Ode to pessimism

Disappointment is one of those things that you never really know when to expect. Generally I pride myself on having quite low expectations of things, a very British quality having grown up watching Arsenal, the English football team and, of course, cricket.

(I wrote this sentence about two weeks ago. Much has happened since then so I kept rejigging parts of this diatribe. If my work is subjected to form criticism in 100 years, there will be scholars arguing for five authors and an editor in Peru. I digress. )

It's a sort of pessimism that actually turns out to lead to a positive mindset, because if before every significant event, interview, exam etc you expect failure, you work hard to overcome it and feel gratified when success comes its way.

 I don't know, maybe I see people and systems as being inherently flawed, so when scandals arise and famous faces turn out to be criminals its never a surprise, only a curiosity.

And of late, there have been many disappointments. Last week saw a disappointment in the rabbinic response towards one of the great religious leaders of Britain. A disappointment that, for some reason, people's horizons remain resolutely fixed and unwavering despite far more pressing issues in the wider world.

And for all my recent disdain for the left wing naive ideologically driven responses towards every terrorist attack, perhaps those individuals are reflecting a fundamental disappointment in their slow realisation that not all people think the same, and are not motivated by the same things. It reminds me of the book 'Heart of darkness' which I read for A level, and the bewilderment of an encounter with an unknown beyond any previous experience.

 Reality is cruel and uncompromising and weaving an ideology around it that explains and reduces everything to one key factor like power or economics is a nice and convenient way around it.

And yes, even if comrade Corbyn of the people's republic of insanity manages to get his way into power I'm sure I will stand resolute in my pessimiso-cryptico-optimism, having had little faith in the masses to act wisely.

And yet, this all has its limits as soon as it gets personal. And believe me, I have tried to limit the areas that I am personally affected by to the bare minimum.

I, for instance, became very comfortable with the image of myself as a Phd student. The coffee shops, reading and control of my own time. The nice feeling of smugness when disagreeing with Israeli academics who particularly wind me up. And the lack of public office which means that I can say what I want without any consequences.

 And the praise I had received in the past, making it seem that success was an inevitability. So along came the swagger, as if it was a birthright to achieve in this particular area. 

Also a certain smugness that I could actually do something I enjoyed rather than sitting in an office, stony faced in front of a computer.

But then, I was told that I wrote like a secondary school student. I had become so utterly complacent that I had forgotten the abcs of academic writing. Stupid blog with its platitudes.

Stoicism was an attitude I could adopt in all other areas of life but not this one. How do you fail something that defines you? And I resented everyone responsible. It was unfair. They had not applied standards equally etc. 

It took me about a month and a half to realise how much of a sore loser I had become, and how sensitivity to criticism had blinded me to the harsh reality that I had to do better and it would be hard work. Every other area, every other exam had not been 'natural' in success. It had taken hours of toil.

Afterwards you could look back and attribute it to some bland factors like being academic. But the only way that had happened was through painstaking work. As Dylan said once, 'there aint no success like failure, and failure is no success at all'. My naivete had replaced my usual pessimism and I woke up as a result.

In religious life, I suppose we often fall into the same trap. This is meant to have answers, meant to heal and console, at least until something comes along which requires healing and consoling. Meant to provide direction, well at least until you have cause to reject it. And then it doesn't.

Governments are the same. Things like security we take for granted until recently, moaning about everything else like its the biggest problem in the world until suddenly you are exposed by the most basic of fears, for our very lives. 

And suddenly those BBC articles about correct pronouns look a little embarrassing.

Which is when the individual comes roaring back into the picture. Pick yourself up, pick up the pieces and start again.

 I keep going on about religious life as being some sort of impetus to improve or personal aspiration, and whilst it can't be reduced to that alone I think at this stage it is the factor that needs dwelling on the most. 

And my rabbinical friends, when you straight jacket it under the guise of fear you just kill it man.

And what it actually does in situations which demand a response, or rather, whether you engage with it at all when making difficult decisions.

Because at one point the studying of laws and their details and recounting messages stopped having any impact because my mind was telling me to move on, enough was enough, it needed something new. So observance became more of a metronomic structure that has preserved me and the values I have absorbed over the years that I hold dear but no longer feel the need to focus on excessively. And this was not to demean their significance. 

 As I have become older, the law and order element of halakhah and value structures are things I increasingly admire and appreciate. In them I see the fruits of many societies that are created with the aim to do good for the sake of their children and broader society.

 But it was the trigger for the mind to wander to pastures new and with it came a realisation that I can no longer expect external sources to provide guidance from the air. You gotta make em work.

I suppose that life is full of disappointments and as human beings we need to be aware of that, resilient to that and proactive in dealing with that. Governments, rabbis or jobs aren't going to kiss it better. 

Thus ends my Tory manifesto. Let decency prevail.