Fear of Failure...

I was speaking to a friend recently who mentioned the importance of making peace with failure. It’s all very well to strive for almost impossible dreams, he said, but you have to make peace with the fact that you might not succeed. His words struck me deeply for a number of reasons.

Over the past few months three unconnected people have urged me to stay strong. Last year was a brutal year for me. I can usually cope with most of life’s constant setbacks, but with the health of one of my children compromised, I become deeply vulnerable. My load was a heavy one to carry. There were no quick solutions. For once I couldn’t fix this problem myself. This has been one of the most difficult lessons for me to learn. At some point my health suffered too. Swine flu struck in June and it took me months to recover. The temptation to give up my own goals and plans completely was very strong.

Slowly I realised I have to make a conscious effort to get back on the proverbial horse. If you can bear with me extending this metaphor a little longer, I was only just able to stay upright in the saddle at first. And it was during the long recuperation period that I met the three kind people who urged me to stay strong.

Their encouragement touched me deeply. I contemplated what they’d said for many hours. For the first time in years my personal goals and dreams had begun to feel intangible. The road ahead seemed just too damned difficult. And then I had the conversation with my dear friend above.

His words were the key. They reminded me of the Buddhist maxim that one should have no expectations of the outcomes of one’s actions. This has always been a tricky thing for me especially as we are surrounded by a driven and goal-orientated society. However, at this critical point in my life, learning to embrace failure made immense sense. If I carried on the journey without being desperate about the outcomes I wouldn’t take such hard knocks when things didn’t work out they way I’d imagined.

It was about then that I read a report about a young girl who’d failed matric and was so distraught about her abject failure in her eyes that she hanged herself. I couldn’t help thinking about how society’s obsession with winning at all costs often comes at the expense of personal welfare.

One of the worst insults in current usage is to call someone a loser. This attitude is pervasive in all walks of life. Just think of hit Show Survivor. The first time I saw it years ago I was outraged. How could a programme reward someone for lying, cheating and manipulating, I wondered? Now I hardly give the matter a second thought. We’ve become used to the idea that winners can do anything to get to the top. The only criterion that matters, it would seem, is that they win.

Sports teams and individuals are berated for losing in whatever sphere and fans desert their teams if they aren’t constantly on a winning streak. Many children suffer through school because they aren’t in the A-team or aren’t the top achievers. I’m not saying that society and schools should encourage failure but shouldn’t we get people used to the idea that someone has to lose? Perhaps the so-called civilized world needs to re-examine our “success at all costs” philosophy.

I think we as parents and educators have a duty to teach children that it’s okay not to win every time. I heard of a school recently which rewards the child who swims the slowest in their annual gala. This school has no life or death outcomes for the child who doesn’t succeed. A recipe for healthy self-esteem, surely?

This same friend told me that praise releases life-enhancing endorphins. Perhaps that’s why we’re driven so hard to succeed and get rewards. Many primary schools ensure that children are celebrated simply for being who they are. But I believe this celebration becomes even more important in high schools. We, as parents and teachers, have to take our minds off the giant carrot at the end of the matric year for the sake of our children. We need to be very careful that we aren’t instilling a crippling fear of failure into them.

Personally, I’ve found it liberating to remove my almost rigid need to succeed after the recent conversation with my friend. So this is my New Year’s resolution: I will try and stay upright on the horse and, like Don Quixote, aim for the giants I see up ahead. But I resolve to be just as happy if the giants turn out to be windmills instead.

Bondes have more fun?

