My French career at school ended in the ditch, like a kid’s toy car overturned by its ridiculous driver, me. I took out teenage frustrations on our French GCSE teacher, who was a good, intelligent man. I still laugh and/or cry when I think about it today. I ‘swore’ at him, but my act of teenage rebellion was in fact a complicated, jesuitical expression of anger. By jesuitical I mean like those Jesuits who excused lying under oath because they finished their sentences in their heads. An example is: ‘Have you seen the priest?’ ‘No…’ and then within their own heads ‘…, not since yesterday when I saw him in his hidey hole’. This was not lying because they had said the truth, and it was a truth God could hear, albeit not their interrogators.
When I swore I used my ring finger, not my middle one, to make the obscene gesture. I mean…if you’re going to swear, do it. Don’t depend on some outrageous defence that ‘it wasn’t the middle finger’ as you’re thrown out the classroom. But that’s what I did and then I did French no more.
I said to myself, because I always liked the language’s sound, that I would come back later. The years passed, that brightly coloured car remained in its ditch, and I never forgot it. And then, as the years went by faster than anticipated, later became now. Back to the school room I went, signing up for classes at the French Institute in South Kensington. But this time, I was free of stupidity. Ok, maybe just less stupid, and more committed, more earnest in my study et cetera. So I thought.
Opening the classroom door for the first time I was thrown into the past: the desks arranged in a ring; the unfamiliar faces of other students; sizing them up, ‘are they linguistic gods? Am I going to look stupid?’; the silence and the space, even with a room filled with 14 adults, recalled the tension of the schoolroom; the performative aspect – ‘I’m actually expected to speak out loud? I did not sign up for this’ (yes, yes I did); the unspoken code of behaviour, the limits and the norms created, with no obvious source, by the group as a whole. So of course the first thing I did was flipped them all a bird and walked out the door. Suckers.
Of course I didn't do that. But not because the impulse wasn't there. It was, I just controlled it this time. It was a shock to realise that outwardly an adult, inwardly I was the same boy. I felt as if I were slipping into an old groove. Later, thinking back, I reasoned I probably was because one way to deal with challenging situations is to create a pattern of action, a sort of behavioural suit that you can slip into and that takes away a lot the decision making. It was just I hadn’t worn this behavioural suit for about ten years.
In fact, when I tell friends this story, they find my act of rebellion a little difficult to believe because as a man I have grown a long way from that youth. Sharper, then, was the surprise I came face to face with to an old self so long banished to a history which verges on myth.
In fact, when I tell friends this story, they find my act of rebellion a little difficult to believe because as a man I have grown a long way from that youth. Sharper, then, was the surprise I came face to face with to an old self so long banished to a history which verges on myth.
Funnily enough, the ridiculousness of ‘swearing’ didn’t seem quite so outrageous when I was back in that classroom. Not that I was suddenly brimming with immature rage, but when I got frustrated, the shortest path was to a surprisingly surly anger. I’m better at controlling myself now – I hope – but it made me realise that I wasn’t so different to my past self. I was behaving stupidly, but not crazily, if that distinction means anything, when I ‘swore’ at my old teacher.
And if I wasn’t so different to how I was then, by catching a glimpse of my past self, I had an opportunity to maybe improve myself, or learn to work better with myself. Essentially be my own management consultant: work on processes together, identify weaknesses, forge competitive solutions jointly.
Ugh. And that also has the added benefit of making me sound like I'm more than a little doolally. But half the battle of life is about self-knowledge and that’s absolutely what this was, a moment to see myself as you would see a third party, dispassionate and critical.
As the Greeks said, γνῶθι σεαυτόν, know thyself. Don’t forget the Greeks also said that there were giant gold-digging ants in India, which had to be battled on camelback for their gilt spoils, so Ancient Wisdom sometimes needs a pinch of salt.
But it is important to know yourself, and that meeting in the classroom with an old self taught me a lot. It was a more conservative lesson than I’d anticipated. To work with what and who I was, rather than assuming I could stride into the classroom and make myself anew. I had, plainly speaking, to work with what I'd got. Perhaps that’s just the slow process of growing up. Or perhaps the lesson was: do not to flip fake birds at nice teachers for no reason.
But it is important to know yourself, and that meeting in the classroom with an old self taught me a lot. It was a more conservative lesson than I’d anticipated. To work with what and who I was, rather than assuming I could stride into the classroom and make myself anew. I had, plainly speaking, to work with what I'd got. Perhaps that’s just the slow process of growing up. Or perhaps the lesson was: do not to flip fake birds at nice teachers for no reason.
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