The quote on the bench is from Kate Chopin's book, The Awakening and yes, I agree, as do masses of walkers and cyclists hugging seafronts all around the coast, because we're all up against it, aren't we, needing the rhythm of waves hitting stones or sand or rocks, needing wordlessness. I've resisted writing much about lockdown because it seems to be another trigger for argument, so many of us wound up by isolation, frustration, doubt. Are we separating into camps, ideologically, drawing our lines in the surf according to age, health, where we are in our lives, the homes we do or don't have, whether we live in a city or the country?
I heard this morning about a marriage and then about a landlady giving long-standing tenants a month's notice in the hope of cashing in on the UK government's suspension of stamp duty. I've had so many discussions about the future of work and reinventing how we do things. And this morning I heard that phrase in my mind which I've encountered often but it always felt rather easy: lifelong learning. I associated it with evening classes, or attempts to keep the retired busy. Its association, then, was that it wasn't essential, more of a deliverer of hobbies for the economically useless.
But as I teeter, months away from getting my state pension (at last, six years late), I get it. Forty years or more of work, and still going, I am learning at a pretty intense rate, along with other writers who've relied on face to face teaching, facilitation, being present in rooms with people who want to read and write.
We are experimenting with Zoom and other meeting platforms. But all the body language is somehow blurred in the tiny windows showing faces in living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens. So how do we find a way to communicate the brilliance of writing encapsulated in that quote on a bench between Brighton and Shoreham?
One group I'm working with has adapted to Zoom, with another we're adapting. I thought I knew what worked when I was asked to run some sessions early on, but I'm learning that there are so many other things at play too - people who aren't used to being alone at home, expectations, fear, frustration. The same things that drive us to listen to the sea, to be with friends.
Learning, or re-learning, what empathy means. Not to point fingers, attribute blame, force a pre-conceived package of ideas, but wander sometimes, listening. Pausing, sometimes, before answering.
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