Put it behind you

How often have you heard a politician or some other public figure - or even a family member or friend - refer to some traumatic event in your past and say "You've got to just put it behind you"?

Do they realise how deep a trauma can be and just how hard it can be to "put it behind you"? Yes, maybe you can bury a minor personal upset, but a truly devastating emotional injury is a different matter.

A serious trauma can embed itself in your psyche so deeply that it lingers for years, set off by one chance trigger after another. You can't simply tell it to go away. You can't simply shove it in your mental attic, shut the door and forget about it.

So those people who tell you to put it behind you are being both offensive and ignorant. Offensive because they imply it's something quite superficial and easily disposed of, and ignorant because they don't understand the reality of living with profound emotional anguish.

My mum's brother was flying a Spitfire in World War Two when he went missing and was never heard of again. I think my mum was still grieving her loss when she died at 96.

Northern Irish people are told to "put the Troubles behind you". Survivors of the Grenfell Tower inferno are told to "put it behind you". Ex-prisoners are told to "put it behind you". What if they can't?

But it's a convenient attitude for people who don't want to deal with the intransigence of someone's mental suffering and just want it to be gone. Do they think you can wave some magic wand and poof, it's all done and dusted?

Out it pops

Because such things weren't talked about much when I was young, I was actually middle-aged before I realised that pregnancy was quite a complicated and perilous business.

For a long time I thought it was all very simple - you got pregnant and then nine months later out popped the baby. What was all the fuss about? Why were mothers always congratulated for doing something so routine?

It gradually dawned on me that pregnancy was in fact quite a trial. Every stage can be problematic. You can fail to conceive, fail to remain pregnant, fail to have a healthy diet or a healthy lifestyle. The baby can be premature, or defective, or harmed by medical mistakes, or suffer a cot death.

So if you manage to overcome all those hazards, congratulations are very much in order. Hardly a case of "out pops the baby". More a case of surviving a tough obstacle course against all the odds.

So I welcome the increasing trend to be more candid about pregnancy and all its difficulties. It means I'm much more aware of the ordeal women may be privately going through, however straightforward it may all seem from the outside.

I'm amazed that after all the problems of pregnancy, women don't always say "that was dreadful - never again" but are often willing to go through it several times to satisfy their burning desire for children. I can only admire their unflagging determination.

I'm very glad pregnancy is something that only happens to other people.

Rush to judgment

I'm a lot less judgmental as I get older (or I like to think so at any rate). I was horribly judgmental when I was young, only too ready to condemn other people's behaviour and tell them where they were going wrong. Everything seemed so simple, so cut-and-dried, I never doubted those instant judgments I flung at everybody.

Why were people depressed? There was no need to be, they just lacked a more positive attitude. Why were people so hard-up? Surely they could manage their finances a bit better and be nicely solvent? Why were people addicted to fags or alcohol? Couldn't they just control their cravings instead of giving in to them?

Nowadays of course remembering such sweeping opinions makes me cringe with embarrassment at my bottomless ignorance. My total unawareness of how other people think and feel and cope with life was breathtaking. Clearly I'd spent too much time with my parents' favourite reading matter, the Daily Mail.

Luckily decades of exposure to the realities of people's behaviour have demolished all those glib pronouncements and made me much more reluctant to pass comment on someone else's situation.

I can finally recognise the infinite complexities of other people's personalities, the tangled morass of needs, obligations and commitments their daily existence confronts them with, and all the myriad twists and turns of their life so far, and I realise I have barely a clue why they're the way they are or why they do what they do.

Now I just want to listen to people, to hear their own explanations of why they went downhill, why their lives went wrong, why they're struggling to cope. No sweeping judgments, no self-righteous homilies, just a sympathetic ear and the desire to understand the roots of their predicament.

You never know, I might even learn something.

Expert bashing

There's quite a fashion in some quarters to deride "experts" and make out that they don't really know any more than you or me. They're dismissed as "so-called experts", "self-appointed experts" and so on.

