Blue

Just so anybody reading this mix of thoughts and life story doesn't think everything is always rosy, I should mention that I did suddenly hit a rough patch this weekend.

As is often the case, it's difficult to know exactly what the immediate reasons were. I had packed a lot into the week, and was probably shorter of sleep than I knew, and was also frustrated at a lack of progress on a project I had hoped to swiftly sign off before the weekend began. Because I'd been occupied with that, more important activities didn't get as much of my attention as they should have done.

Maybe it's also because I've been feeling more distant from my family, something which was noticeable from seeing one of them without being able to speak, and sending a package to another for a birthday, without knowing what (if any) the response might be. I have also begun to question my goals, and wonder just what I should be aiming at. With that uncertainty, I have a lurking suspicion that I may have made some bad choices in some things recently.

Whatever the cause, I had a sudden wave of sadness that took me by surprise, and a general sense of failure. A kind of feeling that I can't be the person I need to be.

Fortunately I had help and support at hand.

A quick glance over my life says that I should cut back on the things I'm doing and give myself more time and relaxation. Not to mention scaling back my aims so that more is actually achievable. However, it's not quite as simple as that. I fill my time with projects, and they're all things I know I can do, although they may be challenging in different ways. Where I feel I fall short is in life itself, in things to do with people, in big scary things like career, security for the future, and in being the person that I want to be for others. The projects, in some ways, are a kind of distraction that keeps me going. That distraction system may keep my sanity from day to day, but I am suddenly wondering if I'm storing up problems because these larger things are lurking in my head, still without solutions or plans of action.

Life is not simple or easy, and abandoning one set of weights and drags doesn't suddenly remove every problem.

Care in the Community

Some while ago now I was going to put down my thoughts on friendship, and the differences between what can be found among the brethren and what there is in the wider world. I never did. That's because it was extremely difficult to work out how to convey my muddled thoughts, and because I found I couldn't generalise in a very useful way.

What started the introspection on that point was a discussion about calling on friends when you're in trouble. If your car breaks down in the middle of the night, if you're in the brethren you call somebody you know, and they'll find somebody nearby who can help. Other people will call a breakdown service. We established that much. Not because non-brethren can't rely on friends, but because that's not what friends are for, whereas the breakdown people really are for precisely that.

Does that make friends outside the brethren community somehow a lower quality of friend?

What just struck me today is that that is the wrong question, and a misleading one. The key word in the question is "community", not "friend".

Suppose you worked for a big international company, and part of your employment contract was that they guaranteed your car. If you break down, you call them, and they sort something out. In that case, it probably wouldn't occur to you to register with an alternative service, because what would be the point? And, having that arrangement, you wouldn't feel too bad about calling on it at an awkward time. That's the nearest I can come to the feeling there is among the brethren. Friendship has nothing to do with it, except possibly in the selection of the person who you first call.

There is a mutual understanding that all members of the brethren will be looked after in every way possible. That means that in any crisis, large or small, the first call will be to someone within the community. Financial or legal problems? You don't call a lawyer, you call a brother. That kind of thing. OK, if your house is burning down, you will call the Fire Service ... but somebody from the brethren will get the next call. The support network steps in at every point, and brethren genuinely don't think in the same way about dealing with such things.

Viewed from the outside, that can seem a little spooky. Brethren, as a group, are so self-reliant that it looks like they have something to hide. Why wouldn't they call on the usual channels if they haven't? But the reasons are much more subtle than that, as I've said. Everything inside the group is provided and taken care of, while everything outside it is disparaged and discouraged. That produces a big imbalance of trust levels.

I have noticed it applying even to me. I still interact with brethren quite a lot, and many times in the last few months I have seen things done and decisions taken which I could have helped with, and in the past would have been considered the most capable person to do so. Now, although I'm still the same person, with the same abilities, I am not on the list of people to call.

In that way, the brethren are quite touchingly literal in their religious attitudes. It is an unquestioned belief that a person with God's approval will always provide better advice and better results in action than a person who relies only on natural skill, earthly qualifications and real facts.

