That which we are, we are

A keen eye will see in the title a reference to a Tennyson poem that I confess I had not read until my mid-twenties. A poem many would say is one of their favourites.

It has become something of a Matryoshka doll of meaning to me.

Over time it has revealed, like the dolls, a meaning more simple, delicate and profound in each form. It is its latest form of meaning to me that I wish to share with you today.

I just think this poem it is of such awe-inspiring beauty to ponder as we do our own ‘year ahead’ with all the plans, promises and protestations inevitably abounding as we do.

An alternative New Year’s message then – a perfect one, I hope – and the antithesis to those that offer or intimate of more happiness for you if you just buy what I am selling or ‘make that change’.

It is no instruction or demand of you. Just a perspective.

I confess I was prompted to think of it again while watching Skyfall over Christmas. Many chocolates in something hit me much deeper and far more than it ever did before.

The very meaning I had come to associate with the poem somehow aligned seemingly perfectly with how I now saw how Sam Mendes deployed its use in Skyfall. The question or issue he called upon as the audience to think about most.

This was and is more than just a Bond film with a few stirring lines from a Tennyson poem. This was about you and me. Let me explain….

In the film the scene where the verse is introduced finds M before a committee reviewing the value or purpose of MI6. Or more bluntly of Bond.

Make no mistake about it.  This scene is about the value of the individual. Juxtaposed in the setting of a collective judgment over another collective in the form of MP’s committee and MI6. A metaphor for our society and your place in it. Groups judging groups and defining a new way for all. The individual no longer relevant to relenting modernity and ‘progress’.

The question of what is of value or not in this scene is most acutely that of the individual. Bond. You.

The very introduction of the poem to the scene is this very point made again. It cannot be clearer the value of the individual is Mendes’ focus.

Following the formal speech which ends with the line “how safe do you feel” M adds what follows as almost a throwaway line.

It is her own unique contribution, when she speaks from her own heart not from the mind demanded by her role. It unfolds thus.

“Just one more thing to say. My late husband was a great lover of poetry, and I suppose some of it sunk in. Despite my best intentions.”

Here she invokes her late husband’s poetry – that which she did not understand or value in life herself – in her own most testing hour of need.

It speaks to the unique ways in which individuals can shape our very being in ways we do not understand or appreciate. How that we perceive having to endure their uniqueness for their sake not ours as we do. Yet how, almost inexplicably, it is these very unique and individual streaks in whatever form they take that we are eventually value and learn from most in our own lives. Immeasurably grateful for that which they are and what it helps make of us.   

She continues.

“And here today I remember this, from Tennyson.

We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven.

That which we are, we are.

One equal temper of heroic hearts

Made weak by time and fate.

But strong in will

To strive. To seek. To find

And not to yield”.

When we look beyond its appearance of M seemingly reminding the floor of the value of the intelligence services in a modern world that is relentlessly seeming to invalidate it, we see the profound beauty of what I spoke of wanting to share.

Who else today feels ever less relevant in world accelerating away from us and our families? Seemingly destined to be swept away before an ever-accelerating technological invasion and coordination of our lives?

Who exactly is feeling empowered and more able to effect the change that once moved earth and heaven?

Almost none I suspect.

Adapt or die they say.

The relentless nature of the change is one you have felt as you pondered those ‘new year, new you’ – whether we admit it publicly or not.

We are, faced, Like M or Bond, with a seemingly inescapable truth that we must adapt or die in the face of this seemingly unrelenting and all-powerful force that is modernity.

To seek to remain relevant in a world ever more changing.

But the price is our own sense of Skyfall – a cataclysmic metaphor for one’s world falling apart.

Or simply. We give up more and more of who that which we are to meet the demands of a world we never wished so.

What meaning then of the poem I spoke of?

The verse and its meaning is one of defiance. A celebration of unmatched beauty. A path to more. The antidote to Skyfall.

The words exude a confidence that is without basis. Uttered in the face of the apparent overwhelming force.

It speaks to a simple and powerful truth that the most purpose, meaning and value lies in a life that, to the outside at least, is a sort of glorious failure of the individual who chooses to matter. No matter what.

To live by a way they know to be true, right and just.

The path they have found and will not yield.

The glory of the individual and their perspective. Their own purpose.

Their meaning.

Not defined by time or fait or by any other. Only themselves.

To not yield to the forces that may well be set to overcome it but who have no right to do so.

That which we are, we are.

Yet how few of us know that purpose and meaning. That path?

How many more have lived what is really a collective idea we tell ourselves to be our own?

As we make choices of which ideas we wish to adopt or commit to as part of our new year’s resolution, maybe this year it can be the first time you choose your idea?

When you commit to seek and to find something far more valuable than simply to conform to what the collective defines as individual success. Or its appearance thereof.

Why not listen to just yourself? What do you want to do? What matters to you?

Your place to stand alone. Your value.

Your meaning.

I have come to believe, even know in my own mind, that this unknown path is the richest one to pursue in life. And I am acutely aware that this is what makes it so terrifying when compared to the comfort and security of living the ideas so widely shared and followed by others.

The unknown nature of the path is worth reflecting on as it is the barrier to change. The very unknown nature of your destination is not to fear. There is no demand for your life fully transform.

Just take one step towards that unknown and open the door to yourself.  Your true self.

Take one stand for yourself, for your own reasons. For reasons that matter.

Your life will evolve not jump to an unknown and unrecognisable state.

Where that path takes anyone is for them and them alone. And that is its other truth.

You will always be in control.

You alone are the one who can seek and find what is of value to you.

You make the choices now.

And I believe without a doubt that the lives of countless others will be made far richer for its pursuit than if you do not. I know it.

Or as Archimedes once proclaimed, “Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth”.

This January then I hope you remember.

That which you are, you are.

To matter. No matter what.

Strong in will. Heroic in heart.

Never to yield.

HNY

There is a wider narrative / meaning within the Daniel Craig Bond films that run as a series of very much linked and deeply layered stories about modern life – another blog I want to write but the complexity I can’t find a way to write through just yet, 2 years in my head and no eureka yet. One day perhaps I’ll get there.