'No Trade'
I would never trade my amazing friends, my zest for life or my loving family for all the money this world has to offer or for less grey hair, more attractiveness of face, a flatter stomach or the finest of healthy features. I would rather be thought as lovely from within than without; for an Adonis without a heart or soul is nothing much to look at during times when honest conversation, compassion or charity of thought and spirit are required. Women who initially are attracted by the Adonis looks of a man usually end up wanting nothing more than a cuddle from their loved one; a love from their cuddly partner.
My family and friends have always been there for me whenever I've needed them. They were there before the others arrived and shall still be there when the others have faded away into the distance. Family and friends have provided me with much needed advice throughout, a shoulder to cry on in times of need, practical sustenance during times of material want and an emotional support structure that I could always lean on and which has been more steadfast than the Tower of Pisa.
My family and friends have always been there for me whenever I've needed them. They were there before the others arrived and shall still be there when the others have faded away into the distance. Family and friends have provided me with much needed advice throughout, a shoulder to cry on in times of need, practical sustenance during times of material want and an emotional support structure that I could always lean on and which has been more steadfast than the Tower of Pisa.
I have always been blessed by having good neighbours that I would never have swapped. Some, I instantly liked from the first moment we met, and we became good friends. There were a few it took a while before I was able to know them in their true colours, but once they showed themselves, I quickly grew to like them. Then there were others; the ones where we got off to a bad start and where our first contact with the other bordered on the expression of hostility. Ironically, after time and understanding had brought us closer and closer, our friendship deepened and became lifelong.
Some from this group I would undoubtedly regard as my very best friends. Even the 'Irish' comrade among them that assured me he had the answer to cutting my 12-foot high hedge without need of paying out for a professional gardener. He said that he had just the machine for the job and would be round the next day to cut the hedge for me. This was my very first April Fool played on me by my friendly neighbour, who it turned out wasn't in fact Irish, but he knew that I was!
Some from this group I would undoubtedly regard as my very best friends. Even the 'Irish' comrade among them that assured me he had the answer to cutting my 12-foot high hedge without need of paying out for a professional gardener. He said that he had just the machine for the job and would be round the next day to cut the hedge for me. This was my very first April Fool played on me by my friendly neighbour, who it turned out wasn't in fact Irish, but he knew that I was!
I would never exchange my years of age with one so young that they had yet to find the fruits of first love. While falling in love for the very first time will most certainly land one on 'cloud nine', I'm afraid that time and events will not allow you to remain up there forever. It's only how you are both able to react to the weather changes to come that will determine if and how long you can remain in that blissful spot before 'the love bubble' bursts and sends you crashing back to earth! And that is assuming that you are alert enough to sense the dangers ahead and to see the storm clouds brewing overhead as the first gloss of your partner's protective coat starts to weather and flake and you begin to see your life-long commitment stood before you; looking less like Adonis and a bit more like a budding Andy Capp.
Beware therefore, the pathway of the clouds and the sensibilities of the sky above. Watch out for a change in the relationship that always emerges after the honeymoon period has safely expired, for it often then that it is found that the foundation of your love is but as shallow as the skin-deep looks in your mate that first attracted you. When attraction is predominantly based on predominantly good looks, where does the relationship go when the handsomeness begins to fade with the wear and tear of advancing years? That is the moment when 'cloud nine' is most likely to burst and send you crashing to the hard ground of life instead of allowing you both to continue to float above cloud cuckoo land.
So watch out if your sunny sky starts to darken, and especially if things suddenly take a turn for the worse. The sexy looking young woman that you married with those fabulous looks can turn frosty and frumpy overnight. If all around you collapses in the relationship breakdown, it can leave you feeling as though you've been emotionally battered by a giant-sized marital tsunami.
So watch out if your sunny sky starts to darken, and especially if things suddenly take a turn for the worse. The sexy looking young woman that you married with those fabulous looks can turn frosty and frumpy overnight. If all around you collapses in the relationship breakdown, it can leave you feeling as though you've been emotionally battered by a giant-sized marital tsunami.
This is the point where you will either jump from your relationship or hang on in there. It is then that you will both be truly tested and will find out if you are strong enough to sustain it and battle on throughout until the weather changes for the better. If you are able to re-invest your love for each other constantly throughout and be prepared to adapt to each other's needs, wants and foibles, then you will emerge from the storm at the rainbow's end, stronger in spirit, more enriched in character and with a deeper love for each other that no future condition could ever bring down low. It will be then that you will rediscover what it was about each other that initially attracted you as you shared your first kiss in Paris; only then that you feel youthful in your zest for life once more that it will provide you with an inexorable desire to put two fingers up at the vicissitudes of married life. You may even develop the urge to jump in the puddles that the storm left in its wake. That is why I would never exchange my old love for one so new.
I would never exchange those places that have meant so much to me and their own particular image of eternal beauty in my mind's eye. My years in Blackpool with my first two children, James and Adam. The very first time they looked up at Blackpool Tower, their eyes held more awe than any vision was ever produced in the traveller to France seeing the Eiffel Tower stand majestically in the Parisian skyline.
