Through the Looking Glass

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I have lived my life backwards, and in reverse - a sort of mirror image of a person if you like.

My guess at your guess is this: already you imagine this will be some sort of self-aggrandisement - expecting a post in which I justify or rationalise what I am, what I value.

It’s a good guess. Generally this is what people do. They open their mouths merely to tell you what they believe, and why they are good. And if you agree, then we can be friends.

But let me assure you that is not my intention here. Instead I wanted merely to remark on the differences, which are becoming more pronounced as time passes - as we travel onwards like trains passing in opposite directions.

I was a precocious youth - an earnest young man. Terribly serious. I worried about all the deep questions. As a teenager I would always get the old man roles in school plays: Lord Capulet in Romeo & Juliet, Dr Rank in Ibsen’s A Dolls House. To the young philosopher that I was it seemed to me that there was no point in doing anything whatsoever in life, until one had first figured out how the universe worked, and what it was all for.

So I took philosophy and psychology as a graduate and postgraduate - mostly my peers were busy drinking, making friends, finding love and trying to look cool. I never really understood these things. We inhabited worlds on either side of the mirror: theirs a social sphere, mine a universe of ideas.

Later, when I knew what it was all about, there didn’t seem much point in doing anything in particular: the great price of truth is that is casts all life in a comical light - everything becomes pantomime.

So I did the jobs that came my way, laboriously noticing the many elaborations of these peculiarities: that meetings were never about ideas, but instead about relationships and consensus, that whilst I was quite uneasy in social situations talking about people and quite at home on the stage talking about concepts, other people were the exact opposite.

In time, as my life began to become more playful and comical, my middle-aged counterparts were beginning to grapple with the same questions that had troubled me as a teenager - What is is all for? What means something to me? How does it all work?

I was once an adult child, now a childish adult.

I think I can say that it has not been the easiest route: the vast majority of people live their lives forwards, not backwards - and going against the flow brings all the turbulence you might expect.

I can only speculate as to the root cause: I suspect it has something to do with a lack of concern with people - either passive indifference or active violence. Someone who really cared what people thought would never live this way.

What I can say is that there is a trade-off. As we age we become less flexible - for example I lack the flexibility required to run a business that I might have readily acquired as a young man. On the other hand my peers - having established themselves in business - are now beginning to grapple with questions that they will never be able to answer. I think - on balance - they have the better lot. After all, I have answers to questions that only I can ask - I can tell you it is not a great source of comfort.

And frankly - on the social front - becoming progressively more childish is hardly endearing to my peer-group who, having now attained positions of considerable seniority, take themselves terribly, terribly seriously - but to me seem increasingly like children, and I cannot help but laugh.

One of the more comical things is the way these inversions show up in language: the person who passes you in the street, wearing the T-shirt ‘princess’ is often quite the opposite - likewise the skinny anxious nerd in the ‘Megadeath’ T-shirt. In similar fashion the people mouthing the words ‘revolution’, ‘innovation’, ‘disruption’ are generally the epitome of convention. I suppose we crave that which we ourselves do not possess - but were we to have it, it would destroy us as we are.

I am not sure this equates to anything profound: there is a trade-off between distance and progress. If you pursue answers to some questions, it will set you apart. No great mystery there.

But I do marvel at these different trajectories, and the differences which lay hidden beneath the surface of everyday life. I do love difference. But that, it seems, is also on the other side of the looking glass.