Hoc Futui

A privileged education and a life of what most would describe as plenty leads me to a single expression.

Which sums up everything I now believe in.

Wouldn’t the Buddha be proud of me.

I could of course have chosen the phrase “Let Go”, or the word “Acceptance”, but neither would have adequately expressed my exasperation and irritation with the thoughts and actions which have dominated my life. Nor my determination to jettison them.

Looking back over the past five years of writing, it seems, perhaps unsurprisingly, that I have returned to the same themes time and again. If I were able to recall all my thoughts over the past 67 odd years, I am sure much the same subjects would dominate.

I imagine many of us have had the same concerns over the course of our lives.

Despite the fact I was born into a comfortably off family in relatively first world England, the trick is always survival. Economically, anyway. Clogs to clogs in three generations is the norm in our society. Assuming your forbears were lucky enough to get out of clogs and into a decent pair of boots in the first place.

“There but for the grace of [insert favourite deity] go I” has always been at the forefront of my mind as I pass a homeless man on the street and throw a copper or two his way. Or don’t.

Even the best healed of my chums have often felt the same. Hardly surprising in a ruthless, dog eat dog world, where life entails brutal competition for everything we need to survive. Vicious battle is not the way our world should be.

Back in the 19th Century a Jewish great grandmother or her family seem to have been kicked out of Imperial Russia and ended up in the East End of London. Her husband, a Huguenot I was told, was brought up in a house of multiple occupation in a nearby neighbourhood. I imagine one set of occupants slept while the other worked, and then places were changed.

I don’t think there were any glamourous relatives on either side of the family. One fellow was apparently a reasonably prosperous builder somewhere in the Midlands, but gambling, drink and women seem to have done for him. At some earlier stage he had returned with winnings from the Ballarat gold rush.

By the time I was born, the Jewish great granny was a very wealthy woman from the rag trade. My mother’s side were cloggies. By comparison anyway.

My father was of the ill fated third generation, and the wealth had evaporated by the time of his death. He was not suited to business.

Money dominated my parents’ lives. The old boy, having been brought up by a very wealthy father, felt it his right to spend. Like Wilkins Micawber, he believed that something would turn up, and in the interim ran up debt.

Hardly surprising then that right from early boyhood I had an overwhelming fear of money – or rather its lack. And I determined I was to make good.

Which in a modest fashion I did, but at a heavy cost to my well being. My character is best suited to some ivory tower, far from the grimy coal face of law and finance where I began my modest ascent. Perhaps some quiet monastic garden would have better met my requirements, and I have always had a soft spot for Tibet, that mystical roof of the world, full of mystery and the eerie music of long horns. Before the Chinese thugs got there.

For almost 30 years I have been trading financial markets to keep myself and my small family out of the poor house. For a couple of years I have been deeply engaged in automated, algorithmic trading of crypto derivatives and after much toil put on a handful of arbitrage trades.

But I have struggled to move on to the next stage. The next idea, the next trade. Perhaps that dread of the debtor’s prison has faded a little as I realise I don’t have to hang on for so much longer.

Or perhaps, more fruitfully, I have at last been able to repeat the mantra “Hoc Futui” and really mean it.

So I played the piano this morning, Bouree and Air by Handel. Not very well, it is true, but with great pleasure.

And I walked along a marshy river bank under a glowering sky to see the egret which lurks there. Spitting with rain, I was grateful for my fine boots and thankful I was not in clogs.

The mediaeval hinges on the old oak door creaked as I crept quietly into the musty gloom and sat, alone in this beautiful old building, and began a silent meditation on a Victorian pew. My little librarian friend arrived, a music scholar, and played the organ, quietly in deference to my efforts. I am as happy here as anywhere, completely at peace. Regardless of my rejection of religious dogma, I am drenched in the culture I was immersed in from childhood, and love every aspect of it. From the damp, beautiful old buildings, to the glorious music and the soaring art which belief has inspired over so many centuries.

Hoc Futui.

The world outside grinds on, but I have determined to shut it out. I have no idea what it is all about or how it came to be there. I’m not sure I care. I have no idea where I am going, if anywhere, or whether I am on a road to nowhere.

If this sounds negative, then I say not so. Peace comes from acceptance of what is and the recognition that almost every aspect of the external world is outside my control. Whatever may be said by others, I claim my thoughts and actions as my own.

If my contemplation leads me to inner peace and a more accepting attitude towards our desecrated planet and largely uncaring species, then that is all I can ask for. As much as I can expect. And all I could want.

Hoc Futui

Illustration: William Blake, from The First Book of Urizen