I’ve been thinking for a while about resurrecting the dear old Cup of Coffee page. Rather to my surprise, I miss it. It had become a chore, which is why I stopped. I felt a pressing sense of duty to the Dear Readers, and this was too much, with all the other work I had to do.
But it turns out that sending something lovely out into the ether, for no particular reason - it’s not a horse thing or a writing thing or a Being A Professional thing - is fulfilling for the soul. And I’ve had some vet bills and a couple of non-payers (how I wish I knew what to do about those) and all those lovely cups of coffee really do add up and help with the hay. Winter is coming on, so I’m about to order in the hay. Perhaps this is a bale of hay, rather than a cup of coffee.
I’ve been thinking about what I love to receive, and what I’m so often hunting for on social media. It is: wisdom.
If I can find just one wise thing to get me through the day, then I’m reassured and galvanised. It’s why I adore great quotes from great minds and am always collecting them. It’s why I love books packed with universal truths. It’s why I love people who know the Stoics inside out and upside down.
But here’s the thing. The wisdom is not always easily available. I’ll give you an example. I was Googling about for some, just now, and I came upon a page where a bloke had asked all his readers for their most wise pieces of advice. ‘Hurrah!’ I thought. ‘Collation! Data! Right from the coal-face!’ This is the kind of thing I completely and totally love.
But the terrible sadness was that he took all the words of wisdom and reduced them to bullet points and management-speak. I’m sure there was some good stuff there, but I couldn’t read it, because of the terrible deadened language. (If my old Dear Readers are still with me, you’ll know how much I care about language.)
These kind of falling disappointments are too common. I’m always finding what I think are wonderful Facebook pages, with poetic, sage lines of thought and nice pictures. And then after I follow them for about ten minutes, they degenerate into clickbait or gimcrack. (I see why people do this. The algorithms are brutal now, and don’t really like anything which is real or true.)
So, as is so often the case, I thought: if I want daily wisdom, I’ll damn well have to gather it myself. This is how books start. I always say to my writers: write the book you long to read, but you can’t find in the bookshop.
For some reason, I want daily wisdom. It may be an age thing. So I’m going to do it myself. And then we can ponder it together.
Today’s words of wisdom are rather surprising. They don’t look that exciting or profound at first glance. (Or rather: they did not to me.) But the more I look at them the more I think there is something foundationally important there. Anyway, I love remembering how fallible I am, and how fallible we all are. I find it liberating and a great relief.
Here is the line I liked:
‘Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.’
It’s from Gerald Brenan who was a writer and a lover of Spain and a bit of a Bloomsberry.
I think it is wonderfully true.
PS. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the pictures. I think that random loveliness may be the order of the day. This photograph is of my splendid friend Deano, an Irish Draught of such loveliness that no camera can ever quite catch it. He works at HorseBack UK, a charity which helps veterans and young people through the medium of horses and horsemanship. Those hills you see beyond him are rising from the Dee valley, looking west.