By Douglas Kruger
WALK through the doors of any museum. Instantly, a social code takes effect. You must move sedately, manage yourself with orderly quietude, speak in a low hush. Suck in those elbows. The expectation is that nothing spontaneous or unmanaged should ever occur.
But Jersey is not a museum.
This is not a place of storage for the ancient dead. It is one populated by the living, and that means families with giggling kids and yapping dogs. It means workers with trucks, tourists with maps, teens in their travelling clouds of hormones and music and mayhem.
Mix it together, and the results will be messy, disorderly, boisterous. But also wonderful. This is the stuff of life. Real life, not the dead-museum kind.
As we grow older, it’s all too easy to lose sight of this. We begin to desire unbroken stillness at all times, and to think that such desires are normal. The street is our museum, our neighbours are items on a shelf, who must conduct themselves accordingly.
Life has other plans. When it refuses to comply, that’s when we see Cruella de Vil leaning from her balcony, yelling at kids to stop running. The lighthouse keeper from Scooby Doo spying on his neighbours, hoping to catch them in a terrible crime. Perhaps parking wrong. Or moving their bins in ways he does not sanction.
Taken too far, life itself becomes the enemy. How dare kids play, people talk, neighbours unpack their cars, dogs be dogs, bikes go by?
The saddest part? When children are taught that they are not a blessing, but a burden.
The problem, of course, is not with the children. They are exactly what they should be. The problem lies the adult individual’s choice, made in small increments over years, to become rigid, inward-looking, unyielding. Old on the inside.
We all grow older. It’s normal, natural, good. There is no opting out. But growing old in spirit is different. That is a choice.
A popular meme makes the point: “When I was young, I promised myself I’d always be cool. By the age of 40, I was shouting at cars for being too orange!”
Author Jim Rohn famously argued that we become the average of the five people closest to us. If that applies to curmudgeonly behaviour, this fact becomes a problem. We need life on our island. Youth. Vibrancy. We need innovation, drive, an upward-aiming spirit. We cannot become a culture entirely defined by what people may not do. A people intolerant even of the play of children. Doesn’t that sound like death to you?
Choosing to become old in spirit comes with a cost. That cost is borne by those around us.
For example, I will never forget the day I watched an older man verbally abusing a kid (aged about 11) who dared to ride his bike, quietly and carefully, across a walkway in St Helier, without incident. The old man launched into a rage that beggared belief. He screamed at the kid up close, then stuck his phone in the boy’s face to record “the evidence of your crime!”.
Crime? Seriously? If that is the extent of the crimes we must endure, we should fall to our knees in gratitude for the privileged lives we lead. Then perhaps ask for help to become less mean in spirit.
Instead of descending to unbearable pettiness, there are simple things we can do. Do you ever audit yourself for signs that you may be becoming “old on the inside”?
For instance, which is stronger? Your wish for everything to stay the same, or your interest in new things happening?
And can you still adapt to small changes, or is any deviation whatsoever out of the question? Do you feel like you are “dancing with life”, or fighting it at every turn?
Adaptation is a healthy form of intelligence. It lies at the heart of innovation. It makes the small compromises of human relationships possible. It even informs good customer service: “Yes, we certainly can veer from our usual script for you, no problem.”
When we can’t do it any longer, everything becomes worse. Our relationships lose their grace, our work loses its versatility, our zest for life gives way to a slow decline. We become victims of life, paranoid, ever more resentful of ever tinier slights. And none of it is necessary.
Do you resent kids playing? Does their doing so make you angry? When you hear it stated that way, does that seem right to you?
Do you yearn to have actions banned? Is there a long list of things that people do that you long to see regulated away, so that life can become more like a museum?
It’s not a good instinct. And managing such things in your street, your town, your parish, does not make you the local hero. It makes you a tyrant, and your neighbours’ lives a living hell.
You don’t have to go that way. What if you used that energy for life and growth instead, making or producing something new?
Examine the make-up of your average day. Is it productive, or are you sitting alone in a flat, obsessing over your own situation, and the awfulness of those around you?
Have you started spying on your neighbours from the shadows, waiting for them to commit sins that seem apocalyptically sinister, but are really just the stuff of life. A pot-plant in the wrong place. Their satanic children daring to play with a ball.
If these things bother you, that should be a warning signal. It’s time for change. The longer you sit alone, the worse it grows.
Self-focus is a big part of the problem.
What if you got out into that glorious spring sunshine? Volunteered for a charity, petted some puppies, worked with kids? Doing something outwardly focused can transform your inner world. It is nigh-on impossible to remain a curmudgeon in the presence of a puppy who likes to play tug-of-war with a pair of underpants.
Honest audits help too. Can you still laugh at yourself? When was the last time a problem or inconvenience struck you as funny, rather than the end of the world? Do you see people as enemies. Or just…people… going about their lives, as they should?
Could you join a group of people for a regular activity? The sweatier the better, given that exercise boosts mental health more than anything else. Take the words “sweaty” and “social” and combine as creatively as your morals permit.
People are not inconveniences to be managed away. They are the entire point. And life is not a problem to be shelved. It’s a gift. A privilege. And sure it’s messy. Noisy. Unruly. But that’s part of the charm.
Douglas Kruger is an author and speaker based in St Helier. His books are all available via Amazon and Audible.
