Fight the nothingness
If you are on a motorway in the early hours and there’s an elderly chap behind you driving a massive Iveco Stralis, it’s possibly my dad. Now in his 70s, he still wakes at just before 5am to start work doing what he has done for most of his life — driving a truck.
He has had that job, with pretty much the same employer, for most of my life. I spent many summer days in the passenger seat of his Leyland Clydesdale. Every child wants to be copy their parents’ work so I used to love taking the straps off curtainsiders. The snap was really satisfying.
My dad could, and should, retire. But he won’t. He will be doing what he does until he is prevented to do so for one reason or another. It’s a hard and physically demanding job, to which many of us would consider the weekend to be a welcome time to relax. My dad doesn’t. He’s up at the same time, washing the windows or tidying by 7am. I recall, as a teenager, he would get me out of my hangover by vacuuming at 7.30 on a Sunday morning. He cannot be stopped.
I have frequently wondered why he has this routine, as it is increasingly demanding, commesurate with age. It’s because if he stops, he will stop. The routine is life’s journey for him. He wants to feel the journey of life itself, in the same way that I felt the journey of travel as a child in the truck.
It means that there is little — well, what we now call downtime. Why ponder and get negative about the world when you can be doing something about it, however little and ineffectual that action is to anyone else?
Of course, like all children, it takes us a long time to not just appreciate but understand the genetic, emotional, and behavioural effects of our parents. The feeling that I get of doing a job — a job well done — is the same that my dad gets when he drops the truck off back at the depot. His day might have been about a series of drops across the country, within the legal confines of the tachometer. My day might have been about coaching, probably over a laptop screen rather than actually travelling anywhere (for now). But, the effect is the same.
It took an artist, of course, to describe this feeling.
In 2012, David Shrigley had a major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery. The outside of the building had a huge vinyl poster of a Shrigley artwork. It had three words, in his well-known wobbly writing style: FIGHT THE NOTHINGNESS.
And, isn’t what this <waves hands in the direction of life> is all about? Fighting the nothingness?
Fighting the nothingness is more than filling time with work. I have had some really empty times — when it has felt like there has been nothing, and no-one, around. That feeling of emptiness is really challenging, as it denigrates into a feeling where I question my own existence. There is no greater, or deeper, instruction at that point than to fight the nothingness.
I have talked about ending Imperica magazine before but it has only been in the past few months that I have considered how its absence has dented my life. The feeling of being continually productive, and meeting people (virtually or otherwise) for shared interests. Since a blog post earlier this year on new business ideas, while I have continued to work on them, there is a piece of my mind — and heart — reserved for Imperica. That sounds trite, and I won’t apologise for it.
Imperica magazine was a friend, really, and I have certainly caused nothingness in my life over the years by cutting ties with people. Sometimes that was for the right reasons, sometimes not. Fight the nothingness with people around you who you love, even if they or you never express such in what is said. It’s what is done that is important.
Fight the nothingness with work, with people, with love, with sweet times, with relaxing times. Even the hardest and most testing of times — and we have those in abundance right now — will feel like they are contributing toward a — your — greater good.
Fight it.