I would never exchange an image of Portlaw Square, County Waterford in the cold months of winter for the vision of The Red Square in Moscow, lit up with all its fireworks. No square in any land could ever possibly matter more to me nor look more splendid than the one I played in as a 3-year-old boy in the country of my birth.
I would never swap the play house that I made with my own hands for my children William and Rebecca for the title and ownership of Blenheim Castle. It took me over three months of my spare time to construct this mini house, but the amount of sheer pleasure that William and Rebecca got from using it was simply immeasurable and its value in their lives was incalculable!
I would never change the beautiful painting that I commissioned of a favourite place in Hopton Woods, Mirfield, by the Dewsbury artist Bruce Mulcahy for an image of The Black Forrest at its most magical time of the year. When my daughter, Rebecca was aged between six and ten years we walked in Hopton Woods often. After we'd been there a couple of times, she pointed out her favourite spot in the woods. I knew that even woods change with the passing of years and so I wanted to freeze that favourite image in time for my daughter's future. So it pleased me to have her memory of this place of beauty and peace we shared immortalised for a time when I am no longer with her by getting the artist to paint it in situ.
I would never have believed that I would derive as much pleasure from seeing the image of a kestral on Haworth Moor as I could possible get from the viewing of a magnificent lion in the Savannah Grasses. That is what happens when one lives in a beautiful country village of historic importance. Its landscape and its creatures take on much greater meaning in one's life when one's heart is firmly rooted there. It is as though everything around that is familiar and loved assumes an extra dimension of beauty that is never afforded to any other place outside the perameters of one's heart.
Of all the beautiful images that one might encounter in the world, at the top of most people's list would be the Mona Lisa. It used to be at the top of my list also until I met and fell in love with my Sheila; another good reason why I love Haworth and will never leave it. I would not swap Sheila's beautiful face in her late 20's for the masterpiece of Da Vinci that now lives in the Louvre.
I would never exchange my time of birth, the class and culture that I was born into and the national birthright and religion that my parents gave me. Each and all of these features that have touched my life have moulded me into the person I've become and have shaped my values and thoughts. They have made me 'me' and I'm content to be the me that I've become. And while I accept that such differences in each of us can be seized upon by others, misrepresented and grossly distorted, it is this cultural and class diversity of mankind that adds to the rich tapestry of society's cloth and which allows us to measure one range of values against another and to compare, contrast and choose the ones we want to adopt.
I would never exchange my time of birth, the class and culture that I was born into and the national birthright and religion that my parents gave me. Each and all of these features that have touched my life have moulded me into the person I've become and have shaped my values and thoughts. They have made me 'me' and I'm content to be the me that I've become. And while I accept that such differences in each of us can be seized upon by others, misrepresented and grossly distorted, it is this cultural and class diversity of mankind that adds to the rich tapestry of society's cloth and which allows us to measure one range of values against another and to compare, contrast and choose the ones we want to adopt.
Each person is born to their own generation which uniquely shapes their particular values and moulds the character that shadows them throughout their lives. Each person finds comfortable footing in their own class. This enables their station in life to remain congruent to their circumstances and maps out a palatable path for their future.
When one seeks to marry two aspects of human function that were never designed to be compatible and function as one, the enjoined product will fracture and break at the first sign of stress. That is why each man, woman and child naturally grows to love their class and their own kind above all others. That is why any experience or culture that is strange to one, is initially viewed markedly different to both sides of the social equation and is sometimes seen with suspicion at first sighting. Whereas one side will simply perceive their cautious action as being wise, the other can feel as though they are being racially discriminated against. Occasionally the two opposing camps who have been divided for many years, decide that 'enough is enough' and that the time has come to pull down the dividing wall and start to integrate and live together.
When one seeks to marry two aspects of human function that were never designed to be compatible and function as one, the enjoined product will fracture and break at the first sign of stress. That is why each man, woman and child naturally grows to love their class and their own kind above all others. That is why any experience or culture that is strange to one, is initially viewed markedly different to both sides of the social equation and is sometimes seen with suspicion at first sighting. Whereas one side will simply perceive their cautious action as being wise, the other can feel as though they are being racially discriminated against. Occasionally the two opposing camps who have been divided for many years, decide that 'enough is enough' and that the time has come to pull down the dividing wall and start to integrate and live together.
Although slavery has been abolished for over a century and a half now, the shadows of the shackles can still be seen upon the faces of a crucified minority class. Despite the passing of time, the Africans and Jamaicans still bear the scars of British and European colonialism and the cultural healing is still very much in evidence. The slow-forced march towards a life of economic servitude still casts a stigmatic shadow over the West as the shanti towns of both east and west still visibly demonstrate.
