My Asian friend was in the changing room this morning he having been to the gym, me having been for a swim. He told me that he has thought every day about what I said – that living each day in the knowledge that one day we will die is positive and enriching. He didn’t use the word ‘enriching’ but that was basically the gist of it. He also told me that he is from South Korea. And he said that he still argues with his wife. When I suggested that must take a lot of energy which could be used in more positive ways he said, “We both enjoy it.”

There were only three of us in the pool for Public Swimming at 11 this morning. There had been six of us at mass at St Agnes at 10 but of course there’s only one service a day and there are swimming sessions on the hour every hour from early morning into the evening at the Castle Centre. When I climbed out having done my 600 meters in half an hour there were five in the pool.

There was a newcomer in the changing room when I was getting dressed after my swim and he said that he thought the water looked very cold. He’d been to the gym not the pool. I said that if it had been cold I wouldn’t have been swimming and that it was much warmer than the temperature outside.

After a bit more chat about keeping fit, or in my case mobile, he asked how old I was. I told him and he said, “Isn’t being eighty a bit sad? You can have nothing to look forward to.” And then, “You can’t even be a politician.” He was in his forties, I guess, and Asian, Japanese I think, and he might not have realised his comments were perhaps unconventional for British culture. Even for me it was a bit of a surprise as a conversation for the swimming pool changing room. And why he picked on being a politician I have no idea. Perhaps politicians in Asia tend to be older than in the West.

I said that being eighty was not in the least bit sad and that my life was very full and, on the whole, fun. “But how can it be?” he said, “You’re old.” He seemed genuinely surprised and wondering so I told him the story.

“There was a student who asked his master. ‘What is the most important thing in life.’ To which the master replied, ‘To know that one day you will die.’
The student said, ‘But everyone knows that.’ And the master replied, ‘Yes. But not everyone lives with the knowledge of that.’”

“Now that really is sad!” my new friend said. And I explained to him that, on the contrary, living with that knowledge gives value and strength and meaning and lots more besides to every moment of every day. He said that he’d never thought of it that way. We talked a bit more. He said he must think differently when he argued with his wife. I don’t know where that came from. Then, being dressed and ready to go, he smiled, said, “Thank you for a lot to think about,” and went.

There was another man in the changing room getting ready to swim. He’d been listening in and said, “It’s a bit early in the day for philosophy!” And he went off to swim. I was left thinking may be not philosophy – theology. And in my book it’s never too early in the day for that.

November 30th

I checked with the Vicar, Fr Paul, from whom I’d first heard that student/master dialogue to see if I had it right. I had, more or less. Traditionally the dialogue begins with the student asking, “What must I know to be enlightened?” And it continues from there.

On the BBC news website in an article about the young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg I read that she, ‘has called the climate summit a, “failure, and a PR exercise.” ‘ And in the same article, ‘However, Thunberg has avoided getting into the detail of what action should be taken, saying, “it is nothing to do with me.” ‘

Unless this is ‘lost in translation’, surely the whole point of what she is saying and doing is that it is to do with all of us, especially the young, including her. I keep remembering the Chinese proverb used by President John F Kennedy, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

Surely the climate summit is far more more than “ blah, blah, blah”. I believe it is trying to light candles and I suspect too many are still more cursing the dark. Pity.

Of course I should not be surprised by the fact that certain quotations appeal simply because they support what I already think. Years ago I learned to beware when after morning service a parishioner said, “Thank you so much Vicar, for such a good sermon.”
“The chances are that all you’ve done,” a wise priest told me, “is to have confirmed their prejudices.”

So when I read the quote at the beginning of chapter five of Christopher Lascelles’ book ‘Pontifex Maximus A Short History of the Popes’, I liked it. They quote was from H.L.Mencken and read,

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilised the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and wrong. The truly civilised man is always sceptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others.”

But when I thought about it more the quote seemed to have a degree of judgmental certainty about it that I liked less. There is that aspect of it which suggests, “The one thing I cannot tolerate is intolerance.” And I remembered one of my children commenting once, long ago, “Take no notice when Dad says something loudly and firmly. It’s when he says something quietly and calmly, that’s when he’s probably right.” Mencken seems to me to be saying something loudly and firmly.

Yes, I liked the quote when I first read it, but to what extent does its weight lie in the meaning of the words themselves or is there just a neat smoothness in the phraseology. And who is or was H.L. Mencken? He could be a nineteenth century German philosopher or a columnist for The Guardian. It was unlikely, I thought, that he would be in the team of President Trump, or, if he were Russian, a protégé of President Putin. And does who he is or was matter? Anyway I googled him and found his Wikipedia entry.

‘Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. . .
As a scholar, Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. As an admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he was an outspoken opponent of organized religion, theism, and representative democracy, the last of which he viewed as a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors. Mencken was a supporter of scientific progress and was critical of osteopathy and chiropractic. He was also an open critic of economics.’

There he was, as presented to me by whoever writes Wikipedia articles. And there was another Mencken quote in the entry,

“War is a good thing because it is honest, it admits the central fact of human nature…. A nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid.”

I did not like this quote at all. It is so far from what I think to be true. For me the central fact of human nature is life, not death. And, I believe, life has the possibility of fulfilment in so much that is positive – above all, love. This quote makes me very wary of others attributed to H.L.Mencken.

Through all this I come to the realisation that I need to be careful when approached by immediately appealing quotes, brief texts, or anything that seems to sum up too smoothly or glibly aspects of the human condition for which there is no easy summing up.

I gather the immediately appealing or attractive quote, phrase or saying, is close to what the young call ‘clickbait’. And, again from Wikipedia, I discover,

‘Clickbait is a text or a thumbnail link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow that link and read, view, or listen to the linked piece of online content, being typically deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading. A “teaser” aims to exploit the “curiosity gap”, providing just enough information to make readers of news websites curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content. Click-bait headlines add an element of dishonesty, using enticements that do not accurately reflect the content being delivered. The “-bait” part of the term makes an analogy with fishing, where a hook is disguised by an enticement (bait), presenting the impression to the fish that it is a desirable thing to swallow.’

I really must learn to recognise and avoid the bait more readily or, perhaps much more importantly, to find out more about and get to know, the fisherman.

Silver swim this morning. I’ve noticed him before and he was there again today. He wears his swimming goggles above his forehead rather in the place where people push their reading glasses when they’re not reading. But these are not reading glasses they are swimming goggles. And he is swimming. I wonder why he bothers to wear them at all? I haven’t had the courage to ask him – yet.