their sleeve and the attachment to their roots more important to them than the avenues of the future. They are real. I love real people. I love flawed people, those who make mistakes and throw up their hands to own that mistake, and those who fall over, dust themselves off and carry on, not looking to blame, just recover lost ground. I respect those who display the traits that I admire so much and I can believe in.
I was brought up to respect authority too. I still call policemen Sir, even when their horse has just bitten me, and they are being overly officious. I do not do this out of a sense of duty, I do it because it is right to do so in my opinion. I call ex schoolteachers who I meet Sir or Miss also. Why? Because it is a common courtesy extended to someone who has devoted their life to the education of others.
To respect others is perhaps the most altruistic means of displaying self-respect, a subconscious nod to my sporting days I think. I firmly believe that sport engenders a level of respect that is hard to recreate in other fields. It teaches you to respect hard work, team work, sacrifice and teaches you humility also. I used to hate my opposition when I played them, I would show no mercy and expect no quarter given to me in return. When the whistle blew to end the match though I would be the first to raise a cheer for them should they win, and the first to put an arm around a vanquished opponent. I respected the fact that they wanted to beat me, I respected their strength and passion, and they respected mine.
Even in later years in the military arena I respected an enemy that would be prepared to die for his beliefs far more than those who stood on soap boxes on social media calling for more death whilst snorting cocaine all weekend thousands of miles from harm, or those in their Ivory Minarets who sent the enemy to their death. That may seem bizarre to some, possibly insane, but I know from experience there are many who served who felt that way.
I respect tradition whilst also respecting the need to assimilate new technology. I respect the youth of today for I believe no generation has ever had it as hard as they do today. I know that even only three generations ago there were children as young as twelve who were forced to work in pits throughout the valleys but there were not the societal pressures that exist today either. Children were allowed to be children, even if only briefly, but today we seem to rush our offspring into adulthood, expecting them to be wise beyond their years. Show them the respect they deserve and they will grow up believing that it is natural to respect those around them.
Humour is something I simply must have in my life, every day. If I have a day where there is not something that I can draw laughter from then I pray it is my last day alive. I will tell a brief story of how humour transformed a situation and why that was so important.
A friend of mine was killed in an accident nearly twenty years ago. He was a popular kid and we all loved him. To lose someone so unexpectedly was incredibly tough, and even though he was far from my closest friend, he was a friend I had played football with and against, had been on a lad’s holiday with and it hurt. The day after it happened we were all gathered in our local pub and to say the atmosphere was sombre would only be telling half the story. We were a group of lads who had not the maturity or the life experience to accept what had happened and the mood was changing from sombre to aggressive. With that, Simon Bigmore walked into the pub. He said loud enough for everyone to hear ‘What a twat he was. I let him borrow my trainers and now I can’t fucking ask for them back can I. Selfish bastard’.
Now the important thing here was the timing of his comment. If it had been delivered by anyone other than Mr Bigmore, there would have been a riot. It was however so outrageous, so risqué that everyone burst out laughing and the mood changed. Now we were all openly reminiscing and even though there were plenty of tears, there was now also the sound of laughter, the sound of life, not the morbid hush that had preceded the comment. We were celebrating his life, not mourning his death. Humour has that power to change everything around when it is used correctly.
My humour is not for everyone. It is based on sarcasm and delivered in often acerbic tones. I find hilarity in irony and satire, but if you want a joke teller or a slapstick stooge, I am not your man. I find the simplest forms of humour are in every aspect of everyday life. The day my father died I had advised my mother that as it was in the early hours of the morning it would be better to tell a few people in person, rather than they hear via jungle drums or the telephone. We knocked at 8am on the door of a woman my father looked on as a sister. She came running down the stairs so fast when we knocked the door I turned to my mother and said ‘I feel like the Grim Reaper, she runs any faster he will be able to tell her himself’. Was it hilarious? No, but it served a purpose for when she opened the door we were stood there smiling, not looking like oddly matched pall bearers.
In almost every setting, humour is the one thing that I seek. I love the banter that parents have on the sidelines as their kids chase their dreams around a football pitch. The ironical humour that the workplace can so often reveal or simply observing others taking themselves far too seriously. I loved Fawlty Towers and Black Adder as a child, I loved the cutting asides bandied about in Red Dwarf and the dryness of Jack Dee.
Courage is a trait I respect so much. It is something that many have tried to quantify but very few can actually display, myself included. It is easy to imagine it as the will to battle opponents into submission, the strength to run into a burning house that contains a young child or to battle an illness. These are overt acts of courage that are forged out of circumstance and though I undoubtedly appreciate their value as acts of courage alone, it is not the type of courage I refer to. I could do all of them, twice a day every day. I have been in dangerous situations and never been found wanting, I have conquered pain both emotional and physical and fought a daily battle with type II diabetes that I won. To misquote a well-known Welshman, ‘I will never go gently into the night for I will rage against my final call’. How could I not?
The courage I refer to is the type that draws me to a person, the moral courage to do the right thing, not the popular thing. To look at overwhelming odds and think that they are not insurmountable, that there is way to succeed. People who do not seek personal glory through battle, but battle because it is in their blood. Those who view defeat not as a failure but a testament to their belief that to not stand up, to not fight or to seek the truth is an act of cowardice.
