To return to the metaphor of my top ten friends being like the fingers on my hands, I’ve now lost four fingers. I’ve got a thumb and two fingers on each hand. Better than none. Reasonably serviceable. Django Reinhardt managed to become a celebrated jazz guitarist with only two functioning fingers on his left hand. Emotionally I’m very good at making the ‘devil’s horns’ sign with both hands, though I’m not as keen on heavy metal as I was.
Those berserkers must have lost a few fingers, literally and metaphorically. I wonder how many of them survived into their sixties like me.
What did those old berserkers do? Surely the looting, pillaging, and killing with a wild and senseless abandon had to stop at some point? You can’t be off your tits on henbane and alcohol your entire life? Surely they were allowed to go home? Maybe they got a little smallholding, raised some chickens, grew some prize vegetables? Lived in the warm glow of a family – a wife, children, grandchildren.
This isn’t me wanting to retire, far from it, I think I would literally die of boredom if I didn’t work, and my best work is still to come (stop laughing), but I think I’ve finally come to terms with what made me a berserker. Becoming a berserker was a reaction to the situation I found myself in, a defence mechanism. It became a way of life, and a way of expressing myself. I found the fun in it, even though it was essentially quite damaging. But the years of being a practising Stoic have made me more at ease with myself. I’m not as angry. I feel more secure. I’m a lot happier. I feel I don’t have to prove anything. I’ve got it in perspective, and writing it down has helped me do that.
The Japanese have a tradition called kintsugi in which they mend broken pots with a gold-coloured pigment so you can see where the damage was. They’re proud of the repair. Part of the process of coming to terms with the damage is to show it off, and not be ashamed. The berserker in me feels like one of those pots – you can see my cracks, but I’ve been repaired, and I’m more or less fully functional. I could probably hold a pint of miso soup without leaking. (This is my second attempt at Pseuds Corner.)
And where are you?
You’ve probably learned enough biographical material to access my old post office savings account – good luck with that, because I can’t get into it – but have you recognized bits of yourself in any of this? I don’t mean directly of course, but we’re all connected to other people, we all have dreams, we all have difficulties, we all meet with success and failure, life is very rarely linear, we can all take a little introspection on occasion, and we all have to make peace with our pasts.
And yet, we also have to bear in mind what the noted psychologist Carl Jung once said:
‘I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.’
So maybe it’s all bollocks.
FIN