That being so, who would you expect them to call on? The rest of us have to settle for mere professionals, and the brethren feel sorry for us.

Speaking Foreign

I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but I have a longer trip coming up quite soonish now, a joint venture to Peru. It's somewhere I have always been fascinated by, so seizing the invitation wasn't a difficult decision.

One thing I wanted to do beforehand was to acquire a little acquaintance with the Spanish language, as besides being convinced that it's polite to make the effort to speak to the locals in their own language, I also feel slightly helpless when I have to be totally reliant on others for communication. So I bit the bullet as January started, and took out a three-month subscription to the online version of a language course. The online option is a fraction of the price of the packaged version, and they send a free headset to go with it. The only snag was that I had to wait until last Monday to get going, because the headset came from Germany.

Parenthetically: among the brethren, it's best to be a native English-speaker. Otherwise you will be obliged to learn English anyway, and nobody will make much effort to learn yours unless they're moving to your country. Although standardising does make brethren life much easier, I suppose, I think that's kind of sad. I've taken advantage of many people's efforts to learn my language in the past, and it always feels very one-sided, which I don't like. I am fairly resolved that this time will be different.

I now realise I was being just a little arrogant, thinking that I could just absorb another language "on the side", without too much effort or any change in routine. I vaguely sort of thought that it could be teaching me while I was doing chores like ironing.

But it's actually very difficult.

I must say, although I hadn't banked on another commitment of this size, it's very refreshing to have a serious challenge that isn't as important as it is serious. Obviously I have quite a number of challenges crowding at me, and have done for months, but they are the kind of things that become challenges because of the stakes, not because of their inherent difficulty. Work, for example. This Spanish is different - if I fail, I will have wasted time, money and effort, but my life will be about as much on track as it was before. Other problems, if not solved correctly, could change my life for years ahead.

So it looks as though I will be spending an hour a day clicking pictures on a screen and attempting to make the machine understand my atrocious accent. The course progresses scarily fast, so in a couple of months I should either be pretty good, or completely burnt out.

Storytime

Once upon a time, a man escaped from a prison camp.

For quite a long time, he hardly knew whether to be happy at his freedom, bewildered at it, or sad because of the loss of a cosy life where he always knew what was going on and what to do about it. Most of the time he settled for an exotic casserole of all of them, just as he did about the happiness that comes from making new friends and the sadness that comes from losing old ones.

Whenever he mentioned these feelings to people who had never been in the prison, they were always sympathetic but puzzled. "We all come from prison camps," they said, "yours was just more closed-in than some." And they would point to some suburban house, as though that was proof. The man wouldn't say anything, usually, but would look back across town at the skyscraping walls of his old camp, behind which, out of sight, was everything he used to know, and wonder how the little fence of a house on the outside could be the same in any way.

At other times he would apologise at some social clumsiness, saying that he only knew the rules of the prison camp, and was finding it hard to learn how things worked on the outside. Again, people weren't sure what he meant. "Out here," they said, "nobody knows the rules. You aren't any different." But still he felt at a disadvantage, though he began to wonder how much of his discomfort came from expecting there to be more rules than he found. Most people, he tried saying, may not start out knowing how to behave, but not many find themselves in so many new situations all the time as I do. "But we do," they said, and left him mystified why they didn't show it.

One thing everybody seemed to understand was that it was very sad to have to leave people he loved behind in the camp. Even then, though, they thought things would improve in time. "Your family and friends will move closer to the outside," they said. "They'll put a door to the outside for you, so you can visit, and install a telephone just for you. Why don't you ask them now? It will be easy." The man just looked towards the place where the people he knew must be, but could only see the wall.

Quite often, he would meet and talk with other people who had escaped the camp. They would always agree that escapers were special people, who would never be understood by people who had never known the prison camp. "They don't know what it's like," they would say, but he noticed that each escaper had a different thing that they thought was impossible to understand.