This was one factor that led to a majority voting for Brexit. We were constantly advised to ignore the experts who foresaw disastrous consequences if we left the EU. We were told the experts were talking nonsense and were just hysterical "prophets of doom".

The expert-bashers will cite doctors who take two years to diagnose a serious illness, or diagnose a serious illness that turns out to be non-existent. Or they cite dieticians who say a certain food is unhealthy, and six months later it's fine, eat as much as you want. "You don't know who to believe" say Joe and Joanna Public.

The trouble is that people expect experts to be 100 per cent certain about something. They should have a clear-cut answer, an infallible explanation. Experts aren't meant to change their mind or get it wrong, that shows they're not really experts.

But of course experts change their mind all the time. It's precisely because they're experts and constantly reviewing new information and new findings that they change their minds accordingly. That's not ignorance, it's keeping up-to-date.

I'd like to know how these expert-bashers would get on if all the experts disappeared. If there was no neurosurgeon to remove their brain tumour, no mechanic to repair their car, no chemists to formulate shampoo and detergent, no builder to fix the leaking roof. We'd be living in pretty spartan and backward conditions.

Sure, there are some bogus "experts" who really are ignorant or are deliberately scamming the public (miracle cures and natural remedies come to mind), but that doesn't mean every expert is bogus. That's an absurd conclusion.

But don't take my word for it. Ask an expert.

Cannot connect

"Men fail us, Sally thinks, because they mostly won't or can't communi-cate. It's their greatest failing as a sex. Of course Pete would help anyone who asked, but taking an interest in people's lives, being sympathetic to their problems, talking things over, putting people in touch or doing a good turn, and above all really saying what they feel - this is what she craves.

"Pete won't talk to anyone he doesn't already know, and on the rare occasions when he does have a chat, he will come away without having discovered a single interesting thing about them, such as the state of their health, the number and ages of their children, whether their business is going well or badly this year, and what they think about Strictly and basically how they're feeling about life in general. Sally is forever astonished and exasperated by this.

"Among men it's as if incuriosity is a badge of honour, with the result that they all going stumbling blindly around in a fog of unknowing, and proud of it too. How did men discover anything ever when they won't ask?" - from Amanda Craig, The Lie of the Land

So very true. Why are so many men so bad at communicating? I've tried many times to befriend a man, only to find that he's okay talking about impersonal subjects such as cars or sport or politics or beer, but as soon as I try to get to know him properly, to get under his skin, a barrier goes up and I can't get any further.

It's a kind of fear of being personal, as if revealing their inner selves will result in some terrible calamity or humiliation or degradation. They're afraid they'll be laughed at or despised or crushed. Astonishing and exasperating indeed.

Bottle opening

It's still a hot topic - who is more knowledgeable, youngsters or oldies? There are young people who regard older people as ignorant and behind the times, and oldies who regard the young as clueless and wet behind the ears.

Personally I believe it's a mixture. Both oldies and youngsters are clued-up on some things and baffled by others. No age group has a monopoly on knowledge. Just because you've lived for 60 or 70 years doesn't mean you've acquired more knowledge than a teenager. You may just have accumulated more wrong ideas and pointless skills.

A recent survey reveals 40 things oldies are more likely to know than youngsters. Like how to sew on a button, multiply without a calculator, wire a plug, spell correctly, play chess, iron a shirt, polish shoes, name different birds, make marmalade or give first aid. I'm pleased to say I can do most of them, so how clever am I?

But youngsters could no doubt name 40 things they know that oldies probably don't know - especially things involving technology or passing exams or the damage we're doing to the planet or academic bullshit. And of course they'll ask why anyone needs to know how to sew on a button or make marmalade.

I certainly don't feel I'm more wised-up than the young. For all the things I'm familiar with, there are dozens of other things I know nothing about. Furthermore I'm now much more conscious of my enormous ignorance than when I was young. Back then I was confident I understood all the world's problems and how to solve them. The tangled complexities of life totally escaped me.

