Being single

Finally, I thought, some intelligent debate about the positive aspects of being single.
A documentary was on TV tonight.
Sadly, No.
It was a question about why some single young people hadn't found mates.

I must admit, had I been still married, I might also probably be buying into the warped view of singleness as being a somehow deficient way of living. My marriage came to an end. To use the conventional vocabulary, my marriage had 'failed'. Our RELATE counsellor described our marriage although having ended was, nevertheless, a 'success'. Look at what we got from it! We found each other. We were a happy couple for a time. We produced two wonderful sons who have grown into amazingly fine young men who we're both very proud of.

A new chapter in both of our lives began. For me, it was a flash-point where I was amazingly fortunate to be able to buy a one bedroom flat on a 15 year mortgage. I was nearing my 50th year. November 1st 1999 was the day I left work for the day and went to the estate agent's to pick up the keys for my very own flat.

A female friend of mine who lives in the USA articulated an almost evangelical zeal for her singleness, which inspired me. However, I accepted that singleness does take women differently. Women often have an emotional strength of character that seems to equip them well for a single life. Men, studies have shown, don't seem to fare so well. Although I did play back a voice-mail from Dateline which seems to contradict the strong women ethos. This lady wanted a man to 'complete' her.
I declined on the grounds that only you can make you complete.

Early days and happy indeed at having my own flat, but I prepared myself for the possibility that my happiness may not last. Perhaps it would be a 6 month thing and I would be climbing the walls?
No, 6 months came and went. I still came home from work, happy that I actually had my own flat.
A year, then? No. Ah! perhaps it's an anniversary thing, like birthdays and Christmas?
No, not really. 5 years and the 10, still very happy being here in my bijou flat.

My ex- and I had parted very amicably. There's often an 'awkward' phase. It's not knowing quite where the new boundaries are, I guess. We morphed into a different kind of 'family' again, but this time with different addresses. If I was ill, my ex- would go shopping for medicines, food. She would make sure I was OK. My Mum adores her and is pleased to have gained a new daughter.

I did briefly deviate from my singleness. I moved away, discovered I was, in fact, one of those ghastly blokes that couldn't commit and then moved back into my flat.
10 years have passed since then and I won't be moving again anytime soon.

When you tell some people you're single, some people look crestfallen, just like when you've told them someone you love has died. 'Oh you poor thing!' Next, I try to guide them from their depression and assure them I am OK, more than OK. I have to be careful with the emphasis otherwise I find I've convinced them I'm putting a brave face on things. Then when I have managed that, they believe I'm gay. Of course, trying to state you're not gay means you're in denial and oh dear... only trying to be clear about what I want.

That's how ingrained this view of singleness misery is.

Single, even in 2013, means:

• you are lonely (climbing the walls)
• you are socially inept
• you have no social life
• you are emotionally incomplete
• you have self-esteem issues
• you aren't really 'normal'
• you're happy on the outside, but crying inside

What singleness means for me is - none of the above!

I still have a nice family life. I call in to say hello and have a cup of tea round my ex-'s. I visit my sons without the need for a social worker, a police officer or a solicitor. It is so nice in every single respect. The only difference is we live apart.

I am not against marriage. I think it's wonderful. Perhaps it isn't for me? I don't know. Maybe one day, I will meet a woman who I just can't imagine my life without and I will want to marry her. I will not waste my life searching. I am pretty convinced that searching for love is wrong-footed.

'Love is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention towards other things it will come and softly sit on your shoulder'.

It's the turning your attention to other things. Learning how the cosmos works, why diet coke still makes you fat, what makes music so amazingly wonderful, why coffee beans disappear so fast (that might be just me). Putting up all those shelves you've been meaning to do for the last 5 years.

I am reading a surprisingly enjoyable book 'Happy To Be Single' by Liz Hodgkinson with a delicious subtitle 'The Pleasures of Independence'.  Don't be put off by the 1990's style cover. The writing is still as fresh as a daisy.

Part of what probably equips me for enjoying my singleness is that I have been loved.
Strangely, I felt that I had been alone, or lonely, for a great part of my life, despite having lots of people around me. Having my own place, ironically, I feel less lonely.
With solitude, you learn a self-sufficiency that perhaps others miss out on.
Loving a woman who you know you can never have.
Equally, finding the courage leave when you don't love someone in return.
Both of these are so hard. You will get over it and you will have grown so much.

The longer I live as a single man, the more natural and right it feels.

Being single is cool! 

Taxing Times for Families

Up to a million families each stand to lose an average of £511 a year under tax and benefit changes, according to research.

