President’s Forward

A study in slippers. Our outgoing president cogitating on his last Contexts forward.

I remember the adventure of climbing trees, when I was a boy – always a personal trial with an accompanying atmosphere of fear. I felt somehow challenged to get up there into those high branches, up as high as I could climb. There didn’t need to be anyone else involved – I wasn’t performing for a present witness.

When I had scrambled up to the limits of my courage and of the tree’s ability to support me, I felt some triumph – always with an attendant worry about how I would get down again. And however great the sense of achievement at scaling the heights it never equalled the profound satisfaction I felt when my feet again touched the ground.

I have recurring dreams about being trapped in high places – stepping out of a lift and finding myself standing outside on a ledge over an abyss – or clinging to a beam up against a barn roof and there’s no way to get down. At the Summer School in Dublin, I reported a dream I had in which I suddenly found myself climbing down, grasping unexpected handholds that presented themselves to me. Reaching the bottom, I shout, “Look, Mother, I’ve climbed down!” When I woke from that dream, I was surprised at the realisation that climbing down could be an achievement to be proud of.

Is leaving the GASi Presidency a climb down or a sliding out? At times I have envisaged it as the shedding of a burden, at others a process of disappearing, which is much the same thing – a form of deathwish. One of the most difficult lessons that life has to teach is how to leave well.

In Belgrade, conflicting views of the condition of our Society impressed themselves on me. Feelings of failure and achievement collided in me. Anxiety about the future sat alongside startled satisfaction at our survival; could we allow ourselves to believe that we are thriving or was this a retreat from life-threatening realities?

As most members will be aware, a number of valued members of the MC will be leaving at the AGM in October. Those remaining will be joined by 4 newly-elected members, bringing fresh interests and energy to the committee. I am delighted about this because we shall have a renewed committee that is rich in experience and energy.

No-one formally put themselves forward for the Presidency, so we are asking the committee, at least in the short term, to perform its tasks on our behalf in new circumstances. I am very confident in their ability to develop new ways of working and enable them to do so.  The coming period will allow them, and all of us, to understand better the value of having, or not having, a President.