Jonathan Dodd: Doing your own thing

Jonathan Dodd’s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed

Every now and then I make a misstep. I start writing one of these columns and I find myself careening in places where I should not let me go. In other words, I find myself writing the equivalent of a rant. And if I can allow myself to have learned anything through these words, it is that having a rant can be a satisfying thing, but it’s never a pleasure to witness.

I don’t mean to say that those words are lost. They’re just put away in the folder of columns that might be, until they render themselves less poisonous, and, to be brutally honest, better-expressed. I have quite a pile of these by now, representing many of the things that annoy me or make me speechless or blisteringly angry, or those things which I have neither the courage to change, nor the serenity to accept.

Finding a way of describing things to myself
I have no wish to hector you, gentle readers, whoever you are, and I certainly don’t expect to persuade anyone by anything but the gentlest of means. These columns are far more about finding a way of describing things to myself so they begin to make sense, and part of that process is translating my thoughts into words, then presenting them to others to read and maybe understand.

I have no doubt you would let me know if I wasn’t making much sense, because you find all those typos and mistakes that get through my sub-editing, and you engage me in discussion and gentle argument, mostly within yourselves, but occasionally you feel moved enough to comment, and I treasure that.

A real book, held in my own real hand
But I’m not fooling anyone, not even myself, that I’m conducting some sort of crusade to change an imperfect world. I’ve been in writers’ circles for many years, and the thing I understand most clearly is that writers write for themselves. We’re a secretive lot, scribbling away on our own, most often not showing our work to anyone or even admitting to it. But at the same time we crave an audience. I know. I’ve not handed out my novels to anyone remotely like a publisher in all this time, but my greatest joy would be to have one turned into a real book, held in my own real hand.

I know this clearly, and yet I’m no nearer to understanding fully why I spend all that time doing the thing, but then hide it once it’s finished. I often think of cavemen painting those lovely animals on their cave walls, which are lost and not rediscovered for thousands of years. But this metaphor doesn’t work, because they lived in those caves, and they could look at those pictures any time they wanted to.

You realise how little control you ever had
I’m also well aware of the minefield that can be entered when something is released into the public arena. You don’t just lose all control, you realise how little control you ever had over the whole thing anyway. And reputations are gained and lost, justly or unjustly, for the slightest of reasons. Our own King Richard the Third was cruelly repainted as a monster by the man who dethroned him, and it took centuries to re-examine his story.

In the same way, people with long and successful careers can be destroyed by a chance remark or action. Witness the jeweller Gerald Ratner, or more recently, David Hoare, the Chairman of Ofsted. Many politicians have incurred the public’s displeasure for transgressions that aren’t always major. And yet, the beloved president Kennedy, and no doubt many others, were able to carry on in their private lives with hardly a whisper of criticism.

Always starkly-lit and usually razor-thin
So sending your stuff out there can be a painful experience. Anyone in the artistic or business or sporting arenas knows this very well. The difference between apparent success or failure is always starkly-lit and usually razor-thin. And yet there’s an unending stream of eager volunteers, starry-eyed and ready to sacrifice everything for the chance of success and glory, and sometimes fame, and occasionally fortune.

I don’t know why we do it. I have known many who avoided anything risky, and they haven’t seemed to me to be more happy than those who tried. There’s a sadness about a life not fully lived, or skills not practised, or talents ignored. I sometimes think about how lucky we all are that Mozart was born into a family that understood the value of musical talent, and I wonder how many were born with the same gifts, but never had the opportunity to discover and use them.

We should really be relaxing and enjoying ourselves
There is a terrible unfairness to the whole thing, it strikes me. Here we are, trying to get through each day, preoccupied with food and protection for our families, having to curtail our desires and instincts in so many ways, spending so much time doing things that bore us to tears, and then these things come along that taunt us. Like riding horses, or ice-skating, or painting, or model train sets, or writing. Some of us find ourselves running charities or scout groups, or Am Dram, or we get involved in politics, or walking, or running, or cycling.

The thing is that all but a tiny minority of us do it for nothing, or for very little reward. Something keeps us going, digging the allotment, or sanding the sailboat, or reorganising our stamp collections, usually at night or over the weekend, when we’re not at work, when we think we should really be relaxing and enjoying ourselves. But the weird thing is that we carry on regardless.

We find our satisfaction and our sense of personal identity
This whole thing puzzled me for years, but I have come to the conclusion that we do it for ourselves. Of course there might be a worthy cause, or a work of art, or a group effort involved, but the real story is that we find our satisfaction and our sense of personal identity through those things for which we volunteer, often against pressure not to, because we need to do it. Mostly we never know why that is, and very often we have very little in real terms to show for it, but in some way it defines us. To ourselves, if not properly to others.

How can someone who plays football on Sundays understand the railway modeller, patiently creating miniature trees? Can the amateur ballroom dancer have any idea of the rewards of taking scouts away to camp? But we don’t need to do it to understand the core of it, of course. If we felt that baking cakes was our thing, we’d be doing that rather than the thing we actually do. What we can understand is the common impulse to do something that gives us pleasure and lets us spend our time in a way that works for us, instead of being defined or prescribed by other people.

You’ll still know nothing about me
We all suffer from those lazy instant knee-jerk labels. Middle-class, conservative, high-brow, middle-of-the-road, high-earning, zero-hour, Sun-reading, Arsenal-supporting, scooter-riding, unemployed, retired, grey-haired, teenaged, young-adult, blue-rinse, happy-clappy, sad, cool, etc., etc. Pore over everything in my CV, but you’ll still know nothing about me.

None of these labels tell anyone anything about us. Each of us is truly unique and different. We all know whether we’re happy or not, whether our lives are about struggle or comfort, and how we feel we’re doing in the great scheme of things. If there is such a thing.

The most important way we have to measure ourselves
We’re all striving to be something. It doesn’t matter if it’s large or small, but it’s terribly important to each of us that we try our best in whatever field we’ve chosen, or that has chosen us. It doesn’t matter whatever anyone else thinks, because our own opinion of ourselves is the most important way we have to measure ourselves. Be yourself, no matter what they say.

As for me, I try to write the best column I can every week, and I’m proud of it, despite any other thoughts or opinions I or anyone else may come out with.

If you have been, thank you for reading this.

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