Still, some knowledge is important, some isn't. As long as I have the essential skills like opening a wine bottle, unwrapping a chocolate bar, swearing at politicians and dodging Bible bashers, everything's just fine and dandy.

Pot shots

One of life's little mysteries is the way people condemn things out of hand. Things they don't understand and don't want to understand.

How can you decide that something is sinful or immoral or damaging purely on the basis of some knee-jerk reaction, some blind instinct totally detached from the facts?

People who slam a play without seeing it, or a book without reading it. People who condemn immigrants or refugees with no comprehension of the circumstances they find themselves in. People who sneer at alternative remedies or veganism or psychotherapy without knowing the first thing about them. People who knock teachers when they haven't set foot in a school in 40 years.

On the basis of a few tabloid headlines, or neighbourhood gossip, or a dinner-party anecdote, they casually let rip at anyone or anything they fancy, oblivious to the distress and alarm they might be causing to those on the receiving end. It never occurs to them that they might be totally misinformed, prejudiced, wrong-headed.

Personally I try not to condemn anything I know very well I'm ignorant about. If I'm not sure of the facts, I prefer to keep my mouth shut until such time as I am. I'm not going to pontificate simply to impress an audience.

If I don't understand something, I'll confess to being puzzled, or being uncertain, or being undecided, rather than feign knowledge I don't have. I'll try to find out a bit more about the subject and road-test whatever half-baked preconceptions and stereotypes are floating round my head.

But I think a lot of people actually feel embarrassed or uncomfortable at the idea that they're ignorant about something. Instead of admitting their ignorance, they parrot the latest fashionable opinion and hope nobody examines it too closely. All I can say is, I'd rather stay silent than talk out of my arse.

Bring it on

There's no such thing as Too Much Information. To my mind, the more information the better. I can never get too much of it. Information is always preferable to ignorance.

The more information I have, the more I know about the world, about other people's lives, about my own mind and emotions, about everything. The less I'm floundering about in a fog of confusion, speculation and misunderstandings.

I don't care if the information is outrageous, or obscene, or repulsive, or peculiar. I don't care if it upsets me, or embarrasses me, or alarms me. I can deal with my emotional reactions and I'm not going to push something away just because it temporarily unsettles me.

I'm an intensely curious person. I want to know. I need to know. I don't like being fobbed off with vague explanations and coy silences. What is so devastating, so shocking, that I mustn't know about it, I mustn't be exposed to such horror? There's not much in this world that's truly shocking, especially at the ripe old age of 66. Whatever you think would shake me to the core, probably would just leave me a bit puzzled.

Of course some people conceal things as being "Too Much Information" when what they really mean is that they're nervous of other people's reactions. They're afraid of being laughed at, or criticised, or simply facing a stunned silence. Which is understandable. I withhold certain facts about myself for just that reason.

But dismissing awkward topics as Too Much Information is absurdly squeamish. It's precisely those awkward or controversial remarks that give me precious insights into human nature and other people's complexities. Without them, my understanding of the world would be much more limited.

So tell me everything, I say. I don't care if it knocks me for six. I don't care how awful it is. To my mind, Too Much is always better than Too Little.

Misunderstanding

People sometimes suggest (because I like my own company I guess) that I hate other people.

That's very cheeky. And totally untrue.

Firstly, I don't hate anybody. Secondly, my attitude to other people depends entirely on the person. If they're intelligent and interesting and considerate to others, I warm to them. If they're dumb and boring and selfish, I give them a wide berth - but I don't hate them, I just wonder what made them like that.

I don't go out of my way to meet other people, I tend to keep to myself, but that's not because I hate people. It's because the chances of their being dumb, boring and selfish are alarmingly high.