Often these other escapers would try to tell him of rules they'd discovered that applied to the outside, too, and sometimes got quite angry if anyone said that they weren't rules after all. "You mustn't disapprove of anybody because they're different to you," they would say, for example, even though the man could clearly see that many people DID judge and disapprove of others, although there appeared to be more complicated rules about whether and when they could show it.

After a while, in which the man gradually became more confident that other people's acceptance of him wasn't just kindness, that they truly didn't think he was different because of coming from the prison camp, he was walking one day with another escaper, and a friend who had never been in the camp. "I wonder if that wall will ever be demolished," the other escaper wondered aloud. "What wall?" asked the friend. Looking across from the hill they were walking on, the man realised the wall was invisible from there, and that from far enough outside, the camp looked only like another part of the town.

There's no moral, and no happily-ever-after, because it's an unfinished story. Who knows what happens next?

Succour for the Needy

I have often wondered, and sometimes discussed, what is most helpful to brethren who wish to leave their cosy society and brave the outside world, and what can be done for those who have done so.

The big problems, as they seem to me in retrospect, are three.

• fear of the unknown
• leaving people behind and being cut off
• worry about hostility or not fitting in anywhere

There are of course many other difficulties, many practical obstacles, and everything is different in every case. For many people, financial worries will be a mountain in their minds. I don't want to minimise anything by restricting my attention to the above points. It just seems to me that the biggest hurdles are mental ones, and that most other things can be managed with a positive will.

Leaving a closed community is a scary step. With years of preparation, and a reasonable idea of what was involved, I nearly never made the leap myself. If I hadn't had friendly unpressured support during those years, I doubt I would have made it. I can think of many brethren who I think know they would do better to leave, and I doubt most of them will manage, or even seriously consider it, because it's just too much. Making the exit, I have often thought, is very close to suicide as an act of desperation, and the tendency for most people is to grimly carry on as they are, because they've survived so far and things haven't become unbearable yet.

Personally, I think it's unfortunate that the most visible presence of ex-brethren on the internet is a strident one. I am sure there is a need for campaigning, and keeping the brethren's various abuses in the public eye is a valuable activity. But remembering my own feelings as a waverer, I shudder at the effect it must have on people like I was then.

What such semi-brethren need, in my opinion, is mainly reassurance. They don't need beating over the head with the evils of their current position - if they were happy with it, they wouldn't be considering leaving, and ranting about it makes them feel very uncomfortable about the levels of hate on the outside. They won't, normally, have worked through their own feelings enough to feel very strongly against the brethren, and if they get the impression that they're alone in their moderate unhappiness while everyone else hates them, they are in danger of concluding that there is nowhere they will fit in on the outside.

They need to know what it's really like on the outside. The good, the bad, the better-than-expected, the unforeseen problems. That turns a hopeful dream into something they can imagine succeeding in. They need to see that there are people like them around, and that they won't be a weird misfit, and that people are often good and kind - that's important, as the brethren put a lot of emphasis on the uniqueness of their own help structure.

Mostly, I guess, a waverer will be sick of being told what to do and think, yet still uncertain of their own capacity to think and act for themselves. That means that anyone wishing to help has a delicate balancing act to perform, ready with support as needed, without letting advice appear like instructions, and without seeming like a replacement for what the person is trying to get away from.

What all this means in practice, I'm not quite sure. I have a suspicion that as computers are being demystified by their appearance in brethren's workplaces, there may be a continual increase in the number of brethren checking out the web. Maybe there is room for more help that way.

More thoughts, maybe, as anything else occurs to me.

Je Ne Regrette Rien

Having been asked this last weekend whether there's anything I miss about my old life, I find myself slightly disturbed by the fact that I haven't really thought about that.

Of course I miss people. You can't leave a tight community and close family without leaving large gaps, and that hurts. But the lifestyle, the routine, the events and activities, the often-referred-to benefits and privileges, those are all what the brethren's "life of their own" are all about. And I'm struggling to think of any aspect that I would like to have back.

Maybe, just possibly, the fact that employment and decent earnings are guaranteed. Without doubt that removes a worry. Yet at the same time it's suffocating, and comes without any real choice of occupation, so there is a heavy price to be paid. I'll reserve judgment on that until I find out what my prospects are outside brethren employment.

