What’s one habit that has improved your life the most?
I’m a firm believer in keeping your mind active. People ask me what I do to relax and I say, “I study.” I read widely and keep learning. But there’s a warning attached.
Reading widely means we learn a little about a lot of subjects. We must never think we know it all. We must recognise the limits of our knowledge. We know enough to discuss matters intelligently. But that doesn’t make us experts. What it makes us is interested in others, empathetic.
So, read a wide range of subjects, but don’t boast about what you know. Use the little that you learn as a prompt to learn more. Ask questions of those who do know.
As it’s been said, the true knowledge is knowing how little we know.
What has it done for me? It’s allowed me to speak with a wide range of people without embarrassment. As Kipling put it, it’s allowed me to “walk with kings nor lose the common touch.”
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
It’s easy to think about hard times. And it’s easy to give in to them.
But the reality is that it’s not the hard times that we have to worry about. It’s what we do about them.
Because it’s a true today as it’s always been. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall. What counts is how often you get up again. And only you can do that.
What’s a time you followed your gut and it turned out to be exactly right?
Pen y Fan
It was the end of our 37th wedding anniversary holiday when my wife and I stopped at the Pont-ar-Daf car park at the foot of Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons for a rest after a long drive. We decided to stretch our legs a little with a stroll up the path leading to the summit. I had reached the top with a friend a few weeks earlier but my wife had never attempted it.
After a short walk, I asked my wife, who suffered from mild asthma, if she wanted to go back to the car. She asked me what the view was like from the ridge that we could see. I said it’s worth seeing and she said, “Let’s see how we go.”
We walked on steadily, one foot in front of the other, got to the ridge and, indeed, the view was worth the effort. I asked if she was ready to go back to the car and she asked which peak was Pen y Fan. When I pointed it out she said, “Let’s see how we go.”
We kept waking and reached the summit, with its view across the whole of South and Mid Wales just as everyone else was leaving. We were left alone at the top for about ten minutes. It was probably the most emotional experience of our lives together.
We took the required photos and just sat there, alone together, tears in our eyes from the waves of emotions. Getting to the top at the end of an anniversary holiday was well worth the effort. It was a shared experience that drew us even closer together than we had ever been before. And all because of her gut feeling, “Let’s see how we go.” It was the first and only time we ascended Pen y Fan despite living in its shadow for over 40 years together.
The following year, there was upheaval in the family. But that shared experience had given us the strength to keep going and just “see how we go,” one foot in front of the other, in the face of trials.
I rarely directly share personal experiences, but this one has kept me going despite everything that life has thrown at us.
Just over five years later, my wife’s asthma turned out to be lung cancer, and she passed away a few months before what would have been our 43rd anniversary. But that shared experience has kept me going, still dealing with the upheaval in the family, still putting one foot in front of the other, still telling myself, “Let’s see how we go.”
Greenacre 9 