Nothing

I had a strange dream just before waking this morning.

I was at a School function of some kind, and I met someone I know - let's call him M. (He is, I think, the happiest person I've ever met. He's always full of energy and enthusiasm; he's always delighted to meet you; I think his experience of the world is what my own might be one day, if the medicine works. He's not in School. It seems to be just the way he is.)

In my dream, however, I could hardly recognise him. He was wearing a conservative dark blue suit and tie, he looked frightened, and uncertain of what to do. What I knew, as I woke, was that M had forgotten himself because he had spent time in School.

Well, it was just a dream. Even so, I think it reflects something that I've felt for a long time. The School as it is raises some people up, because it's relatively better than what they know. There are others, however, who already know something better, and for them the School is relatively bad company. What we do is teach people about duty and obedience. This is helpful to many, but there are others for whom duty is the bedrock of their existence - but far from the whole of it. For them, "there is no time to attend a School, or to do duties" (Conversations, 1965).

This is not to say we are all wasting our time: not at all; but it is time we made an honest, unsentimental assessment of how far we need to go. We're not going to improve things by magic; nor are we going to do it by effort. We need to start being intelligent. Not intellectual, just reasonable. We need to start giving something better, so that the best people are attracted. This isn't a marketing issue: we need them.

There's another man I know who has something of M's quality - again, not in the School, as it happens. He's been fairly successful in life. I heard a story about how he was accosted by a mean old lady, who spat at him, "I knew you when you were nothing!"

He paused for a moment, and said to her quite calmly, "And I knew you before you were nothing".