OCEAN WAVES AND RAIN-SOAKED WINDOWS

Listening to ‘ocean waves’ today for white noise. It’s okay but it just keeps reminding me that I’m not at the beach.

I’m in Oxford, which is about as far from the nearest ocean as you can be on this old island of ours. Alright, it’s not as landlocked as say, Kansas, but it is still 70 miles from the sea - which is a long way when you’re stuck in an office with plasma lamps and rain-streaked windows.

“Have you checked the weather?” asked Sammy this morning in the car on the way to the station.

“Erm, no,” I replied. I caught up with her thinking suddenly and pulled the sleeves of my very thin summer coat. The Met office app showed a row of grey clouds with heavy looking raindrops. Too late to do anything about that.

Now here we are, with grey clouds over Oxford and rain dribbling down the window. It isn’t matching the sound of waves crashing onto the shore in my ears.

I heard someone yesterday say that people with high expectations have the lowest resilience. In other words, we’re vulnerable to depression and inactivity because the gap between reality and what we’d hoped for is massive. That sounds like a typical Generation Y complaint but it almost certainly afflicts us Xennials as well - a malaise brought on by the crushing reality of squashed pipe-dreams.

I’ve been thinking about it. I do believe that success is a result of character, and character is built on adversity - therefore, a little difficulty, a little pain and failure is actually very healthy. But what do you do when the chasm between you and the thing you hoped for is still far wider than you can jump? Do you give up? Change your expectations? Start looking for other ways to build a bridge?

I do not know. I’m in a rainy town with the sound of the sea ringing in my ears, trying to think about it. That person who made the comment went on to say that he wished a little pain and suffering on the students he was talking to - Stamford graduates who’d known what it was to be top of their class, surrounded by brilliant hope and sparkling expectations. Pain and suffering. They all laughed out loud when he said it of course, but he was very serious. Difficulty would give them resilience. Resilience was the key to success.

I switched off the ocean waves in the end. I have to focus on the next step, which today is getting through a day in Oxford: a working day, a set of to-dos and the agenda that’s trickled down in front of me. Inexorably though, I know the day will morph into tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, until the coming moment when I’m standing on a windswept shore - endless ocean ahead, crashing and rolling onto sand and stones. I’m pretty sure I can get there.