Books

Writing has become the new broadcast, although it operates on a slower frequency. I send out stories about childhood, work, depression, family, foolishness, intelligence, ordinary courage and the ways people reduce themselves to survive the rooms they enter. Some are read immediately, some may wait years and some may remain silent objects in a world already overflowing with words. I cannot control the return.

This is where this chapter belongs after the preceding one. That chapter asks whether I can begin again without pretending the working years did not matter, while this one asks what happens once the page has turned and the missing answers remain missing. Retirement does not automatically return the parts of a person surrendered to work, conformity or survival. It may simply remove the noise that prevented him hearing how long they have been absent. The rain sounds louder when there is no office door to close against it.

The Black Dog does not appreciate that kind of patience because its strongest arguments depend upon urgency. It says the feeling must be resolved now, the failure is complete now and the burden has already become permanent. Time threatens that conclusion by allowing circumstances, chemistry, conversation, sleep, treatment or simple human interruption to alter the evidence. Even a small change exposes the claim of permanence as an exaggeration, and depression dislikes having its language audited. The next day may not defeat it, but the next day can force it to prepare another argument. Sometimes making the darkness repeat itself is the beginning of hearing where the reasoning fails.

That does not require me to accept the institution, only to respect the need from which it may have grown. Faith can be an act of courage when it admits uncertainty, while religion can become an act of control when it disguises interpretation as command. Scepticism can protect thought, but it can also become a shield against wonder, dependence and the possibility that another person has found meaning in a place I cannot enter. None of us is improved by replacing one rigid certainty with another.

That may be more difficult than it sounds because solving things has long been part of my identity. Listening can feel inadequate when no decision has been made, no strategy adopted and no action item allocated to a responsible officer. Yet some people do not need to be fixed by the person in front of them. They need evidence that somebody has noticed there is more than the image being presented.

I also have to allow that same possibility for myself. The accountant, mentor, writer, husband, father and volunteer need not be dismantled merely to prove that another Jeff exists. They can remain genuine expressions of the person while surrendering their claim to be the complete explanation. The task is not to extinguish the public image, but to stop using its brightness to hide whatever is standing behind it.

That does not make the anger false, but it does make it mine to examine. There were times when I reduced myself to fit the room and then blamed the room for accepting the smaller version I had offered. There were also times when I delivered the full-colour explanation with such force that the people listening may have heard only the force. Being right about the existence of more colours does not guarantee that I have made anybody want to look at them.

The younger man may have imagined wealth as escape from the choices poverty removed. The professional man learned that money also purchases time, status and the presumption that a person is worth hearing. The older man has begun to suspect that the richest use of money would be to return choice, time and voice to other people. That may be what the song has been waiting for me to understand.

The words that formed me worked that way. They arrived through songs, poems, performances, films and the internal radio without submitting an explanation of their future purpose. If I Had a Hammer did not need me to understand political folk music when I first heard it. It only needed to leave the tool behind. The rest of my life gradually supplied the timber, the damage, the anger and the uncertainty about where the next blow should fall.

The system was not always right, and neither was I. Some warnings should have been heard, some institutions deserved the criticism and some of the stupidity I encountered was every bit as damaging as I have described it. Yet anger becomes dishonest when it edits out my pride, my impatience, my need to be recognised or the possibility that another person saw a cost I had not included. The losing side of a dispute is not automatically the noble side simply because it contains me.

After the bands stop playing, we discover what the gratitude was worth. If the veteran is left to fight another department, another night without sleep or another day without secure shelter, the music was not honour but accompaniment. If Indigenous service can be celebrated while Indigenous imprisonment continues at an obscene rate, commemoration has been separated from conscience. If we speak of heroes while refusing to look at the systems that manufacture need, the word has become a substitute for action.

I have done that with responsibility. I found Bigweld, service above self, pay it forward and every story in which the useful outsider arrives when official structures have failed. I placed them around the table and asked whether I should help, knowing perfectly well how the vote would go. The dissenting voice suggesting rest, boundaries or the possibility that another adult might carry his own parcel was frequently ruled out of order.