Duck and Cover

Duck and Cover was one of the winning stories performed by the wonderful Lin Sagovsky at the 'Women and Girls' Liars League event on August 11th.

Read it or listen to it here or watch 👇

On Superstition: Magpies and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

In many parts of the world people are superstitious about the magpie as a bringer of ill-omen or a predictor of fortune. Yeats (1922) refers to superstitions including the magpie as follows: 

In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are adverse to sitting down to dine thirteen at a table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, of seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tale.

Growing up with traditional superstitions such as these, it can be hard to shake off the instinct that makes us avoid a ladder or throw spilt salt over a shoulder or avoid the room or house number 13. This is the same habit of thought which brings to mind the following rhyme when we see a magpie:

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for Gold
Seven for a secret
Never to be told

The Magpie Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Walking, to cool down after a run, I saw a magpie. I automatically looked around to try and find another, thinking  'One for sorrow, two for joy...' Nothing. I immediately berated my self for looking for the second magpie and then suddenly twisted my ankle and fell to the ground.

To the superstitious this would be proof of the 'One for sorrow' premonition.

To others this proves that if you are too busy looking for a magpie, to look where you are going, you are more likely to trip over an uneven pavement stone, twist your ankle and fall to the ground.

This is Merton's 'self-fulfilling prophecy' at work here (1948). As he put it, 'definitions of a situation (prophecies or predictions) become an integral part of the situation and thus affect subsequent development' (p.195).

'The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true' (Ibid).

So yes one magpie was unlucky for me - but only because I went looking for the second.

Merton, R. K. (1948) 'The Self Fulfilling Prophecy', The Antioch Review, Vol. 8 No. 2 (Summer, 1948), p. 193-210
Yeats, W. B. (1922) Modern English Essays, p.192-193

Lighting Fires

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

Attributed to WB Yeats & originating with Heraclitus around 500 BCE

I can't always choose what happens to me but I can choose how I experience it. Whether I see it in terms of motivation, inspiration, warning or confirmation, its all learning.

I set out to live my life this week lighting fires rather than filling pails. I went to a networking meeting in City Hall, worked with the Museum in Docklands on a local history project, got some news of the 'life threatening' variety relating to my daughter's health one day and went to her graduation the next. I learned that fire could be a metaphor for warmth, security and light. It could be the cosy feeling of safety or the flicker of inspiration or the kindling of a passion. It could also burn. All could motivate.

Light

The meeting in City Hall was surprisingly enlightening and inspirational. It sparked ideas. It prompted me to think about writing and learning from it and learning and writing about it. A see-saw Kolb's Cycle. We do something, think about it, make conclusions and surmise, try something and start all over somewhere in the cycle – back and forth and round and round.

Warmth

On the history project, during a tour of St Annes (one of the five Hawksmoors in London), I noticed all the publicity materials and commented that our centre didn't have any. Milly, a 15 year old working on the project said 'You don't need it. We know what you do and we know how good you are.' This made me feel a warm glow. Maybe I was doing something right.

The Burn

Our campfire where we toasted marshmallows

The life threatening news relating to my daughter's health burned. It was a terrifying shock and although she lives with a somewhat debilitating condition already, most long term degeneration is trumped by the slightest invocation of the 'C' word. We hoped it was a warning shot across the bow. A fire that wouldn't take. That it was the hot stove or fireplace where we learned not to play with fire. An early diagnosis would mean early intervention, like a small fire could be more easily put out. But forest fires all start the same – small. I had to tell myself to see it as good news, its not as if the fire was out of control. It could still be a good thing. A warning can be good. That's what I told her.

Security & Passion

Then came graduation day. I had encouraged my daughter to go from the start. I had no idea if it would be a good experience or not but I knew that as much as she could regret going she could also regret not going and at least if she went she could have a basis for her opinion. We went and it was wonderful. Jenny was anxious and nervous, from the putting on of the gown to the walk on stage to receive her scroll but she felt like she had been acknowledged for her achievements by her peers and an institute which shared her passion for learning and it felt good. She had worked and paid her own way through her education with the Open University and had shared with us everything from the excitement of the opening of the box of course materials to the slowly incremental word counts to the too close for comfort deadlines. We got to also share the celebration.

Tony Benn's son was there to receive an honorary doctorate posthumously on behalf of his father. He talked about his fathers activism and love of learning. He talked about when discussions abounded regarding raising the age of compulsory education to 18 and how his father had disagreed. Tony Benn said that the age of compulsory education should not be raised to 18 but to 95! He advocated lifelong learning. He had not been challenged on this assertion, apart from one man who told him that 95 didn't work because he was 96!

'Its not every day you get your dream job', a mum of a young man I have worked with, commented this week. 'Thank you', she said, he couldn't have done it without youse.'

None of us can do it without each other. That's what I learned this week. We motivate and inspire each other. We are each others fires.

Why This Blog?

An outdoor adventure weekend full of kids facing their fears and trying new things and it took a few grown ups, who should know better, to knock my confidence in the world.

'You got your passport?' a neighbour asked watching the street fill with men from the local mosque. I'm not even British, I reminded her, of course I had a passport, and she laughed.

It was the tip of the iceberg of my disappointment that week. It wasn't as if I didn't know people thought such things. I was more disappointed that they thought it was acceptable to voice such things to me and that I had to contend with them either by parrying or arguing the case for the opposition in each case, while still maintaining a sort of status-quo. The liberal dilemma.

I had been to City Hall on Monday and heard many inspirational stories, from the teens who had done their Duke of Edinburgh award expedition with their children to the practice of living by inspirational quotes to using film as a medium of enlightenment and change.

I thought about my work and how I could better inspire the people I work with. Maybe I could start a discussion group, I thought. We could choose an inspirational quote a week and live it and discuss how our weeks had gone living by the quote. I quickly dismissed this idea. Why do something I have no idea works and dictate terms from a position of uninformed power? Maybe I should do it myself first, I thought. I could do a year long experiment. A year of learning from people in the know, living my life according to their advice. Research gurus from Gandhi to Grover. Find out the meaning of life, not in the quantitative terms of money or power or even The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's 42 but in qualitative terms. How could I improve the quality of my life and those around me? How could I take the lessons of the learned and apply them to my life and be able to reflect on them and learn?

Although I thought of this improvement in terms of a quote a week, giving me 52 Quotes, that's where the numbers ended or even began. A year was, I thought a place to start. I hoped for it to continue further, for as long as there were people to inspire and as long as I could learn. That was the experiment. The question was whether it could take on a life of its own and be a upward and outward cycle of never ending learning?

First I had to check to see if I was replicating other work in this field so I did an online search and found a range of websites with the tag 52 Quotes. I found 52 Quotes to Live By, which at first seemed interesting but was not like my idea, it was more instruction on how to use the quote rather than discussion of the experience of living by the quote. Another site was about success and bumper stickers. Another was lessons in mindfulness not about actually doing what other people say to do, from their lessons learnt.

I decided what I wanted to do was not for success or inner peace or any amount of navel gazing but needed to be more reflection in action as well as on action. It had to be more praxis led (Paulo Friere and Kolb) for a better me and better world around me. I was happy to start with me.

I wanted to inspire and needed inspiration, and I knew my words weren't good enough for either. That's when I thought of my first quote. One I had used many times before. when talking about other people but this time I related it to myself and this week I decided, I would live it out. To inspire and be inspired. And to learn.

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

Attributed to WB Yeats & originating with Heraclitus around 500 BCE

Freire, P. (1995) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth, Penguin

Kolb D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall