More questions than answers

This blog title today sounds like it is deep, really deep, but do not be afeared, dear reader.  I have promised to write a blog every day for thirty days, although I am not entirely sure why.  The well is already running dry and I’m on day 4.  I think my brain is abnormally small and exceptionally underperforming.

So this blog is not a Deepak Chopra style path to higher enlightenment, it’s inspired by A Question of Sport, in particular the round where you see little snippets of a famous sports personality doing something mundane (it was normally driving a car).  So you’ll see their lips, their eyes, a hand but never the full person.  The team (Bill Beaumont et al – I have no idea (or interest in) who is on it now) would then try and work it out who it was.  Did that look like Ray Reardon’s eyebrow?  Or could it have been Princess Anne’s upper lip?  Anyhoo, the song ‘There are more questions than answers’ used to play in the background and I often find myself humming it at inopportune moments, such as during a driving lesson (perhaps I think I am being filmed for the snippet round?) or while my students are sitting a controlled assessment.  

The point is that the snippet round was either incredibly easy or incredibly difficult depending on whether the sports personality had any defining features or not.  Red hair and it was probably Gordon Strachan, for example but if they just had a chin and eyes that looked like eyes – then it was normally a toss up between a racing driver or a cricketer; as they seemed to have the most uniformly bland faces in the 80s.

Bu then my current fascination with A Question of Sport, and the snippet round in particular, is clearly based on something more philosophically rooted about how I perceive people (obviously).  I dissemble and deceive all the time: I think most people who have met me would think I was an exceptionally cheerful person with lots of energy.  This is based on the snippets they see.  What they don’t realise is that I’m actually a miserable old shrew who spends most of her free time lying down, willing the world to ‘do one’.  And even though I am aware of the gap between what they perceive and how I am, I routinely base my judgements of people on the miniscule amount of time I may spend with them.  So someone will be assigned to ‘never talk to again ‘pile, because of an offhand remark or a facial tic which may or may not have appeared just after one of my incredible jokes.  Granted, if you’re not going to assume things about a person from what they present to you, then what are you going to use?  In brief, I don;t know, but I think the answer is for me to at least bear in mind that the snippets presented do not make the whole person and if I can remember the nights I have spent with my fist in my mouth after misjudging a situation and looking like a prick, I’m sure everyone else can too.  Do I sense a New Year’s Resolution coming on?  Regretfully, yes.  I hadn’t started this point with a view to setting my self anymore life targets, but sod it, in for a penny in for a pound.  This year I will not put so much emphasis on face value and first impressions.

However I will try and base more philosophical and soul searching blog posts on game shows from the 80s and 90s.  Next up: Learn to love yourself: the Bullseye doctrine.

Author: nefny

Getting on with it. View all posts by nefny