TWITTERING ON
|
50 PLUS MAGAZINE
TWITTERING ON BY ANGELA KELLY successfully created his famous cyclone Hoover-type machine. That took out four years of his life - and probably most of his temper - but he got there. As he points out: “Folklore depicts invention as a flash of brilliance. That eureka moment. But it rarely is, I’m afraid. It is more about failure than ultimate success.” He beavered away in his workshop every day, building cyclones, testing them for their effectiveness in collecting dust. Fortunately for James, he had a very supportive wife who believed in him and allowed him to put their home and home-life at risk to develop his dream. But if you look at crucial inventions all through history, they come at the price of consistent, dogged determination – and often health and wealth. The real value of grandparents WHAT value on grandparents in 2021? Are we still useful and relevant in this age of Love Island and Tik Tok? I only ask because it was interesting to see that Meghan Markle’s father, Thomas, is reported to be considering going to court in order to be able to see his grandchildren Archie and Lilibet. I don’t want to go too deeply into personalities here. The Sussexes generally make me rather annoyed and disappointed and I don’t know what kind of father Thomas was. What I do know is the value of grandparents today and what they can mean to busy young parents and children who may not have many family members nearby. Grandparents have often got the time and willingness to spend on both caring for their grandchildren and being the patient listening ear that youngsters need. They have experience of life generally, and particularly of bringing up their own children, and have learned from the mistakes that we all make as parents. Grandparents offer children a second, different view of adults. Sometimes, one that is gentler and kinder partly because we’re
6
not full-time carers or disciplinarians and we can always give them back! This allows a special kind of freedom of loving and enjoyment of life with grandchildren that busy parents can’t always provide. Grandparents can supplement that caring basis in the home and take it in different directions. So I hope – for the sake of Archie and Lilibet and, oddly, for the sake of the Sussexes themselves – that they can all resolve this in some way and allow the generations to get to know each other better. It’s what can ultimately make real families. Going through trying times IF there’s one life-lesson that should be passed through the generations it’s that simple saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” We seem to have moved away from that kind of “stick-at-ability” and often give up when faced with the first real hurdle in many things we’re doing today. One person to show just how this can work brilliantly positively for us, though, is inventor James Dyson. Talking about his life and inventions in a national newspaper recently, James recalled how it took 5,126 attempts before he
There’s no doubting that Alexander Graham Bell didn’t just suddenly discover the telephone one day. It was the result of years of hard work. Or that Marie Curie happened on the power of radium by chance. Everything important since the advent of the wheel has been achieved by someone – or a group of someones – being prepared to put in the hard yards and keep going with an idea until it worked. It’s true that during that time there will also have been thousands for whom effort didn’t ultimately pay off. But the main thing is that they had a dream and they tried and didn’t just chuck in the towel when things got a bit tough. It would be unfair and unjust to say that there aren’t success stories today because of course there are. It’s just that this determination to succeed, to reach a goal, isn’t always given the kudos it deserves. We might acknowledge the achievement in creating a clever idea and making it work but we seldom pay homage to the huge amounts of time and energy it took to reach that point. In fact, having “stick-at-ability” isn’t necessarily something that’s admired in people today. We praise the flexibility and vision of people prepared to move on from projects to something else if it doesn’t pan out.
