What I’ve learned in the last 20 years

Last Tuesday when so many or you kindly stopped by to wish me a happy birthday, someone asked what I’d learned in the last 20 years.

In 1988, I turned 35. (Here I am squinting into the sun one windy day that year, on Eastbourne beach. Not a grey hair in sight!)

What was happening?

Out in the world, Reagan and Thatcher were wreaking havoc in the US and UK respectively, and in November, George Bush Sr was elected president over the Democratic challenger Dukakis. Thatcher was to last until 1990.

Apartheid was still in force in South Africa and Nelson Mandela was still in jail. He would not be released for another two years, and it would not be until 1994 that he would become President of his country.

The Iran-Iraq war ended in August 1988, having raged for eight years and cost a million lives. In another two years to the month, in August 1990, George Bush Sr and the UK would send coalition forces into the Gulf following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in what we now generally call the First Gulf War.

Jazz genius Chet Baker died in 1988; Tracy Chapman released her eponymous first album and sang about a revolution; Eurythmics, UB40 and Chrissie Hynde, Dire Straits, Sting and many others sang at the Free Mandela Concert at Wembley, three years after Live Aid.

In my personal life, my mother was still alive, my lovely nephew was not yet born. I was living in a cute little house in a Hertfordshire village, having recently moved from a West London flat. I was working as an IT trainer and really enjoying it. (What in the world made me change to working in Human Resources, which bores me, I have yet to figure out.) I owned a little red Renault 5 car that had a tendency to overheat in heavy traffic.

I think it must have been around 1988 that I spent a life-changing retreat with the Poor Clares at Arundel. So I was beginning to find out how to become a Christian again after not having given much thought to any kind of spiritual life for years. It wouldn’t be until 1990 that I first visited Turvey Abbey, which came to mean so much to me.

I realise that none of this answers the question, but once I started thinking about it, it seemed important to remember the background. In fact that was the easy part. Figuring out what I’ve learned is much more difficult.

What I’ve learned

I’ve learned the Enneagram system of psycho-spiritual development. Knowing that I am a type Three, with its workaholic behaviour, preoccupations with status and success, and huge concern with image explained a lot. Getting to know this personality type of mine, and learn some compassion for it, has enabled me to leave some of that competitiveness and attention-seeking behaviour behind. I’ve come to understand that these compulsive characteristics are driven by shame – that just being me isn’t good enough. I’ve been able to explore the gifts that are as much a part of me as the faults. (Although re attention-seeking, I often reflect on this blogging lark and my motives in doing it…)

Partly as a by-product of my Enneagram studies, I’ve learned that it is perfectly legitimate to spend introspective, quiet time. Navel-gazing, I used to call it. In fact it’s become essential to my well-being.

I’ve learned that prayer is not just (or even) asking God for things, nor reciting a formula of words. At its best, it is living every moment prayerfully. And by that I mean living with joy, not some dried-up, doleful piety.

I’ve learned so much about the sacred practices of other faiths and their richness, including that not all pagans are whacky goth types (although without a doubt some are, but then some Christians are creationist fundamentalists). And in learning about other faiths I’ve come to the deep conviction that all beliefs are one belief at core, different expressions of the same truth.

I’ve learned that Christianity has just as rich a seam of mysticism flowing through it as anything you would find in the East, and that the earth does not open beneath me when I question factual elements of Christianity.

I’ve learned that compassion is not a soft emotion, it seems to me to be a combination of gift and active decision, and it can blow complacency out of the water.

I’ve learned that having more possessions does not make me happier, although there’s much more scope these days for my geeky love of gadgets.

I’ve learned that I am a creative person, with many expressions of creativity, and that this isn’t something to be embarrassed or tentative about. Nor do the outward results of my creativity need to be perfect to be valid.

I’ve learned I can make people laugh; I’ve learned the basics of XHTML and CSS, and that I love everything to do with computers; I’ve learned to love the semi-colon and the ellipsis; I’ve learned (quite recently) that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a really witty, well-made, well-written TV series, not just rubbish for teenagers! In fact I’m coming to think of myself as a female version of Rupert Giles – the tweedy English librarian with an interesting past…

Perhaps above all I’ve learned that I love learning. And I love being 55 even more than I loved being 35.