by Joss Sheldon
“You’re not ‘just’ anything.”
“Well, I’m not trained to help you in that way.”
“I don’t care about training - that stuff’s a bunch of baloney. Just do what comes instinctively. Do the first thing that comes into your mind.”
The faint light of recognition trickled across Nurse Betty’s face.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, my lovely.”
She removed a book from her handbag and then passed it to me.
I took that book, which was entitled ‘The Wisdom of Lao Tzu’, and I began to read.
TWENTY SEVEN
Have you ever seen an adult play with a young child? Those mature, sensible people, often act as if they themselves are children. They make silly sounds, do silly things, and allow their imaginations to run free. It’s as if the child is re-teaching them how to play; reminding them of a long lost skill, and helping them to re-connect to their own inner-child.
Well, I experienced a similar process myself, thanks to Nurse Betty. She helped me to re-connect with my inner-child.
It all started with a delicate question:
“Why did you want to die?” she asked me.
I paused.
A sparrow sang a song to its lover.
I looked into Nurse Betty’s deep, empathetic eyes. Those eyes which were as white as the stars. And then I answered:
“Because I can’t be me,” I said. “Society won’t allow it.”
Nurse Betty bit her lip.
“I just want to be free. Free from social pressures. Free to be myself. My true self. My egot.”
“Your egot?”
“Free to be me. Free to listen to my inner voice. Free to be happy.”
Nurse Betty nodded.
“You want to play, don’t you, my lovely?” she asked.
I shrugged.
My body was eager but my mind was confused. I wasn’t sure what Nurse Betty meant by the word ‘play’. Playing, for me, meant partaking in a structured activity, like exercising at a gym or dining at a restaurant. The sort of thing that adults did once they’d finished the serious business of work. I wasn’t thinking of the childish concept of play. The urge to partake in that sort of thing had been drilled out of me at school.
“Come,” Nurse Betty continued. “Come, come, my lovely.”
She helped me out of bed and led me down the corridor. But she didn’t just walk down that corridor. Oh no. She skipped! She skipped down that corridor with all the exuberance of a five year old.
And I joined in! Dear reader, I actually skipped down that hall! My little voice said, ‘What the hell!’ And I skipped for the first time since I was a child. I swung my legs forward and bounced through the air with all the gaiety of youth.
We skipped together, holding hands, as if we were in a school playground.
We skipped past busy doctors, sickly patients and baffled visitors.
We giggled with glee when the sliding doors opened, as if by magic. And we ran out onto the grass, where we removed our shoes and socks.
That feeling of grass underfoot! That unadulterated magic! That holy elixir!
My toes were massaged by those fluffy green tufts. My soles kissed that soft green carpet. My heels sunk into that luxuriant rug.
Mother Nature tickled my naked feet. The living earth stroked my tired flesh. The crumbs of the centuries absorbed my flaky skin.
It started to rain.
We started to dance.
We held hands and swung around in a circle, whilst the tears of heavenly cherubs caressed our mortal skin.
That crystalline elixir took me away to another place. It was refreshing. Exhilarating. Real.
My heart pumped.
Colour returned to my cheeks.
My little voice cheered with joy.
And the rain gave way to an enchanted rainbow.
I gawked at it. I stared at that thing with open-mouthed and wide-eyed amazement. Childlike amazement. Blissful awe.
The violet was so vivid! The indigo was so indulgent! The red was so real!
As if I was seeing a rainbow for the very first time, the sight of it filled me with wonder. It just seemed so magical to me. So mysterious.
You may recall that I’d felt that way once before. Just before my sword fight with Chubby Smith, I’d gazed out at a rainbow and felt those same emotions. I’d wanted to chase that rainbow too.
But I hadn’t felt that way for years. I’d considered rainbows prosaic, a scientific phenomenon; easily ignored and easily forgotten. On the day I was arrested, for example, I was totally oblivious to the rainbow which hung above me. To me, back then, it just wasn’t worth considering.
