Orders For Life
Jan. 5th, 2008 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI had a grandfather who made a lot of money. I had a father who made a lot of money. But me, I don't have that ability at all. Rather the reverse. It's not that I'm careless with money. Or profligate. No, not at all. I just can't get anywhere with it. I don't understand it. I'm even a little scared of it.
Stephen Pegler- I mentioned him a few posts back- had his bedroom set up as an office- just like daddy's. Ooh, how grown-up! So I copied him. What do you need? A desk? Check. A notepad? Check. A pen? Check. A telephone? We'll have to imagine that. And Bingo, I'm a businessman. And now what? I sit behind my desk and...and... Gosh, this is boring, lets play soldiers instead.
And that's the story of my life.
I also have this thing where I'm useless with numbers. I can't do math. I can't remember dates. Ask me how old my children are and- I'm ashamed to say- I have to work it out on my fingers.
And in the bad old days when I was a professional and had money coming in on a regular basis I never could remember how much. I'd be asked to fill in forms stating my yearly or monthly income and I didn't know. So I'd look it up and write it down- then promptly forget again.
I used to think I could break the spell- like write a bestselling book or something- but I'm getting old and I've seen the pattern so now I just accept it as the way it has to be.
Like it's my fate? Well, not exactly, because I don't believe it's inexorable. If I really wanted to over-ride it I probably could. But there's something that holds me in check. A compulsion, an inner voice. There were times in my life when I might have followed the money trail but at each opportunity I turned aside because it seemed wrong. Not wrong in absolute terms, but wrong for me.
It's like I'd made some sort of antenatal compact. As if someone had spread out my life before me and said, "Here it is. You'll go from A to B and work on these karmic issues you've get hanging around and it'll all be reasonably jolly just so long as you shy away from making money- OK?" And I've looked it over and approved it and signed on the dotted line.
There's a story by Kipling where he talks about Orders for Life- "the sentence which is written on the frontal sutures of every three-year-old child, which is supposed...to foreshadow his or her destiny." The Orders for Life aren't unbreakable but if you break them there'll be consequences- unpleasant consequences- so you really don't want to try. He was joking of course- well sort of- but I think he was onto something.
Stephen Pegler- I mentioned him a few posts back- had his bedroom set up as an office- just like daddy's. Ooh, how grown-up! So I copied him. What do you need? A desk? Check. A notepad? Check. A pen? Check. A telephone? We'll have to imagine that. And Bingo, I'm a businessman. And now what? I sit behind my desk and...and... Gosh, this is boring, lets play soldiers instead.
And that's the story of my life.
I also have this thing where I'm useless with numbers. I can't do math. I can't remember dates. Ask me how old my children are and- I'm ashamed to say- I have to work it out on my fingers.
And in the bad old days when I was a professional and had money coming in on a regular basis I never could remember how much. I'd be asked to fill in forms stating my yearly or monthly income and I didn't know. So I'd look it up and write it down- then promptly forget again.
I used to think I could break the spell- like write a bestselling book or something- but I'm getting old and I've seen the pattern so now I just accept it as the way it has to be.
Like it's my fate? Well, not exactly, because I don't believe it's inexorable. If I really wanted to over-ride it I probably could. But there's something that holds me in check. A compulsion, an inner voice. There were times in my life when I might have followed the money trail but at each opportunity I turned aside because it seemed wrong. Not wrong in absolute terms, but wrong for me.
It's like I'd made some sort of antenatal compact. As if someone had spread out my life before me and said, "Here it is. You'll go from A to B and work on these karmic issues you've get hanging around and it'll all be reasonably jolly just so long as you shy away from making money- OK?" And I've looked it over and approved it and signed on the dotted line.
There's a story by Kipling where he talks about Orders for Life- "the sentence which is written on the frontal sutures of every three-year-old child, which is supposed...to foreshadow his or her destiny." The Orders for Life aren't unbreakable but if you break them there'll be consequences- unpleasant consequences- so you really don't want to try. He was joking of course- well sort of- but I think he was onto something.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 05:38 pm (UTC)I am going to come to some sort of mid-life crisis soon where I will have to decide whether to continue running in my litte money-spinning hamster wheel, (maybe even faster, if I decide I am still ambitious) or, alternatively, let go of everything I know how to do, and have a completely different life, but potentially a more fulfilling one. That is scary.
Poliphilo, you, on the other hand, could make money out of what you love to do, and at the same time get your remarkable writings to the audience they deserve. The poetry, especially, ought to be published, if it isn't already! What have Iain Pears, Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman done, that you could not do?
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 06:14 pm (UTC)We're back with Orders for Life I'm afraid. It's not only money I'm supposed to avoid, it's fame as well.
Maybe I let fame and money corrupt me in a previous life. I don't know. It's a hypothesis.
I dropped out of a secure career at 35. Yes, it was scary. And there were times when it was VERY scary. But I've never regretted it.
When I was a kid I had this dream of living on my own terms in something like perfect freedom (with the woman I loved) in a French chateau. Well, I finally achieved it all- except that the chateau turns out to be a terraced house in Oldham.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 07:16 pm (UTC)It depends how much you could use a little extra dosh. If you are happy as you are, it doesn't much matter, but it would be a pity if your poems never got out of the broom cupboard, whether you make money out of them or not. Your outlook is very original - as distinctive as Betjeman (sp?) but IMHO, rather more interesting and less tum tee tum tee tum. It is a voice that should be heard, not least because it rocks the Judaeo-Christian paradigm of this country. We need that.
I'm just worried about people who get a mindset about what they "deserve" in life. In my experience we kind of make our own fates to a large extent (not to say that life can't sometimes bowl us a googly).
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 09:17 pm (UTC)Says who? Hmmm. I don't know, really. It's how I rationalise my life. Maybe it's nonsense. All I can say is it feels true. It fits.
And I'm happy.
No-one makes much money from poetry. Well, one or two people do- but they have to network very hard to draw attention to themselves, the way the present poet laureate does or did- a man of moderate, but very well-husbanded talent. And I really don't care to do that.
Anyway, I've left it too late.
It's true I'd like the poems to have an audience- and in the past I've placed quite a few of them in magazines of one kind or another and now I'm "publishing" them here. But it's a bit like putting messages in a bottle. If they deserve readers I reckon they'll eventually find them and if not, not.