Enough is enough! This has to stop: the discrimination, the supercilious looks, the rude remarks, the prejudiced assumptions. I blame the schools. And the Universities. And the government. And the television. In fact, the media in general. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. I strongly suspect it is an international plot! Think about it. How many Blondes have you seen in positions of power lately?
Yes, I am talking about the ‘Dumb Blonde’ syndrome. Things have gone too far. It is time that we, the victims, stand together. It is time for us to put up a united front - as it were - and to fight for equal treatment for all, for our Human (albeit Blonde) Rights. And to start with, the first question which needs answering is: why are the parliamentary benches bereft of Blondes? Now I know that most of you will be leaping forward with snappy comments like ‘Put Blondes on a parliamentary bench and what do you get? - benches with inbuilt make-up compacts and blowdryer facilities!’ (I just thought of that one. It’s quite good, isn’t it?)
But seriously, the final straw came when my mostly sweet eleven year-old came home from school sprouting jokes which involved women - it’s always a woman - of the ‘B’-word description. The thing is, his sister, his mother, his great-aunt and grandmother are all of the follically-pale variety. Admittedly, some of the older members are a little more chemically-enhanced than others now that ‘Basic Blonde’ has turned to ‘Mostly Mousy’, but hey! Blonde is the way Mother Nature intended us to be. A long, long time ago, perhaps. But still. I digress. Now, however, my formerly-loyal son is telling his D.B. jokes hour after hour, to anyone who will listen.
I saw it coming, I tell you. When someone first refused to give me credit when credit was due, I began to suspect it. When someone else’s eyes glazed over as I began to voice my views on Wordsworth, I knew I was on to something. When an application for funds was summarily dismissed, I was sure they had scrawled the ‘B’-word over the top of it.
How do I fight back, I wondered? Strongly resisting the temptation to say, ‘It’s because I’m Blonde, isn’t it?” I have devised a set of rules for overcoming the opposition instead. Gather forward all ye blondies and listen. These rules will change your life.
Rule number one: When presented with oversights like forgetting to sign homework books, cheques, affidavits again blame it on being follically inferior.
Rule number two: If you miss the AGM, PTA or TGIF meetings three times in a row, throw your hands up in the air, shake the blonde bob, and say, “I don’t know, I just don’t seem to be able to get things sorted out anymore.”
Rule number three: If you are challenged to give a brief summary of Derrida’s deconstructionism theory, smile sweetly and say “I’m sorry. It’s just too much for me. After all, I’m only a Blonde!”
Rule number four: Write the best deconstructionist essay, compose the most original poem and utter the most ground-breaking statements when everyone least expects it, and smile as their collective jaws hit the ground.
If all that fails, refer back to rules number one to three, and enjoy the lack of responsibility.

Bureaucracies.

What is it with Bureaucracies? Do you think they have weekly committee meetings to see how they can make their average customer’s life more difficult? I’m convinced they do. It’s the only explanation.

I had the misfortune last week to be on the receiving end of a bureaucratic system. This meant I had to go from Point A to Point D, brandishing a little form which needed to be stamped and signed and ratified and approved at each of the various stations. Have you ever noticed how the trip between any two points of such a system always has to be done on one of the hottest days of the year? Funny how that happens.

Anyway, I thought I could get it all done in an hour. All that was required, after all, were a few signatures and a little financial negotiation and I would be home free. Silly me. How easily one forgets.

Point A went along swimmingly, filling me with false hope for a speedy conclusion. Point B was a little sticky. Person required to sign the form was not available so I had to come back. And then come back later again. And once again come back later. But all concerned were doing their best to be courteous. When the person in question was finally back, the signature was done with the best will in the world. And it only took a couple of days. I was lulled into the false security that everyone was out to help me.

So I sailed on blithely to point C. And there she was. The original bureaucrat. The one who designed the system. The one who worked out how it takes five pairs of hands to fill in a single form. The one who says “How can I make this process more difficult for this person?” The one who lies awake at night thinking of different ways to say “NO!”

I almost escaped her clutches. Her young colleague was listening with empathy to my need for a little bending of the iron-clad rules. I could see the girl consider the possibilities of how we could make efficient but alternative arrangements.

And then the experienced signer of forms, the veteran deflater of hopes, the gainsayer extraordinaire moved into position. A quick interrogation of her colleague’s intentions made her act swiftly. Behind their glass enclosure, she covered her hands with her multi be-ringed fingers and whispered urgent instructions to her innocent and wayward co-worker. Of course I couldn’t hear a word of the vicious calumnies she was obviously pouring out on my head and so couldn’t pre-empt any objections. But it took a mere matter of seconds before the young girl’s helpfulness changed to stern “There is absolutely no way on God’s green earth that we can possibly contemplate this”-ness. If you know what I mean.

I sighed deeply. I did not break down and cry as I’ve done before. Three years ago, when ill with TB, I’d been broken by the system while waiting in a queue at the local clinic for a packet of pre-packed medicine for over two hours. I could see the packets neatly arranged on a table within my grasp. All the other patients were waiting for the same medicine. But we had to follow the primordial procedure to go from step A to step Z even though it was the n’th time all of us had been there. And then, then - just when it was finally my turn - the nurses shut up their little offices and went to tea. Both of them. For half an hour.

I do not profess to have great time/management skills but I’m sure I could improve the efficiency of most of these processes. I once heard a man describe his attempt to obtain his preordained funds from the government for his state school as being impossible “because it takes ten hands to wipe one arse.

It’s those weekly obfuscation meetings I tell you. They must spend hours devising new ways to make life more difficult for the average applicant. But I’m willing to bet that they never come to a unified resolution on anything.

In fact, I believe hell is not “other people” as Jean Paul Sartre stated in his play Huis-clos (No Exit). It’s being given a form and asked to get it processed by an endless string of bureaucrats!

So You Want Me To Take Off My Underwear??