That all changed.
I rediscovered my sense of wonder.
My glutinous eyes feasted on that rainbow’s beauty. I ate up those colours, drank down those hazy hues, and devoured that brilliant glow.
Energy returned to my being.
Health returned to my skin.
Nurse Betty took me by my hand. Her coarse skin caressed my palm.
“A family of elves live over there,” she said.
I was about to laugh. Indeed, a titter of spontaneous laughter did flirt with my tongue. But it didn’t make it any further. My newfound sense of wonder overpowered it, destroyed it and expelled it.
In that moment, I could believe. I’d removed the straightjacket from my mind. And I was ready to see the world in a whole new light. I was ready to break free from the constraints of reason and give myself to the world of infinite possibilities.
“They live in giant caverns beneath the roots of those trees,” Nurse Betty continued. “They wear red uniforms and pointy hats. And they cook elaborate banquets using whatever nuts and berries they can gather.”
“What sort of dishes do they make?”
“Oh, everything, my lovely! Everything! Cranberry gazpacho. Acorn couscous. Stinging-nettle pie. They make the sort of scrummy dishes that we humans would never even dream of.”
“Wow! That sounds great!”
“Sure is!”
“We should ask them for a recipe.”
“Ok. Let’s do it!”
Nurse Betty led me through a copse of lanky trees. Dark firs stretched their gnarled arms above us. Tangled roots pinched our heels. Leaves crawled up our legs.
“We need to call the elves,” Nurse Betty told me. Her craggy face, which had been weathered by the years, was awash with childlike innocence. “We need to call out to them like this:
“‘Elfie! Elfie! Where are you Elfie?’”
Nurse Betty looked at me. That chubby smile of hers filled her face. She chuckled and then continued:
“Now you give it a go, my lovely.”
I nodded. And, like an adult following a child’s lead, I completely lost my inhibitions.
I called out to those elves! I sang to them. I searched for them in the undergrowth. And, when I saw something dart beneath the foliage, I called out ‘Elf! Elf! Elf!’
I was convinced that it was an elf. There was no evidence to support my claim, but I believed. I believed!
We celebrated. We clapped. We kept on clapping. It felt great just to clap.
We hugged. Electricity passed between us. That human contact felt like a huge chunk of bliss.
And we laughed. We laughed out loud. We positively guffawed. Belly-laugh followed belly-laugh. Thunderous guffaws knocked us over. And hearty convulsions forced us to roll around.
It felt amazing.
We laughed and then we laughed some more. We laughed for the sake of laughing. We smiled for the sake of smiling. And we howled for the sake of howling:
‘Ah-woo! Ah-woo! Ah-woo!’
A wolf howled back.
A bird sang along.
A rabbit danced.
A tree swayed.
A rainbow smiled.
TWENTY EIGHT
Nurse Betty took me out to play, to frolic in the natural environment, every single morning and every single afternoo
n. We talked about Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy, and the gnomes which come alive at night. We sang into the wind. And we danced beneath the rain.
That wonderful lady really helped me to re-connect with my inner-child.
But my inner-child was still just a child. I still needed to nurture it. I still needed to help it to grow into a fully-fledged inner-adult.
I just didn’t know how to do that.
Then I listened to a song by Akala called ‘Get Educated’. (The song which was playing when I got arrested). You may recall the lyrics I put at the beginning of this book.
Anyway, there was this line which got me thinking:
‘Forget what they told you in school. Get educated!’
I’d listened to that song hundreds of times, but those words had never registered. Not until that moment.
In that moment it all seemed clear. It all made sense. I realised that my resentment of school wasn’t born out of the education I’d received there. I appreciated that I’d been taught to read and write, add and subtract. No, my resentment was born from my indoctrination. I’d rebelled against that, of course I’d rebelled against that, but I’d never rebelled against education itself.
‘Beep! Bop! Beep!’