Anti-poverty campaigners dubbed the start of the financial year Bad Friday, warning cuts totalling more than £2bn were taking effect over the Easter weekend.

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said the impact calculated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS (SES: E1:I49.SI - news) ) was proof of a "tax credits bombshell" with up to a million households losing eligibility entirely. Mr Balls said the IFS figures revealed a "bombshell".

More than 850,000 families stood to lose their child tax credit - worth around £545 per year - from the start of the financial year.

Child Poverty Action Group chief executive Alison Garnham said: "Some of the poorest working families will lose thousands of pounds from their annual income, leaving them in a desperate struggle to pay for basics like groceries, clothes and household bills."

This sounds slightly out of step with the Coalition's "we aim to be the most family-friendly nation on Earth" objective - which you can read on page 41 in the Conservative's 2010 manifesto here:

Make Britain the Most Family-Friendly Country in Europe

http://media.conservatives.s3.amazonaws.com/manifesto/cpmanifesto2010_lowres.pdf

The key phrases are here:

"We will make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe.

We will support families in the tax and benefits system, extend flexible working and improve parental leave.

We will help parents cope with the commercialisation of childhood and give families more control over their lives.

We will support and improve Sure Start, and introduce a new universal health visiting service.

We will give targeted help to disadvantaged and dysfunctional families".

While the Conservative's intentions are good, the reality is that the brakes are applied too fiercely on benefits, when a family member is lucky enough to secure a job. There will be a shortfall in the first 3 to 6 months where the adjusted economy takes effect.

I encountered one young woman, a single parent, at a village hall who had a monthly shortfall of £400. It is hard for me to believe that this woman's circumstances are that unique and aren't frequently repeated almost everywhere in Britain.

The economy of single people is critical, to put it mildly.

The Tories have previously, never given much thought to single parent families and single people's only acknowledgement that they are up against it is the single person's Council Tax discount.

Now they are even failing to give even their much preferred one man, one woman nuclear family a helping hand in these most difficult times.

Science the poetry of creation

“Why do you have to keep reducing everything to science?” asks Jackie Tyler of the Doctor in Doctor Who, Series 2 “Army Of Ghosts”. Jackie’s way of thinking about science has never occurred to me.

I’ve always viewed science as being a portal to a truly beautiful cosmos. However, Jackie’s view is not unique. To many people, scientists are not real people, they have no sense of humour, very few social skills and always wear white coats.

This could be a masked fear people have, not of science, but of the more terrifying aspects of cosmology. The supernova of a star, a massive explosion which often has a blast area of several light years reminds people that we are very fleeting beings and even our planet Earth, is a temporary home for us humans.

Poverty, famine and wars seem to be constant companions though aeons of time. Technology affords greater life spans. We have a burgeoning population of 80 to100 year olds but our financing of retirement pensions does not afford the greater number of people who are no longer working. There is little that young people in the 1960’s could have done to manage and provide for their old age now.

At first, when I listen to Gustav Holst’s The Planets “Saturn” I am reminded of Saturn, the bringer of old age. It sounds distressing at first, but the piece evolves into calm and serenity. It is at this point, that I view old age as being a chance to smell of that coffee we never got the same chance to, while we were working and raising families.

“Creation” means something a little different when you’re an Atheist.

Not a God created universe. No-one can explain now or before, (and they may probably never will), how the universe came into being. That flashpoint, in order to have an existence, must have straddled the boundaries of our physical universe and that point where time and space were yet to exist.

While I’m pondering that, I’m looking at clouds. Rather a lot to look at in an English winter. I’m struck how beautiful they are. They are only water vapour. Now why do I have to keep reducing things to science?

Oh…

The Coalition

I well remember people saying "why can't we have a coalition government?"

We were a bit niave in those days. A coalition government would be about parties all working together for the common good. And not about the Tories telling the Lib-Dems to get stuffed, after all.

In life, I've always noticed that it's a tiny minority of families on estates who bring down the reputation of the estate. This eclipsing of the decent majority has a lot to do with our media, hell bent on selling their newspapers, because for some reason, they judge us to be only interested in bad news.

School bullies are probably no more than about a dozen, out of a school roll of 1500. In the course of my union work, I've met a great deal of people who have been bullied at school. Again, bullies seem to be very far reaching, given their very small numbers.

I have always believed that politicians, (of whatever persusaion), go into politics because they believe that they can make changes for the better. I still believe that today.

I can't help but wonder how so many would be councillors or MP's feel when they have these great ambitions steamrollered by some pompous political grandee's desire to replace their ludicrously expensive bird table, have their moat cleaned, or supply their husband with a porn DVD courtesy of the tax payer.

