Hypothetically Disagreeable

Do you ever find yourself rehearsing hypothetical disagreements in your head?

I caught myself doing it on the way to work a few weeks back. Workmen were digging up the pavement: something they seem to do an awful lot of around here (I suspect to fulfil some kind of hole-digging-and-filling-in-again quota that they need to tick off before the end of the financial year to help justify next year’s budget – but that’s a whole different topic/conspiracy theory/made up scenario that most likely just lives in my poor, harassed brain). This particular worksite had been terrorising pedestrians and cyclists for the better part of two weeks and some of what they were doing didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. They had coned off a sizable stretch of walkway at the start of the work, you see, and then proceeded to do nothing with it for days and days and days: no digging; no stashed away tools or equipment; no sign of even the suggestion of future tarmac bothering. I was sure they would get around to it at some point – workmen do have an uncanny knack of apparently doing no work at all and then magically completing a project overnight without anyone seeing; like a troop of hard hat wearing shoemaker’s elves – but I didn’t know when, and in the meantime a whole stretch of pavement was off-limits for no apparent reason. Or was it? It was still perfectly walkable pavement. There was nothing there to trip over or fall into and there was definitely, hopefully, nothing to topple over or drop out of the sky onto my head. There wasn’t even a workman in sight – not even one of those important ones that stands around ‘inspecting’ the ground for half an hour before turning around and heading back to their van for a well-earned cup of tea. There was nothing to stop me… except for the signs and the barriers and the cones.

There’s still something very reassuringly British about obeying the laws of roadway construction. It’s a bit like the law that says we have to apologise to someone else when we step on their toes or the law of amiable queuing. We tend to not question signs and barriers, and definitely not cones, we tend to just shrug and dutifully follow the diversion signs. But this time, this time, I was feeling rebellious. This time I was going to bravely, perhaps recklessly, step around one of those stout, protective cones and jolly well walk on that stretch of still unadulterated pavement. Yes, I was, and hang the consequences… And that’s where the whole point of this post comes in…

Yes, I could do it, and I did it, but I couldn’t just forget about it, oh no! I had to rehearse in my head a hypothetical conversation with a belligerent workman who had jobsworthedly taken offense at my rebellious ways. I am certain, and was pretty convinced in the moment, that it was a complete and utter waste of my time and effort - after all the only workmen within a one-mile radius were back at their van having a cup of tea and probably a biscuit or two from a grimy Tupperware – but I still had to do it, I still had to prepare my argument and justification, most probably to assuage a desperate self-, and culture-fuelled, sense of guilt. I was finding myself worried about the consequences of breaking that pesky law of roadway construction. I had delved into a slimy pit of personal and cultural shame that, from a distance, looked a little bit silly but was still very, very real.

And now, as I step back and reflect on my experience, I find myself wondering how my thoughts and actions jibe with Jesus’s very clear advice about worry to all those people on that hill. On the one hand it’s right and proper to take on board social norms and expectations, otherwise we end up descending into a culture of rampant individualism and anarchy, but, on the other hand, I do need to question whether I really need to get so het up about it all. Can I not find a healthy, respectful middle-ground: one that both honours the other and frees up my poor brain to work on things that are not wrapped up in neuroses and might actually have some value? Hypothetical arguments, hypothetical situations, all wrapped up in real thoughts, feelings and, yes, worries.

I’m not sure that I have the time or the willpower to keep fighting hypotheticals. There’s still a lot to think about in this little old life… and rapidly less time to do it. I’m pretty sure I need to focus on the things that really, really matter, whilst still taking time for a nice cup of tea once in a while… and perhaps a biscuit or two…