‘I ain’t saying play by the rules. Get educated!’
With that one line Akala helped me to realise that education could be rebellious. Education could be the purest form of rebellion. It could be unadulterated insurrection!
And, because of that, it could be liberating:
‘Beep! Bop! Beep!’
‘Break the chains of their enslavement. Get educated!’
I realised that I was going to have to get educated. Really educated. I was going to have to educate myself.
So I asked Nurse Betty to get me some books from the library. And, when those books arrived, I immersed myself in their sweet, musty pages. I read about all the psychological concepts which I’ve introduced to you already.
I read about Nature Deficit Disorder. And I realised that I wasn’t alone. That it was natural to feel trapped whilst being made to sit inside a stuffy classroom or a soulless workplace. That children and workers, all across the globe, also felt the same way. That they’d have preferred to have been outside in the natural environment too.
I read about Stanley Milgram’s experiment, which helped me to understand my subservience to authority.
I read about Solomon Asch’s work, which helped me to understand how peer pressure had swayed me.
And I read about the Optimism Bias, which helped me to understand why I kept on going, even when it was irrational to do so.
But it was discovering Operant Conditioning that affected me the most. It was a real eye-opener. It helped me to understand how my headmaster, teachers and parents, had all conspired to mould me. How their punishments and rewards had made me deny my true self, kill the egot, and lock up my inner-child.
That, it seemed to me, was the root of all my problems
And so I concluded that I was going to have to start from there. I was going to have to undo the damaging effects of my Operant Conditioning. I was going to have to resurrect the egot.
But that, dear reader, was easier said than done. Yes, I’d rediscovered some of my childlike capacities for innocence, wonder, awe, joy, sensitivity and playfulness. But I hadn’t re-written history. The truth was that the egot had been denied, neglected, disparaged, abandoned and rejected for many, many years. It had been buried beneath the earth of social pressure. Its body had turned to dust.
I tried to will it back into existence. Honestly, I did! I clamped my eyes together, scrunched my lips up tight, and focussed all my energy onto my brain. I focussed on a mental image of the egot. I called out to the egot. I even prayed for the egot to return. Yeah, that’s right. Me, Yew Shodkin, who’s never willingly prayed for anything in his life, actually prayed for the egot!
But, alas, it didn’t make a difference. The egot was gone and it wasn’t coming back. I was going to have to move on without it.
Well, having come to that rather sorry conclusion, I returned to Nurse Betty’s Lao Tzu book. And, buried within its well-thumbed pages, I found inspiration. I found hope. I found direction.
Lao Tzu’s words really spoke to me. They vibrated on my natural wavelength.
Like this line, for example; ‘By letting go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let go. When you try and try, the world is beyond winning’.
Truer words have never been spoken!
I realised that I’d spent my whole life trying. Trying and trying and trying. Trying to be the student my teachers wanted me to be. Trying to be the son my parents desired. Trying to be the employee my bosses required. Trying to succeed, trying to be the best, trying to earn rewards. Trying to earn a promotion, receive a raise and buy my own home.
It hadn’t made a difference. I’d ‘tried and tried’ but ‘the world was beyond winning’.
That myth our society is built on, that ‘You can get it all as long as you try’, seemed utterly absurd to me. At best it was a delusion and at worst it was a deliberate sham to keep us all working for the man.
For me, Lao Tzu had got it right. I realised that. I realised that I needed to ‘let go’. Or, as Lao Tzu put it, I needed to ‘Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness and have few desires’. Because ‘He who knows that enough is enough, will always have enough’. He will ‘Win the world’.
TWENTY NINE
“Come on then, my lovely,” Nurse Betty said. The glow from a street light reflected off her pitch-black skin. The early morning breeze caressed the crumples on her craggy face.
Nurse Betty put my solitary bag, which contained all my life’s possessions, into the creaky boot of her rusty old banger. She put her key in the ignition, forced it to turn, and fell back into her dust-filled seat.
