There has been a fair bit of soul searching/life-style-evaluating  on the old tent. Perhaps it is just evidence of an unfolding mid life crisis- blogging style.

How middle class!

I grew up in a single parent family, to a working class mother. We had very little money.

I do not want to pretend that we had nothing- there was always food and presents at Christmas- but the shadow of poverty was always on us. Second hand clothes, and even home made clothes singled us out for terrible bullying at school, and every single activity was overshadowed by worry about COST.

My mother was very good at squeezing some kind of security out of the state benefits that supported us, but her constant anxiety about the cost of repairs to the house,or replacing a lost coat led to terrible rows.

So it was that from an early age, it was drummed into me that the only life worth aiming for- the only one that was acceptable- was one based on middle class values.

• Education
• University
• Sobriety
• Responsibility
• Professional employment
• Property ownership
• Security

Adrift as I was as a young man, this was the island that I swam towards. A suburban world of respectability, gainful employment and financial comfort. Or at least, being in a position where money was not something that ever needed to be worried about.

But I never really reached this point. This is the great middle class trap- when is enough? When do we achieve safety? How many stocks and shares, how big a pension pot, how recently should the house have been re-painted?

Alongside these motivations have always been dissonant and equally powerful ones- arising from my faith (not needing two shirts on my back, camels not fitting through eyes of needles etc) and my left leaning politics (property is theft, international trade and inequality etc.) Life then is lived in the presence of internal conflict and discomfort.

But having started down this path- how do you change direction?

My conviction is that most of us simply can not. Life is simply too full of obligations and compromises. And there can still be blessing, beauty, and grace in this middle class life. There are still people who open up their suburban lives and homes to the other and from this part of our demographic come the committee members, the community activists, the fund raisers and the protestors against many an injustice.

Some of us are forced to change direction by crisis. Redundancy, mental/physical ill health or some other extraordinary life event that disturbs our innate conservastism.

Outside of this, change takes such courage. Like standing at the edge of a cliff and daring yourself to jump in the direction of a crumbling ledge in the middle distance.

The sort of courage demands a great confidence. Confidence of purpose, and clarity of vision. A willingness to embrace risk and uncertainty.

And for me, confidence was always absent. It was lost somewhere aged 8, and I never really found it again. Confidence belonged to those other middle class kids, who were able to embrace risk and uncertainty whilst beginning from a  firm platform.

But standing here I now am.

Daring myself to jump. Or waiting for a push.

Here is a poem from a few years ago;

Michaela loves that time when evening turns to dusk

When streetlights shine with purpose

But people have not yet drawn their curtains

.

There laid naked by approaching night

The secrets of some other sitting room

Are shelved

Are stored in boxes from Ikea

In two dimensions

Animated by the ubiquitous TV sets

Flickering from the corners

.

Arm in arm we share clandestine glances

Whispering our words of approval or approbation

And walk on into our own lives

.

There was a time when we watched in aspiration

Building middle class castles in our minds

Safe within suburbia

Dreaming of a day when we too would know the security

Of ownership.

A solid sideboard

And stripped pine floors

.

Like the moths flapping at the amber streetlights

We are drawn to the artificial arc

Of convention

And conformity

Tied down to the temporal

Walking to stand still

.

Michaela and I

We sometimes transcend the tramlines

Or at least we try

.

We catch a glimpse of another way

The scent of freedom on the breeze

Blown there from another Kingdom

And we start to fly

.

I do not believe that Icarus

Melted his wax wings

I think he mortgaged them.

20.2.06