So are these the same MP's who've frozen for 2 years public sector worker's pay* (who didn't cause the recession) and allowed bankers bosses (who DID cause the recession) to collect huge bonuses?

*(That's of course, except for the 425,000 public sector workers who will be losing their jobs).

Ah yes, we're getting a day off on Friday 29th April. The wedding!

Come on, it's not as though we're paying for it, is it?

Happiness

Our government wants to know if we’re happy.

This is refreshing news.

I can’t recall any previous government before asking us this question. Our governments seem to be permanently locked into a continuous battle of capital versus labour. Occasionally, they say they've seen a "third way" - but I notice that it's still all rates of mortgages, unemployment that figure in their election leaflets, defining their successes. So it's not suprising that we’re still left with the same old questions. We still have a society that bases itself on citizens being enriched by hard currency, alone and not being happy, after all.

“Are we happy?”

“Is being happy what we’re supposed to be here for?”

“Are we supposed to be happy?”

We, in the west, are pretty sold on the idea, that happiness isn’t about money. I’m not at all sure about that. As someone who’s never had much money, I can tell you that there is little happiness in being poor. I have been happy, in spite of being poor. If I suddenly became rich, I predict that I would use money to free myself and those who I love, from the stress and worry that goes with not having enough money to pay the bills.

We babyboomers were not poor in a sense that our parent’s generation understood. Being poor, these days, is often a very relative state. Our parents did not have enough money to buy enough food. Actually, pretty well all parents in those days were poor. Our generation feels deprived when we can’t send our kids to school in the same trainers. So we’re aware of a bigger rich/poor gap. The pain we feel is not because we don’t have the same, it’s because we are made to feel excluded because we’re told we have failed to have the same.

If our society were more “poor-friendly” we would feel no pain about not having the same material wealth and things as our richer peers. We would simply be living different lives and we wouldn’t be feeling that our lives were somehow “inferior” just because we were poor.

Being a socialist, I am much more inclined to believe that if we were brave enough to try for a much more equal society, not only poorer people would be happier, but rich people would be too. Poor families can often be very creative when it comes to being happy. An evening with a box full of clothes, where people can dress up as a pirate or a policeman can be sometimes surprisingly wonderful. We are truly playing.

That's not to say that I wouldn’t turn my nose up at the latest Nintendo Wii, Playsation or X-Box, but neither would I turn my nose up at the box full of pirate costumes either. Or a game of "shove ha'penny".

Consider these quotes about happiness:

“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.”

Groucho Marx

“The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.”

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The surprising thing is that each of those quotes could’ve been written by the other author. And yet, how differently we view Groucho Marx from Tenzin Gyatso the,14th Dalai Lama. We appear to be very much in unison about what happiness really is.

I can bear this wisdom out personally.

"Have no friends not equal to yourself."

Confucious (551 - 497 BC) Chinese philosopher.

Nothing is more miserable than when you don’t feel equal to someone who you’re trying to be friends with.

My life has been very varied. I have probably done it all, compared to a lot of folk. I have been married, and now, I am single again. My single life is not spent in miserable isolation, which is what many people have wondered about, when I tell them about my singleness. Perhaps I am happy being single and living alone, with no intention to become part of a couple again, precisely because I have had experience of being married. I have, like my mother, spent most of my life, living a life where I am often alone, so emotionally, that I am used to it and now have the emotional intelligence to actually relish my aloneness.

As an atheist, my idea of happiness is not seeing this life as a prelude to a better life to come. Suppose there isn't one? Wouldn't we feel cheated about.... Oh, I suppose we wouldn't know whether or not we had lived our lives not in a way that we could have chosen, had we known what would be in store for us, if you see what I mean?

A terminally ill patient usually lives life to the full. Somehow a mental, emotional focus, that eludes many of us, takes over. They do say live your day as though it were your last, don't they?

Aloneness is not interchangeable with unhappiness. It’s simply a different way of living. I found that out from a friend who is truly inspiring on lone living at its best. She packs her art, her love of creating it, learning all about history and making it her business to know about the fascinating city she lives in. Learning and the excitement you feel as it evolves you, really rocks her world. You could say that she is living life to the full, as though it were her last day.

Happiness is universal. The pathways to it are myriad. Mine is music, writing and astronomy. One never really knows why we are here. Created, evolved, sent here, who knows? It's a fair bet that while we are here, the pursuit of happiness is probably a pretty damn good shot at guessing the right reason as to why we're here. And even if that's the correct reason, well, who cares?

The government may well define happiness in a completely different way to me. So now, if the government really are serious about wanting to know whether I'm happy, what do I put on the flippin' form?