Short Story

A TALK TO SCHOOL LEAVERS Jenny Campbell, Sherborne Scribblers

‘F or the past thirty-three years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: if today was the last day of my life, would I do what I am about to do today? And whenever an answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.’ The person who said that was Steve Jobs, the American business magnate who died from pancreatic cancer in 2011. Was he talking about the voice of conscience, do you think? Perhaps. But he may also have been talking about that still, small voice inside each one of us which defines

WHO and WHAT we truly are. In Hamlet, Shakespeare, as always, had exactly the right words for it:

‘To thine own self be true; and it shall follow, as the night the day, thou canst not, then, be false to any man.’

During my own school days, there were two occasions when I did not so much listen to that still, small voice as recognise two subjects which made my heart sing. The first was writing – or composition as it used to be called – and led to entering my first writing competition, in the Bournemouth

Daily Echo. The subject was ‘The Island I Would Most Like to Visit’ and the competition was run in conjunction with the local Gaumont cinema to promote a film called The African Queen. It was open to all age groups and

I, at fourteen, wrote about Hawaii which came second to a middle-aged entrant’s Easter Island; but that love of writing has continued throughout my life and given me so much pleasure over the years, not least in the likeminded friends I have made.

Despite an eventual career in nursing, I have also pursued another interest which began with my first French lesson at school. The sheer joy of being able to communicate in another language was a revelation to me and

I still remember the shock of that realisation. Decades later, nearing sixty,

I did a 3-year Open University French Diploma course which included

two summer schools at Caen University where we had to speak French for the entire week - not easy when we had so much grammar, translation and dictation at school, with very little conversation. I have enrolled in several French courses since and still struggle orally, but continue to love reading in that language.

So, what I’m saying to you is this: when you hear that voice inside you – be it in a matter of conscience, relationships, work, hobbies or whatever – don’t ignore it. Because that is truly YOU and it is a voice which will serve you well throughout your life.

I began this talk with a quotation, and I am going to finish with a few more. ‘PLAN B,’ said the actor, Sylvester Stallone (probably in some film or other), ‘you’ve always gotta have a PLAN B.’ Boris Johnson must certainly have wished he had a PLAN B at the start of the Covid crisis because, as somebody else wrote: ‘Success in life is not how well we execute PLAN A. It is how smoothly we cope with PLAN B.’ To put it another way, in the song by Bob Newhart, a 20th century American entertainer: Be prepared! That’s the boy scouts’ marching song, be prepared…

You can’t, of course, be prepared for every situation in life. Sometimes, stuff just happens and we have to deal with the resulting challenges as best we can. Speak to anyone, in their quieter, confiding moments, and you will find that, regardless of how successful, confident or untroubled they may appear to be, they have all had to cope with the unexpected. And what I have learnt is that life goes on, the sun always comes out eventually and until it does, we have to emulate members of the SAS whose motto is: ADAPT, IMPROVISE AND OVERCOME.

One last thing: If neither PLAN A nor PLAN B work, always remember that there are 24 more letters in the alphabet. So, stay cool, keep calm – and have a GREAT life!