“You want me to take off my underwear?” I look at the young man in surprise, as I stand next to the bed. He is waiting for me to lie down. He nods politely as he prepares to take my gown. “But…” I splutter. Does he really mean I must strip down to bare flesh without even the lubricant of dinner and a movie? Can’t I even have a glass of wine first? His smile continues patiently. “We do have disposable underwear for you to put on during the treatment,” he says reassuringly as he reaches into a drawer. He removes a frippery of light paper which has a thong attached to a central landing strip the size of an Elastoplast. I am not ready for this, I think nervously. But there is no escape. I am left to remove my reassuringly black and prevent-all-comers underwear to arrange the minimalist scrap of disposable lingerie in the most discreet way possible. It’s not easy, I sigh to myself as I lie down on the bed and try to cover myself with the towels provided.

My young man returns, still patient, still smiling. Efficiently, calmly he begins to scrub my whole body with a mixture of coarse salt and something else which smells delicious. I talk rapidly, trying to ignore the unusual situation for me. I mean, I do not usually share my cellulite with just anyone. Matthew – that’s his name - continues, professional and efficient, answering my slightly hysterical stream of questions. I should get out more often I think as he begins to wash the salt off with many nozzles of the Vichy shower placed above the bed. I now regret the bikini wax I tried to do in five minutes this morning before I rushed out to do an interview before I was due to arrive at this spa. I had a premonition that I might be required to wear a swimming costume. I never envisaged this post modern thong thing. In my extreme haste to wax and go, I had burnt myself rather badly. The bikini area was now mostly fuzz free, but had the alarmed and reddened look of a freshly plucked chicken. Oh, how I wished those nozzles would wash more quickly over certain areas.

My young therapist does not seem fazed. He continues with round two. He makes a solution of milk and honey and begins to wash it into my skin. How decadent, I think for a moment. But how smooth! No wonder this treatment is called Cleopatra’s Secret. A great lover of creams and softening agents – I have never been able to bear dry skin – I am amazed by the glorious richness of the mixture. I am then wrapped in the plastic on which I had been lying all the time but hadn’t noticed due to my crippling self-consciousness. I babble on blithely until Matthew moves to a seat above my head. While my skin is absorbing the mixture, he begins to massage my forehead. One waft of his fingers over my brow and I am rendered speechless. Bliss. So this is what it’s all about. Not another word squeaks out of my mouth as I finally get the point of all this therapy. I stumble out of the spa a few hours later – refelexologied, massaged (Melanie gives the best massages in the world) and facial-ed out of all thought. I am so relaxed I can barely find the door. And this is just the first day of treatments. There are more tomorrow. I really should get out more often, I think again as I stumble home.

I was at the blissful and extremely delicious Fordoun Spa in Nottingham Road. Coming back to the real world is quite a shock after being royally pampered. Sigh. I will just have to keep dreaming of being Cleopatra whenever I get the chance. I wonder if anyone will notice if the milk disappears more quickly out of the fridge than usual.

Living Like Jane Austen

I’ve been thinking about Jane Austen a lot lately. No, I’m not waiting for a dashing Mr Darcy to storm over the horizon to carry me off to Pemberley. Actually, perhaps that’s not such a bad idea after all… But, no, the reason I’ve been thinking about Jane Austen is that recently my working life has been very much like hers.

Jane Austen is remarkable to me for many reasons, not least the quality of her work. She is one of the few women to be mentioned consistently in writings on the development of the novel. But one of the most impressive things about dear old Jane is that she wrote her novels in a communal sitting room in the midst of her family’s busy and noisy lives. Jane would pretend she was writing letters at her desk and cover up her work as soon as anyone came too close. It’s a sign of her immense writing ability that she managed to complete novel after novel while being constantly interrupted by visitors, having family consultations about whether to have lamb or pork for supper, and listening to inquiries about the sick people in the community.

Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit like Jane. Although working from home has many advantages it’s not always easy. Not having to dress for work at 6 am is a big advantage, though, and the joy of sloping around in my pyjamas until I absolutely have to get dressed is not to be sneezed at. Especially in winter. Having the flexibility to choose to work when it suits you, instead of when a boss tells you to, is another big plus.

Unfortunately, this flexibility is a double-edged sword. In many people’s eyes, working at home means that you are available. Available to help at school sports days. Available to have meetings with people who want to ‘pick your brain’. Available to visitors who come to stay during the week during what is a normal working week for you. You see, people seem to think that the phrase ‘working from home’ is an oxymoron.

What happens to me because of my flexible working hours is that I find myself doing all the extra things: the school meetings, the entertaining of visiting friends, the meetings with brain pickers, and sorting out of people in crises. And then in a frazzled rush I try to catch up with the never-ending load of work late at night, most weekends, and in the early hours of the morning.

