The Wardman Wire

This was read recently at a funeral I attended, and it summed up the strength of character of the person we mourned:

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Who’s been reading this poem?

Hillary Clinton, though her resistance may possibly be at an end.

Den Dover MEP, though his colleague did quit, in what probably isn’t the last expenses rumpus.

Sadly Robert Mugabe, and heroically Morgan Tsvangirai

The bonus-laden Network Rail top brass, despite a record fine for over-running engineering works at new year, and an impending strike over, erm, pay.

Gordon Brown, which is fine by political commentators, as the ‘will he won’t he’ story will keep them in brandy and cigars for the forseeable future.

And Mr Henry Allingham, WW1 veteran and, at 112, Britains oldest man: “”The only thing I can say is all my life I have lived within my limitations, take life slowly, don’t get any stress or strains.”

Please Do Quit

Everybody loves a fighter? Well, no we don’t. We want Mugabe, and the Burmese junta, to give up. Sure we don’t want leaders who just go with the flow and make policy by opinion poll, but what about folk at the other extreme? Ignoring the odds and pressing on can be heroism, or it can be a personality disorder. We admire it when the goals are good, but there are few things more dangerous than a non-quitter who is no longer aware of the damage they’re doing to themselves, or to others.

Ploughing on is only a good thing if it serves a higher cause. That’s why there’s been so much debate over Clinton - her rhetoric claims that the higher cause is the American people, but everyone suspects that the higher cause is Hillary herself.

Compare and contrast George Sampson, winner of Britains Got Talent. Dropped at an early stage of the competition last year, he came back better, won, and is using the prize money to pay off his mothers mortgage. Whether a few months on the celebrity circuit will turn him into a bog-standard self-absorbed hedonist remains to be seen, I hope not. It would be a shame if he won the world but lost his soul.

Quitting Well and Quitting Badly

The last time New Zealand’s cricketers toured England, former England skipper Nasser Hussain hit a century, then quit. He realised that he could best serve the team he loved by making way for younger players.

Our kids are constantly measuring themselves against the Tigger chart on the wall to see if they’ve grown. Once we’re adults we stop doing this (scales excepted), but maybe we should carry on, but exchange the feet and inches for benchmarks of character and ethics and the good of others.

What both quitters and non-quitters need are friends, space, and vision. To live life well, we need a place to stand which gives us perspective on what we’re doing - and a sound perspective, based on things like integrity, generosity and love. That place can be people who tell it to us straight, space to reflect, or a higher purpose we can measure ourselves against. These things also give us strength - behind every hero is a burning sense of purpose, or a faithful supporter, and probably both.

Quitting and Consumerism

Social change has led to a much more ‘disposable’ attitude to work, relationships and possessions. We buy stuff, then when it stops working or gets outdated, we throw it away and buy something new. Henry Allinghams generation thought a job for life was normal, we would see it as constricting. Most people have already quit reading this post to move on to something else.

The danger with this is that we also dispose more readily of valuable things. We quit family ties because we think we’ve found something new and better, or just got bored. Consumerism doesn’t encourage us to work at things, to see them through. Would a 21st century William Wilberforce have stuck with his lifelong campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, or given up after a couple of years to become an MEP? A local housing estate, completed recently, had dreadful leaks during the recent storms. On inspection, the houses had been built very well up to the roofs, at which point the main workforce had been shipped off to another project, and subcontractors hired in to finish them off. The job wasn’t seen through.

Hardest of all is to quit what has control of us, whether its greed, power, status, control or internet porn. Wise living is about quitting the right things, and persevering with the right things. And now I’m going to quit writing this.