A Rule of Thumb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
When I failed to get enough A-levels to take up the place at Library School that I had been offered, I was in despair as to what my next step should be. My English teacher told me “Never lose hope, Taber, or you will lose everything.” It sounded somewhat trite at the time, and I took little comfort from the sentiment, but over the years I have learned the wisdom of it.
Emigrating to Australia in 1969 was more impromptu desperation than a plan, doomed to failure from the start. Even so, it gave me six weeks to think things over during a voyage on the good ship, Southern Cross. I couldn’t get a job, ran out of cash, and ended up sleeping under Sydney Harbour bridge. Then I met an old Aborigine who not only gave me hope, but also told me how to get back to the UK (without having to get into debt) and make a fresh start … which I did.
A few years after I returned to the UK found me at university and doing OK. Seven years later, mother died, the only member of my family who really understood the problems I faced with perceptive deafness and how it had contributed to my not having achieved as much as I’d hoped at the ripe old age of 30. Consequently, three years on found me doing battle with a nervous breakdown. Again, I am ashamed to say my first instinct was to run away and I took an overdose. Life, though, had other plans for me, demanded I get real, let hope back in and make the best rather than the worst of my situation. I started writing again, and that was a GOOD start. With the encouragement of several people in my life (not family) providing an invaluable support network, I eventually got another job as a librarian four years later, and stayed there until I retired in 2008, although I went part-time after 13 years in order to make time for more creative writing, a life-saver as depression was starting to take over again.
I will be 75 in December, not a good age to find oneself in the midst of a pandemic, but I continue to seize the day, give depression the old heave-ho, and let hope take its course if only because there is no workable alternative. After my nervous breakdown, I had promised myself that I would never again wake up wishing that I hadn’t. So far, so good...
A RULE OF THUMB
Dour
mist lifting,
late
morning sun, a smile on its face,
rescuing
us from doldrums,
whisking
us to a better, kinder place,
encouraging divisions
to reconcile, religions to come together
in
the same love and peace
whose
rhetoric its peoples would have us
engage with its principles
Birds singing,
as
if telling us not to despair of winter,
but
remember best summers,
look to spring, when the chances are
Earth
Mother will bring
new
leaves for our trees, new flowers
to cheer home and planet,
a
burst of incomparable colour
having us engage closer with Earth Mother
and also with one another
Humanity,
waking up,
resolving
to put aside any cares of the day
long
enough to listen
to
what mind-body-spirit has to say
about
how best to rise
above
dark scenarios closing in
on
the Spirit of Morning,
re-engage
with a sense of hope-faith-charity
that
characterises humanity
True,
we well may argue “Easier said than done …”
but
that’s a rule of thumb for everyone
Copyright R. N. Taber, 2020
Labels: depression, despair, discernment, expectations, fear, home truths, hope, human nature, human spirit, life forces, love, mind-body-spirit, poetry, positive thinking, self-awareness, society, support networks, willpower