Having your home as your work space also means that you have no place to hide. After a recent stint with builders wrecking my roof with some vague explanation that it was for my own good, I found the scales tipped far too heavily against me. Dealing with men breaking through my ceilings while supposedly fixing my roof, under which I was trying to write something vaguely intelligent, was just too much for me.

This intrusion into my home and work space was followed by an onslaught of visitors. It’s always lovely to see friends and spend time together, but my work suffered badly. The resultant strain as I tried to find any piece of a candle left to burn on either side has made me dream of an office with a heavy-handed boss. How blissful it would be to say that the boss won’t give me time off to have my brain picked, solve emotional problems or attend meetings of any sort. How nice it would be to say that I can’t be available as entertainment co-ordinator for visitors either as my boss won’t let me leave the office.

But I don’t have a boss, and I’m not really sure I’d like one. So I have to focus on Jane Austen. If she managed it, I should be able to as well. And so I think of how her novels sparkled with vibrant and quirky characters. Perhaps she would never have written such unforgettable classics if she’d been isolated in an attic with hours a day to think about her next line. I like to think her work would not have been as good if she hadn’t fed off the interaction of people around her. At least that’s what I’m telling myself just before the next batch of visitors arrives.

Women over thirty

In 1815, the British critic, J.W. Croker denounced the work of a previously beloved author as the work of a ‘shriveled hag.’ The reason? “Novel and novelist alike have grown too old to delight discriminating male readers,” Croker croaked. “The vivacity, the bloom, the elegance, ‘the purple light of love’ are vanished,” he moaned. Women should not write after they turn thirty, Coker implied. He must have been delighted to have another unassailable source of wisdom on his side. Lord Merton believed that, not only should women not write after thirty, women should not live after thirty. These two curmudgeons decreed: “If a woman had anything of significance to say which was not ‘modest, delicate, wispy and delightful,’ they were past their best as writers and as women.”*

Luckily, certain women seemed to have missed this decree about the decline of the female species after a certain age. It is a good thing too that they haven’t read the rash of prepubescent publications edited by pimply-faced youths who couldn’t get laid unless they had a position of power. Fortunately, there are women in the world who ignore these magazines’ pronouncements which say that women over the age of thirty-five should be euthanased. It’s also a good thing that certain women are not deterred by the fact that some internet dating sites have set an age limit for women, but not for men. (Women over the age of forty are persona-non-grata on these sites, according to a friend of mine who was not allowed to join because she admitted her age as fifty).

I asked my friends of all ages and both sexes who their female role models were. Their answers were pleasantly surprising. These are the names they came up with: Geena Davis; Oprah Winfrey; Jane Goodall; Madonna; Annie Lennox; Maria Ramos; Michelle Botes; Noeleen Maholwana-Sangqu; Sibongile Khumalo; Miriam Makeba; Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka; Rebecca Malope; Leleti Khumalo; Gcina Mhlophe; Nadine Gordimer; Susan Sarandon; Meryl Streep; Hilary Clinton; Arandhati Roy and many more.

Most of these women are well past thirty, most are past forty and the majority are older than fifty. Isn’t it strange that not even the prettiest model made it onto anyone’s list? It seems, therefore, that models are – forgive the pun - not great role models. Women who make indelible impressions need to make their mark in ways which are not only decorative it seems, although one has to admit that Michelle Botes, Madonna and Geena Davis are pretty darn sexy too.

The older woman’s need for romantic entertainment has come under scrutiny too recently. A Time magazine article written by Lillian Kennet referred to the emergence of a new genre of literature, ironically termed ‘Gray Lit,’ which has just become acceptable. It seems that the baby boomers are getting older and are still demanding large slices of cake, which they want to eat too. The largest growing demographic in the UK is the women-over-fifty-bracket. One publishers, Nikki Read, who has taken note of this fact and is publishing previously scorned novels about the love-lives of older women says, “Middle age is no longer a gradual decline to old age; it’s a time to start again. We want that to be reflected in the literature of our time.”**

So perhaps the mindset about women needing to be exterminated after the age of thirty is changing, slowly but surely. And yes, there may be some men who are saving themselves for their soul-mates who must fit just a single specification: they must be younger than thirty. But there are still men who appreciate women as they mature into their finest incarnations of themselves. As I approach, somewhat cautiously, middle-age which looms just ahead of me, I must admit that it feels good to be grower wiser and more satisfied with my life. Each passing year finds me more in control of my talents, more certain of my views of the world, and happier to be in my body as it is now. In fact, being well past thirty is remarkable simply because it is a much more comfortable place to be in than any other age before. Even if I am a woman who writes.

First published in the Sunday Independent.