Definitely not the meetings. It would shock my old fellow-members to hear it, but I haven't felt the slightest pang from staying away from their gatherings for six months, not even the flagship event of The Supper on Sunday morning. On the rare occasions when I remember its existence, the only emotion is relief at my good fortune in being able to sleep right through the appointed time. Once you strip away the sense of extreme importance that surrounds the meetings and their central place in brethren's lives, the gatherings themselves stand exposed for the most part as empty, pointless and dull, except as something to sit through before catching up with friends.

Travel is often cited as a benefit, but I could never quite see that one. I'm doing more travelling now than I was, and to a wider variety of places. Brethren will say that it's not the same, that in their society they can walk into a house halfway round the world and be made welcome. The odd thing is that it turns out to work that way for me, now, too, but I also have the option of other places if I prefer. It doesn't always feel right to disturb friends, although it's amazing how good people are at offering hospitality.

Socialising was a big part of my old life, and I don't miss that. It was always too structured and organised, and happened at fixed times and places regardless of mood. Now I meet plenty of people, and it's when it suits us and we can enjoy it properly. What could be better than that?

Perhaps the biggest benefit of being among the brethren, though it's not often acknowledged, is the superior and firmly grounded feeling that results from being completely right when everybody else around is wrong to a greater or lesser extent. Do I miss that? In a way I do, as it's a comfortable sensation. Yet it's years since I felt it, and have come to prefer uncertainty and realism to delusion, however comfortable the delusion may be.

I'm kind of hoping there's something obvious that I've really lost out on, because it's scary to think that I spent the first thirty-three years of my life on things I can leave behind without the slightest regret. People excepted, of course, as always.

Murder as a Lifestyle Choice

On Christmas Eve, I visited my old family home for the first time since leaving it in August. It was a very strange feeling, and I was actually quite shaky in advance.

As it turned out, things were OK, though obviously hardly as warm and friendly as it used to be. But while driving home afterwards, I found myself trying once again to sum up in my head how the brethren's attitude to leavers might best be conveyed to those who have never experienced it. The whole thing is very hard to explain, as most people with a normal amount of decency struggle to understand why a simple difference of opinion can have such radical effects, and why, if there is love between a set of individuals, that can be ignored or even switched off just by one side quietly making it clear that they don't subscribe to all the same beliefs.

What I thought about was murder.

No, seriously. Not that there is anybody I would wish to take personal responsibility for wiping off the face of the planet, but as an analogy.

To put yourself in the brethren's mindset, ask yourself if there is anything somebody could have a difference of opinion about that would make you change your feelings about them. If you don't think there is, try imagining that someone important to you said one day that they thought that murder was actually quite ethical, and proceeded to alter their behaviour to suit that belief. Of course, you also have to imagine a society in which such an attitude can be indulged, preferably one outside of what you know.

If you think that's too much of a stretch for an overworked imagination, think of countries where honour killing is routine. Suppose a male friend moved his family to one of those countries, saying that he wanted his children to grow up in an environment where they would be killed by family members for moral misbehaviour because he thought that was how things should be.

Would you feel differently about someone if it became obvious that they sincerely believed your ideas about the sanctity of human life were mistaken? At the very least the consideration might bring a bit of understanding of why brethren members' feelings can be so complex about those who have left them.

Because really, the brethren do think their system of beliefs is that important. To disagree with it enough to leave the fold is to turn your back on morality itself, just as a normal western person would imagine of a person who condoned murder. What other evil might such a person be capable of, and how much further might they slip?

Anyway, those were my thoughts over the couple of miles between my old home and my current one. It isn't pleasant to be looked at as a moral deviant by loved ones, but I do think it is very important to try to understand these things.

Suspension of Disbelief

I have been watching films for about fifteen years, give or take. Sorry if that disillusions anyone who still thinks all brethren play by the rules. First at the cinema, and later more often on DVD, using a laptop and speakers as a mobile home cinema wherever anyone felt like a movie. But for obvious reasons it wasn't exactly a daily experience.

