As a small child I fell off a 30ft high terrace in northern Pakistan, dismounted a horse headfirst in Lahore, was pulled back from climbing overboard an ocean liner, had to be coaxed in from the window sill of a fourth floor tenement window and permanently carried hundreds of cuts and bruises.
Risk taking – stretching beyond our safety to learn is one of the most basic of human instincts. Watch any small child and they will persist to get what they want – no matter how many falls and setbacks. As a child, I had this capacity in spades. But asthma then curtailed my flair for adventure. It was the cosseting and the persistent cries of “Michael, you can’t do that” that kept me in what now seems like a straitjacket.
My parents, doctors, teachers and a whole cast of adult conspirators did that to me. I don’t blame them. Asthma is unpleasant – in fact it is downright terrifying. You can’t breathe. Your throat and your chest are constricted. You feel helpless and hapless. You think you are going to die. I know. I wheezed my way in and out hospitals more times that I care to remember. But I would have adapted far better if I had been allowed to deal with the attacks without an army of concerned adults whispering their concerns and pulling me away from strenuous activity.
What happened to me is what would to any child in that situation. I began to believe that I couldn’t do things that others could. I began to seek the succour and sympathy an asthma attack would bring. Slowly, I my dependence on that support grew. As I gasped for breath my eyes would avert to the nearest adult prop. Without it I became fearful, my body craved attention – the rubbing of the back, the soft palm on my forehead and the whispered assurances. I learned to use my vulnerability to elicit affection and favour.
I know now that I was overprotected and that served me ill as a child.
Leaving home, at sixteen, (like so many before me, I headed to London) I breathed deeply and with such blessed relief that I knew then what to do – to put my body on the line and to live life on the edge – it was a liberation. Sleeping out on London’s cold and damp streets, working my fingers to the bone on dusty building sites, smoking heavily – the list is endless. What did I find out about myself? For a start, I was a great deal tougher and more resilient than my parents, doctors and peers ever gave me credit for.
But there was more. I learned I was resourceful. I knew how to stretch a little to make a lot. I took beatings – a lot. I was and, am a survivor. The challenges life throws up are there to be faced up to and overcome. My addiction to being cosseted was replaced by an equally ferocious passion for risk.
That’s why today’s uncertain climate excites. We need now more than ever to make more of the resources we have and to come up with new ideas and fresh approaches. We need to turn fear into excitement and something else I learned in my early adulthood – don’t moan about it, do something. Make things happen.
I have organised a few Thinktastic workshops recently and when I have given people the tools and encouragement to find from within that resourcefulness, it’s dynamite.
This period of economic turmoil is an opportunity for the new.