Are You Certain?

In my play JUBILATE! The central character ANNA is certain about everything.  She is married to a vicar, she has four children, her life is perfect.  She has a captive audience in her husband’s congregation and starts to point out their mistakes to them, taking some of the most vulnerable under her wing and sorting them out.  She’s funny because, as with all comic characters, the gulf between her view of herself and the audience’s view of her is wide.  She helps bring about the end of one marriage, the suicide of a young woman and the abuse of a single mother by her son.  Adorable.  And even though her own life is disintegrating around her as the curtain falls, she is still totally unaware, absolutely sure that all is well.  Her self-belief is both ridiculous and dangerous.

I’m aware of a lot of certainty in the air at the moment (it’s probably always been there) and I distrust it.

For example: there may be racism within the royal family or household.  There is certainly racism in some of the press attacks on Meghan Markle and in some unattractive anecdotal stuff I’ve heard with my own ears.

Does that make Meghan a reliable narrator about everything?  She said she got married three days before the wedding. False.  She implied that Archie should be a prince and that his skin colour may have been a barrier to that title.  Nope. He will become a Prince the moment Charles becomes King; that’s a simple constitutional fact.  And there’s THE COMMENT, made not to her apparently, but to Harry.   Clearly, I don’t know what was said or by whom or what their intention was or the expression on their face or the feeling in their gut when they said it.  I wasn’t there.

But I am certain of this: I can’t imagine listening to an interview with anyone I don’t know inside out and being happy to take on trust everything they say.  Why would I?  I don’t believe everything I read so why would I believe everything I hear? 

So there I go, appearing to be certain about something.  Or, at least, reconciled to being uncertain. Do I have other certainties?  And, if I do, is that a good thing?

What are you certain about?

I know and understand the thrill of being part of a tribe, being on ‘the right side of history.’  When I marched to oppose the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I was certain I was right – and I do love being right! 

The other thing I am certain I like being is liked. I really do wish I was less weaselly.  Growing up an only child, I have always reserved the right to be as judgmental as I like about other people while being genuinely shocked and hurt if anyone criticises me.  Much was expected of this posthumous Wunderkind, all that was left of a beloved son and husband. Yet that child was also a ridiculous, lowest-status possible specimen, wasn’t she?  Look at her: Pff! Abandoned even before she’d emerged into the world: knock-kneed, puny, pathetic.

I grew up feeling myself to be a somehow neutral point, with no window on myself, no perspective.  I had no gut understanding of what equality might be.   I feel certain that one of the main lessons I am here to learn – and haven’t yet – is how to reconcile a healthy sense of myself with a genuinely equal healthy respect for other people.  All my life, I’ve felt at once better than everyone else and also like the runt of the litter: unwanted, unpopular, pathetic.  The desire to be on the summit alone battles with my need to be enveloped in a group of friends.  I have a tendency – yes, still - to endow new people in my life with either higher or lower status than my own, struggling to land on level ground.  Maybe one day I’ll get there – but I can’t be certain.

I realise I am making myself sound just too delightful here. 

Even a coy little sentence like that is designed to disarm you: I know I’m a pain in the arse but look how charming 😊

My school motto was ‘serve one another by faith and by love, goodness and kindness is the rule.’  The motto made me neither kinder nor gooder than I was minded to be.  But I am certain, more and more so, that kindness is the most valuable quality in the world and the root of all our hope.

So, in the confusion, a few certainties.

Obviously, death and taxes.

Apart from those two:   everyone is redeemable, torture is never justified, animals love unconditionally. 

What would you add to the list?