This Christmas was heavy on movie-watching, just as a relaxed time should be - it's more companionable and less demanding than a good book, which in most ways I still prefer. So I saw more in a short space of time than I ever have before.

It made me notice once again what a softie I am when it comes to screen entertainment, and I would be very interested to know how many other ex-brethren find the same. I simply cannot take the stress of a lot of adult drama.

The traditional staples of adult-rated entertainment, sex and violence, are not the problem in themselves. I can take gore, though it isn't what I would call enjoyable, and I have in the past tested myself with the horror genre. Oddly, it gives only about the same amount of tension as some things that are classified as family-friendly.

What really gets to me is the depiction of emotional trauma and, I suppose, trauma in general. So boy-movies in which scores of people are mown down in a hail of bullets are simple fun because nobody seems worried, even the victims, while girl-movies in which various characters have their noses rubbed in romantic failure, for example, are hard work. And the most difficult I can remember was a recent movie where the fulcrum of the drama was the torture of an innocent man while his wife wondered where he was. Even The Exorcist wasn't as stressful as that.

And maybe that's the key. My formative years were ones without the experience of a false reality on a small screen, and now it's too late to develop the level of immunity that most people have. However much I know - in my head - that what is happening in front of me isn't real, and wasn't even real when it was filmed, my gut reactions remain to be convinced. So while I enjoy a good movie, my taste will probably remain skewed towards fantasy and escapism, with animation being my favourite. The more similar a drama is to real-life events, or what could be real, the less likely I am to enjoy it.

Or maybe it's just me, and I'm naturally soft. If so, that's probably the penalty for being too engaged in what others think and feel, but is a price worth paying, I think. It would be nice to know which it was, though.

A Fresh Year

It's less surprising than it seems, I suppose, but 2008 is here already.

For me, at least, last year was very eventful, with probably the biggest changes of my life. And the changes are only halfway yet, at most, I feel, so this year is another journey. After a long time in which milestones of time came and went accompanied by varying levels of frustration that other kinds of milestone remained as much in the distance as ever, that is a good thing. Finally I have the sense of being personally stretched and put to the test.

Not that there's been much stretching over the holiday period, mind you, other than a short introduction to Yoga. But there has been time for reflection, and a renewing of energy, ready for new developments - and I am quite sure those will come. I have had many blogworthy thoughts, too, which may well appear in due course.

In the last six months, I have learned a lot about things I had only thought about before. Life is both easier and harder than I anticipated. It is easier to merely survive, yet harder to realise life goals. It is easier to keep up with necessities, and harder to make time for the ought-to-do things. It has been easier to find good friends and relationships, yet harder to make sense of my family. It's easier to please others, and harder to please myself.

As the new year starts, my position with the brethren is still somewhat one of limbo. I expect that to change before too long. Some kind of decision will have to be made, and it can only really be that they conclude I am beyond reach. One of the shocks to the heart, if not the head, has been to see how their attitudes and behaviour change as their perception of what they can achieve with a person alters. There are honorable exceptions to that, but generally I appear to have become less of a human being as I become more of a problem. That has meant that at times, as I feel hurt by that, I have drifted close to the bitterness I swore to avoid. One resolution for this year is to strive to continue seeing the good where it exists.

Relations with my family are better than I expected but a lot worse than I hoped. Maybe that will change for the better as they come to terms with my hurtful decision, and maybe it will be worse as my official status changes. Seeing my parents just before Christmas, I was relieved that the meeting was polite and free from emotional trauma, but also a bit troubled by exactly the same things. That situation, I feel, is a very long-term one, more amenable to decade-long resolutions than just new year's.

It feels, now, as though I have given myself a couple of months' break, besides the relaxation of the holiday time. So the main resolution for now is to stop looking back at the changes I have made, and start taking action on what there is still to do. The time for letting things happen is past, and the time for taking control is here.

Those who know me will be surprised by that. My resolution takes the form of "I suppose I should try to be more definite".

And so I shall.