And no, that doesn't mean I'm an elitist snob, it just means I don't want to spend my precious time humouring someone who's intent on airing their ignorant views about immigrants, homosexuals, lefties and welfare claimants. Or how long they had to wait for the bus, or the supermarket checkout, or the plumber.

Far from hating people, I'm hugely compassionate towards them. I want to understand other people's personal circumstances, I want to know why they're the way they are, I want to grasp the often traumatic and daunting situations they've been through that have influenced their personalities and their outlook on life.

We've all faced overwhelming and terrifying events at one time or another, and I can't hate people who've done their level best to overcome those obstacles and keep their lives on track. I can't hate people who're simply frail, vulnerable human beings trying to cope with the messy unpredictability of their daily existence.

I don't even hate rapists or murderers. They shock and sicken and bewilder me, but I don't hate them. I just want to know why on earth they did what they did, why they lacked the normal scruples and inhibitions that stop others doing the same. And I want them to be treated or rehabilitated rather than punished or ostracised.

I've seen enough vicious hatred in my life to know that hate achieves nothing except yet more hatred. I'm not that way inclined and never will be.

Secret knowledge

I can't for the life of me remember how I found out about sex. I mean, how you did it. What it involved. I picked it up somewhere obviously, but the actual source is lost in the fog of childhood memory.

It certainly wasn't from my parents. In those days, most parents were acutely embarrassed about the subject in front of their children. My parents would only refer to it in the most roundabout way, through double entendres and cryptic euphemisms.

In the 22 years I lived with them I never saw any evidence of their sex life. They kept it very carefully hidden, strictly confined to the bedroom and never shared with us kids. We knew "something" was going on, but what exactly that something was, we could only guess.

I didn't learn anything from my teachers either. At that time sex education was unheard of, and decent schools would never get involved with "that sort of thing". Maths and grammar naturally, but sex? Not at all appropriate for a school curriculum. And of course most teachers were as embarrassed about it as the parents.

Nor did I glean anything from other boys. If they were up to anything sexual, they didn't mention it to me. It was a guilty secret they kept to themselves. Even in the sweaty intimacy of changing rooms and dormitories, the subject never cropped up. Or was my sheltered and prudish mind simply blocking out whatever I heard?

Somewhere along the line I put two and two together and worked out what this sex thing was all about. But the when and the who and the how is lost to memory. No wonder my first sexual experiences entailed a great deal of fumbling and panic and semi-ignorance. I'd just about discovered the basics but there was an awful lot I still had to learn.

What a great advance it is that today's kids are brought up in a more enlightened atmosphere and can learn more easily and naturally about this very basic aspect of life without all the squeamish secrecy and sheepishness of an earlier age.

No room for doubt

It alarms me that people are so ready to make instant judgments on people in court cases when all they know about the case is whatever sensational bits and pieces the media choose to report.

For months every ill-informed Tom, Daphne and Hermione have been holding forth on the innocence or guilt of Amanda Knox, the American woman accused of murdering her roommate.

Either she's totally innocent, a crucified victim of the corrupt Italian legal system, or she's thoroughly guilty, an evil witch who's trying to wriggle out of well-deserved incarceration.

It doesn't matter if your grasp of the facts is woefully small. It doesn't matter if you've never met her and have no personal knowledge of what happened on that fateful day.

However ignorant you are, you're entitled to your knee-jerk reaction and your scornful dismissal of anyone who, heaven forbid, might keep an open mind on the subject.

Personally, I have no opinion on Amanda Knox's innocence or guilt. How could I possibly know the truth? Even the lawyers and the judges can't decide. Three years ago she was convicted, now she's been acquitted, but the case will trundle on to the Supreme Court for yet another decision.

But such uncertainty doesn't impress those whose minds are firmly made up on the basis of some mysterious personal insight, some sort of sixth sense that tells them what others aren't privileged to know. I just hope they never end up in the same position as Amanda, persecuted day in and day out by such self-righteous know-it-alls.

Pic: Amanda Knox