That rust-bucket roared into life. It shook from left to right. It vibrated from front to back. And then it jolted forwards.
We crawled through the city’s labyrinthine streets; passing grey buildings, grey skies and grey people. And although we had to stop and wait for an endless series of traffic-lights, it felt like we were making real progress. It felt like we were breaking free from the city’s robotic grip.
We finally made it. We finally reached a land of unadulterated greenery. A land that you might call the ‘Countryside’ or the ‘Wilderness’, but which I prefer to call the ‘Natural Habitat’.
We snaked along quaint lanes which were enclosed by antique stone walls. We slipped past grassy fields and trees which were older than time. We slid down muddy tracks which were as sticky as a hot fudge sundae. And we slithered through aqueous brooks.
The air tasted of freedom. The grass smelled of life itself. The birds sang of love.
Nurse Betty sang along with those birds. And so did I! We sang as loudly as we could. Succulent air filled our lungs and sweet rhythm filled our souls. It made me feel free. It made me feel fulfilled.
Dear reader, I really must take this opportunity to mention how grateful I was to Nurse Betty for helping me that day. She didn’t have to. She wasn’t on the clock. But she helped me nonetheless.
God I loved that woman! I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t lust for her body. I didn’t harbour any romantic feelings for her at all. But I did feel a pure, unselfish sort of love for Nurse Betty. A benevolent sort of love. The sort of love that the Ancient Greeks called ‘agape’.
Anyway, Nurse Betty turned off the road and zigzagged through an aromatic copse of dancing trees.
We arrived in a clearing; a glade which was as fresh as a dewy dawn. It was lush. It was inviting.
I inhaled. And I looked up at my new home.
To you, dear reader, that abandoned shack might’ve looked like a wreck. A mere pile of rocks. But to me it was heaven. It was dreamy. It had four stone walls, plenty of wood, and an abundance of nature’s bounty.
My little voice released a huge sigh of relief.
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br /> I finally felt like I belonged.
It’s like Lao Tzu says; ‘The career of a sage is of two kinds: He’s either honoured by all in the world, like a flower waving its head, or else he disappears into the silent forest’.
Well, I’d found my ‘silent forest’, and I was ‘disappearing’ into it.
I’ve been here ever since.
THIRTY
Nurse Betty said ‘Goodbye’ and I got to work.
I fixed the roof, using the wood which was propped up against an outside wall, and I made a small stove using the stony rubble which was scattered all around. That hut became a home. It became more than a home. For me, it was a palace, a refuge and a sanctuary.
The rain dripped in through places I hadn’t even realised existed. The wind whistled. It twisted and it whirled. But I didn’t care. I drank that rain down with gusto. And I sucked in that sweet, saccharine air.
I took it all in and smiled.
What wonder! What beauty! What grace!
I finally felt like I belonged. Like I’d found my natural state.
My whole life began to ebb and flow in time with nature’s rhythm.
It’s like Lao Tzu says; ‘Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished’.
Well, I didn’t ‘hurry’. I made little improvements to my shack each day. I did a little bit here and a little bit there. And, in time, ‘everything was accomplished’.
I constructed a table and some chairs using scavenged wood. I built gutters to collect rainwater. I dug a natural toilet. And I made a small wind-turbine which powered my lamp.
Nurse Betty brought me a mattress and some seeds.
I put the finishing touches to my home and then set to work on the glade, where I planted all the seeds I thought might flourish.
I grew luscious greens, crunchy vegetables and succulent tomatoes; vibrant berries, eager fruit trees and hearty pulses.
I taught myself how to survive. How to turn wood into fire, wheat into flour, and plants into potions. How to forage; how to spot edible berries and mushrooms. How to dry nuts, roast coffee and process rice. How to smoke, dehydrate, salt and pickle fresh food. And how to perform spiritual exercises like meditation and yoga.