In the last two years, I have lost a lot. I lost a home, a career (through choice) and fifteen months ago, there was simply no hope. I was unemployable, unlovable (as proven by a Christmas Eve break up) and could barely lift myself out of bed, but I did. I rallied and I fought. I fought harder than I have ever done and I may not have won, but I proved what I always knew, that the only person who can give up on me that really matters is myself. I love the fight, but in other areas I am my own worst enemy.
There is a part of me that wants to settle down. I am hardly a lothario but I am at that stage in life whereby if I remain single much longer I will die single. Melodramatic? Not at all. I have lived alone for over a decade now. In that time one person could have changed that and perhaps I should have fought harder, I don’t know. What I do know is that I was not fighting for a shared goal. The salient point though is I simply don’t have the guts to chase anymore, to put myself out there. If there was only a 1 per cent chance of success I should try but I am too weak to run the risk of embarrassing myself, of facing rejection yet again. This is where I am lacking in strength, where I know myself to be anything but courageous.
There is another who I like. Attractive, yes. Strong, yes? Intelligent? Absolutely. Could she possibly even look at me in any light other than moonlight on a stormy night and think of me that way? I’ll never know for the same ratios apply. There is a one per cent chance of success (and that is optimistic) so I will not take the chance. I will stand by and watch someone else take that risk and reap the rewards whilst I chastise myself. It is my biggest flaw. That I will champion others and fight for them whilst so often refusing to fight for myself.
I take so much delight in seeing moral fortitude in others though. My daughter has been fortunate enough recently to gain representative honours in her chosen field that reflect on her as an individual. Of course the platform she performs on is a team one, and though I am proud of her drive and focus, I was equally as gutted that others who have that same dream were not selected. Two girls in particular deserved their chance and it was denied them. In the world of football politics, a twitter account and a lack of any shame is as much a useful tool as any skill on the pitch. It was always thus. Clearly the lack of selection hurt these girls. Whilst others were ignorant of the actions of these girls I wasn’t. They were heartbroken, and those who think I am being overly dramatic cast your mind back to the first time you ever encountered injustice in your life and how it felt.
They were the first to congratulate my daughter however, and they meant it. It would have been easy for them to concede defeat, to give up their own ambition but they didn’t. They worked harder than ever before and chased that small percentage opportunity. On Tuesday they will join my daughter and I am so proud of them. In years to come they may be the ones who make the step up to senior level and win caps, in fact I am certain they will, and my word is given now, I’ll be there. I may sit amongst a peer group three times older than them, but they showed me what I love, that courage to fight on, to battle and ultimately, to succeed. There are many in my age bracket that walk the same path would do well to heed these words, which are if you build a platform for your child that is too high for them to ever perform on, she will fall, and fast. You will need one hell of a safety net to prevent any damage and rest assured, in the years that follow they will see for themselves that you allowed them to fall. It will not be pretty.
Finally, there is passion. I am passionate, often too much so. If I commit I do so entirely, be that in a relationship, work or hobby. I have never known any other way and I am certain I never will.
I was told once that I fall in love easily. I am honest enough to know that this is rubbish. There are very few people who have heard those words uttered from me, and maybe I will never utter them again other than to my children. If I was a betting man I would say it is odds on in fact, a very safe bet. What I do know though is that if my commitment to anything is there it is total. Before I commit I weigh up my options, and if there is any doubt in my mind that I cannot fulfil my commitment then I do not even begin. It carries a price though, for I expect the same in return. I have said twice already, my word is my bond, it truly is, and if I tell you I love you, you will not only feel it, you will see it. If I tell you I am going to fight you, it is to the death if you push it that far. It is all or nothing.
This year I have embarked on a new venture, one that I have thought about for some time and it will succeed, simply because I will make it succeed. That passion that drives me is something that staggers me at times, and can often be overpowering even to myself. As always no apology is offered, why should I? I have passion for so many things, nature, art, literature, even passion itself but above all else, life. I have hurt, I have loved, I have laughed and I have cried but I am still here, the culmination of all those emotions that have acted upon me. If ever you doubt me, if ever you think my words are laced with a purpose you don’t believe then look in my eyes. Should my lips ever speak a lie, my eyes will tell you what you need to know, whether that is in conversation, argument or the throes of the bedroom.
My autopsy is at an end, my psyche revealed. Writing this has been draining because I could have written forever. People relate to the search for themselves but it really is not that difficult. It is not a long journey to undertake but one that can be arduous and bring a lot of pain through reflection. In answer to the question that was posed to me by a friend, I am honest, to a fault. I pride myself on that, and I will never change. Perhaps in time I can be more honest to myself but just writing this has highlighted to me flaws in my outlook, bigger flaws within myself and a sense of unease that I will need to revisit this journey at several more points in my life.
I may seek to rectify those flaws, but if I am entirely truthful I probably will not. I know who I am and I am proud of who I am. I have nothing to prove to anyone other than myself and I do that daily. My flaws are not the sort that can harm anyone other than myself, and I have no desire to be a poster boy to anyone, just content that when I draw that last breath, those who knew me, really knew me.
Acceptance is something that comes from within, and I not only accept who I am, I take pleasure in the knowledge that I live the most ordinary of lives, and am grateful just for that, being alive. I am thankful not to be the amazing man someone once wanted me to believe I was. I am no poet either but so what, I enjoy writing and will continue to do so. I said from the outset, I write for me, nobody else.
I hope in years to come that I will be able to share my life to a greater extent than I do, but if not, I will not cry or worry. It is what it is, and I can live with myself. I am confident of that.
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