Wealth and poverty still sleep side-by-side in the same bed, but the poorest still never manage to get enough of the blanket to feel protected! This is pure and undiluted racism that wants eradicating from the face of the earth for the planet to be once more purified. It is as blatantly offensive to the more sensitive of us as seeing a seaside shop window crammed full with hundreds of golliwogs for sale; not too different to how the slavers used to cram hundreds of slaves into the stinking hulls of slave-trading vessels. The sheer pretence that such opulence and poverty sitting side-by-side in the 21st century can continue to be maintained, along with cultural peace between nations is as fragile as a bubble floating through a desert of thorn bushes and giant cacti. I fear that there is still a mighty slave revolt that is yet to come as we westerners do not appear to have learnt many lessons since William Wilberforce last stirred and shamed the English conscience into slave trade abolition.
Wealth and poverty still sleep side-by-side in the same bed, but the poorest still never manage to get enough of the blanket to feel protected! This is pure and undiluted racism that wants eradicating from the face of the earth for the planet to be once more purified. It is as blatantly offensive to the more sensitive of us as seeing a seaside shop window crammed full with hundreds of golliwogs for sale; not too different to how the slavers used to cram hundreds of slaves into the stinking hulls of slave-trading vessels. The sheer pretence that such opulence and poverty sitting side-by-side in the 21st century can continue to be maintained, along with cultural peace between nations is as fragile as a bubble floating through a desert of thorn bushes and giant cacti. I fear that there is still a mighty slave revolt that is yet to come as we westerners do not appear to have learnt many lessons since William Wilberforce last stirred and shamed the English conscience into slave trade abolition.
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I would never exchange the simple fact that at the age of eleven years, it was a black, South African surgeon working in the British National Health Service who saved my life on the operating table amidst very little hope of my survival. The year was 1954 and England was a place where all manner of dark skinned people were openly discriminated against without fear of any legal reprisal. Because however, my first close encounter with a non white person lead to his skilled black hands saving my life, I grew up befriending all religions, cultures and skin colour thereafter.
During my twelfth year of life, I decide to abandon all my white friends who would not accept my friends of different colour on an equal footing. The strange thing was, that I am pleased that it was so, because this helped me to see the injustices of society more clearly. Before I was seventeen years of age, I was well acquainted with the history of the slave trade that had plagued the planet over most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, this human tragedy can better be told in pictures than any words of mine could ever depict. I soon grew to understand that when we make the stranger among any less deserving of our respect and humane consideration than our own parent, sibling, child or spouse, we lessen ourselves!
I would never exchange the advances of my heart for those of my head; for though I have a good head on my shoulders, I know that it is the heart which opens the gateway to our compassion and is capable of lifting one to the height of ecstasy in matters of love. The heart will go where reason dare not venture or prior experience dictate. In the final analysis, however, where bodily conflict exist and there is no clear cut answer or course to take, it will invariably be the heart that wins out. The head will allow the action that is ultimately taken to be determined by the heart, but rarely vice versa.
In all matters of love, I would never place the head above the heart because the heart will never attempt to balance the scales of love between the temperature of human temperament. It will not seek to balance warmth against cold or try to weigh facts against feelings. It will never seek to establish the merit between cold facts and warm emotions because it knows that the flutter of an eyelid, the skip of a heart beat or the most fleeting of fanciful flights has the capacity to make one wholly ignore any warning of the head.
Sure, there have been times in my life and the life of others when to love in haste has been to repent at leisure; when to have used a bit more of the head in the equation would have led one not to emotionally invest so heavily and to have probably prevented heartbreak. Over the years my heart has been bruised often when I have ignored the voices inside my head and once or twice, broken. There are so many experiences that are capable of breaking a heart. How can your heart not break when you are not the first choice of your heart’s desire, or when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers or even when someone’s beloved pet gets hit by a car?
Sure, there have been times in my life and the life of others when to love in haste has been to repent at leisure; when to have used a bit more of the head in the equation would have led one not to emotionally invest so heavily and to have probably prevented heartbreak. Over the years my heart has been bruised often when I have ignored the voices inside my head and once or twice, broken. There are so many experiences that are capable of breaking a heart. How can your heart not break when you are not the first choice of your heart’s desire, or when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers or even when someone’s beloved pet gets hit by a car?
The cruel hard facts of life dictate that hearts are made to be loved and to be sometimes broken. But broken hearts are what gives us strength, understanding, empathy and compassion. A heart that has never been broken is pristine and sterile. It will never know the joy that can only come with being imperfect, by having tasted imperfection of the bloodstream. To ensure its healthy growth and continued existence, a heart can only beat true when the person in whose body it resides is true to themselves. In love, the lips never act the winning part without the sweet concurrence of the heart. Go on! If you never dare ask her you will never know how she might answer!
None of these things about me or my life's circumstances would I exchange, for they are all that I am. I see the love you feel for me as clearly today as when I first felt its presence. It is your constancy that keeps me constant in my love for you, measured in my thought, mindful in my consideration, proportionate in my passion and true to myself, family, friend, neighbour and God. No swap!
Copyright William Forde May, 2012.
Copyright William Forde May, 2012.
