Posted on 20 Jan, 2010 -
5 lives and people to inspire you
* Why each of these 5 famous(ish) people have shown characteristics and actions to inspire us all
* Why some are to be thanked for what they have done for us personally
* And why I could have written thousands more stories of courage and strength of character for each and every one of us
Before I get angry emails back complaining that one or more of these people have been misogynists, fascists, toffs or worse, let me just put the caveat in now that these people have been chosen for certain qualities that they have not as role models for your grandchildren.
People, people, people - there’s a lot of us around. And I never cease to be amazed at how uniquely individual and amazing we all are.
While I’m sure most of our lives would make inspiring stories full of courage, achievements and strength of character, it was a lot easier for me to put today’s email together today using stories of famous people from history and people currently in the media.
I hope you will find something to inspire or at least interest you from these five little pieces of hero worship, biography and snippets…
1. Gandhi: continually risked imprisonment to improve the lives of others
One of my pet hates at the moment is for journalists making lazy sweeping statements that aren’t particularly true. One journalist in The Guardian, for example, recently excused the failure of politicians at Copenhagen by saying “There’s a limit to how far ahead of their people any leader can go.” OK, I guess there probably is a limit but people like Hitler, Stalin and Gandhi have certainly challenged that particular boundary.
So yes, my first choice for inspiring person of the week is Mahatama Gandhi. I was tempted to say Hitler because in the right hands you have to admit that his enthusiasm and leadership skills could come in useful in this country at the moment. But frankly I’m too chicken…
Gandhi, however, was definitely good so that’s not only a safer option but more pertinent to my purposes. He also managed to change the beliefs and lives of millions by gentle persuasion and example rather than force.
Both a spiritual and political leader of India during the Indian Independence Movement, he lead successful yet peaceful campaigns to end the poverty of peasants, expand women’s rights and bring people round to a belief in ethnic equality.
He also believed so fervently in his aim to free the country of the British monopolies over salt and textile production that were causing poverty throughout India that he risked the wrath of the British government to campaign against them. We imprisoned him for several years at a time in an attempt to keep hold of the money we were draining out of India.
The word ‘Mahatama’ actually means ‘Great Soul’ and is honoured in India as The Father of the Nation. He lived a very simple lifestyle in a self-sufficient residential community.
2. Survival through humour with a shoplifter in Budgens
A somewhat more humble hero who I happened upon in the newspapers recently is the “penniless” journalist, Roger Lewis from South Wales.
While I’m not sure where I stand on his stubborn determination to subject his family to penury rather than compromise on his career choices, it was his humourous take on his situation I was drawn to.
As they say, if you don’t laugh you’ll cry and so often in life it is this attitude more than anything that will get you through adversity.
Here are a couple of extracts from Roger Lewis’s Seasonal Suicide Notes to inspire you in concocting your own funny stories about your life:
“Olive’s wool shop is to close. When Anna bought a small piece of ribbon there last week for 38p, Olive said ‘You’ve doubled my takings.’ I said she should try making a living as a freelance journalist.”
“My children are sometimes a terrible disappointment. They’ve never even been fairly competent on the recorder. Spent much of the month in bed with depression - I hate the spring. A photograph of me in The Malvern Gazette makes me look like a shoplifter in Budgen’s - doughy, yellowish, porcine and fertive.”
3. Dragon’s Den millionaire who started with an ice cream van
I don’t watch a lot of telly but I do have a weakness for the Dragon’s Den if I catch it on. I was pleased, therefore, to find my third choice from among its highly entertaining millionaires.
Why a highly successful business man? A) Because I think they make very human stories. B) Because it shows what it takes to become wealthy and successful. C) Because if it weren’t for such business men we wouldn’t have things like sugar for our tea, homes for our elderly or clothes on our body. In fact, we wouldn’t have anything!
At the age of 30, a penniless barman lying on a beach, Duncan Bannatyne told himself it was time to start doing something with his life. Just 15 years later he had set up several successful businesses including a chain of nursery schools, a chain of gyms and a chain of nursing homes and had a personal fortune of more than £115 million.
He did not get there, of course, without a lot of hard work, some simple but smart thinking and a determination to make it big (the main ingredient, from what I can tell, of becoming very rich).
His first step on the ladder was when he bought an ice cream van for £450. He saved and invested every penny until he had a fleet of six vans making £70,000 a year.
His first big break came, however, when he read an article about the shortage of nursing homes. After a visit to some local homes where he was appalled by what he found, he sold his car, home and everything he had to foot the bill of building a new one. A soon as it was open it was valued at £650,000 and he was able to remortgage it to pay off all his debts. Within weeks, he was already building his second home.
The decision to create a chain of nursery schools came because he was fed up with driving 10 miles each day to take his daughter to one. The idea for the gyms came because there wasn’t a gym anywhere near his home.
4. All the writers, artists and musicians who have suffered penury, depression and self doubt to bring richness, quality and higher value to our lives
My reading material at the moment consists of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the new biography of Coco Chanel and a book about the photographer Brassai. Having recently finished The Shadow of the Wind which I found to be an amazing book and a real page turner, I found myself turning to things a little more heavy.
I have also found myself thinking how much I admire and give thanks to all the writers, musicians and artists who have suffered throughout their very often tortured lives to leave us with the amazingly rich body of culture and art that we can enjoy.
Of all the professions, writers are always at the top of the charts for suffering from depression along with many composers. Famous sufferers include Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Hand Christian Anderson. Artists, it would seem, are better known for suicide attempts…
The reason? As Ernest Hemingway said:
“That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is
what is known as The Artist’s Reward.”
Kafka himself hardly allowed anything he wrote to be published in his lifetime and left a letter to a friend at his death asking him to burn everything he had written. (Which he thankfully did not.)
5. Doctor of Political Philosophy Turns Motorcycle Mechanic
My final choice this week is a man called Matthew Crawford who I believe has a very important antidote message for a world in the West that sometimes feels it is becoming too immersed in the virtual, too distanced from the physical world and insufficiently connected with the inner workings of reality.
Having received a doctorate in political philosophy, Matthew took a highly-paid job as executive director of a Washington think tank. But he wasn’t happy. “I was always tired, and honestly could not see the rationale for my being paid at all?what tangible goods or useful services was I providing to anyone? This sense of uselessness was dispiriting.”
Matthew’s recent book, Shop Class as Soulcraft tells the story of how he quit his job, opened a motorcycle repair shop and has been loving his manual, ‘fixing’ work ever since.
‘Shop Class’ in America is roughly the equivalent to our woodwork and metalwork classes where schools also taught children how to carry out basic repairs at home. This story hit a button with me as I recently agonised over the fact that I need to buy a new toaster when a little bit of mechanical know-how and a screwdriver would probably have fixed the problem.
Apparently very few schools even teach such skills anymore, educators believing it isn’t right to teach kids skills which are considered too ‘blue collar’ and insufficiently aspirational… But as Matthew Crawford says, our society today places too great a value on white-collar work and not enough value on the trades - or just the joyful activity of getting out your toolkit and making something work again. He also wonders whether this trend doesn’t “issue from a peculiar sort of idealism, one that insistently steers young people toward the most ghostly kinds of work.”
Surprisingly, however, says Crawford, he often finds manual work more engaging intellectually. There is great satisfaction to be had from “tangible work that is straightforwardly useful”. “I also want to consider what is at stake when such experiences recede from our common life. How does this affect the prospects for full human flourishing? Does the use of tools answer to some permanent requirement of our nature?”
It is also very interesting to note that in 2006 the Wall Street Journal wondered whether “skilled [manual] labor is becoming one of the few sure paths to a good living.”
