Necessary Desires

I had never really thought I would need to ask myself this question, but it turns out that I do:

What do I want out of life?

It's a query that I think many ex-brethren are ill-equipped to answer of themselves, although I'm a bit cloudy as to the exact reasons for that. It may be partly to do with the teaching that our own desires are not only irrelevant but something to be fought against and overcome. When you grow up in an atmosphere where that is taken for granted, you find ways of concealing the nature of your desires even from yourself, hiding them behind more complicated reasons.

One simple example would be the purchase of a new car. It isn't enough to simply want one and to have the resources to do so. The purchase will be because the business demands a certain degree of newness, the family needs more space, it's more efficient to have a car with a warranty ... and so on. These are not just reasons given to others, but I think most will really believe them.

Similarly, a day out will be for the sake of the children, or because somebody needs a break. A good christian shouldn't want anything at all, not even a day with his family - although as a good christian he should be looking after them, and that may include such days.

The doctrine is that saved sinners have forfeited the right to any desires of their own, and that, in practice, happiness is found by controlling one's desires rather than fulfilling them.

So, if I've been told all my life that "wants" are a sign of insufficient christianity and poor character besides, how can I now deal realistically with my plans for the future? The honest answer is "with difficulty".

I do still believe to some extent that happiness comes most from not seeking it too hard, and that self-indulgence is very definitely not the way to it. Yet I have also come to believe that even those who claim to do nothing for themselves are still following their own desires, whether they know it or not. At some level, the satisfaction they get from bypassing their own superficial wants outweighs the downsides of doing so.

But those of us who have left the mental straightjacket behind have a kind of obligation to look at things more clearly and honestly. If I find that I do get the most out of denying myself, then I can continue to be comfortable doing so. If, however, I am merely doing so in order to fit into an image I have of myself, then I am storing up mental conflict, which is unhealthy.

I don't plan to turn self-obsessed overnight. But I feel quite strongly that it is time to look at the various aspects of my life, and think about whether each thing is needed, or whether it is really something I want, or merely a hang-up. It has started with small things, and just the awareness of the process has helped me to say "no" on occasion. As I get to grips, I may find out more, and graduate to the larger issues of life.

Being Busy, Fitting In

Weekends are quite often busy these days, and with things that are very different to life before.

("Before" is now a loaded word, as increasingly my life appears split into two.)

This weekend had its fair share of such activities. Firstly, on Friday night, was swimming. When I first went I was a little apprehensive, as the last time I was in water deep enough to swim in was when I was eleven and failing to get my badge for swimming a length. However, although I am still not a swimmer, I can get from place to place in a pool without drowning - always a useful skill. And it's an activity which is simultaneously relaxing and tiring, which is a good thing for someone inclined to think too much.

Then, on Saturday, was not one but two birthday parties. The first was not too scary, being at a centre for people with learning difficulties. I've been to those a couple of times before, and they're quite endearing. The second, a mass surprise party for someone's sixtieth, was a little more daunting.

Oddly, though, in spite of having to slot in among more than a hundred people in a crowded set of rooms in a bar, and having to fight above loud music to have even simple conversations with people I didn't know, it didn't seem too strange. When I thought to myself "what am I doing here?", what most surprised me was how long it had taken for such a thought to come. It was a long way into the evening, and was prompted by seeing a grey-haired man with missing teeth, a pierced nipple and more tattoos than I could count, dancing with his shirt off. And that's OK, too. I answered my own question with the thought that I was helping to make an occasion, and actually enjoying myself at the same time. Not every experience needs to be just like others before it.

In actual fact, it was another milestone in feeling just a part of society, rather than an odd-shaped piece in the wrong jigsaw. Among so many people there was obviously quite a variety, some who looked very dressed-up, some who looked like they'd normally be shouting at the football in a pub, and some (most noticeable by their discreet appearance) who looked roughly like I felt - as though their usual pleasures were less social ones, but this made a change. We're all different.

Then Sunday brought a trip out into the country to meet friends. And it hadn't occurred to me until today that anything about that was at all unusual on a Sunday - which shows how far I've come in six months, especially as I spotted several minibusfuls of brethren on the way back. Sundays mean lie-ins and walks, these days.

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.