‘Resilience’ is the key word of the moment. At least, it is at the school in which I teach. For the last year or so, in form time, assemblies and all lessons ranging from English to PE and Technology, we, as a staff, have been attempting to perform a kind of alchemy and change the lexis of our students from “I can’t” to “How do I…?” and their thought processes from “It’s too difficult” to “I might be able to do it if I…”
The main issue with this, in my opinion, is the fact that terms like resilience and persistence are just plain boring in an age of instant gratification, immediate downloads and ONE CLICK CHECKOUT. For them, it is far better to be like the lone poppy I saw growing from the concrete at the base of a front garden wall just a street away from the school itself – independent and sudden and vital; or, better still, to be unpredictably and interestingly arresting, like the handful of wheat stalks growing from a flower border outside the council offices. Wheat? In the middle of a civic square? How? Neither I, nor any other passer-by, could possibly know but I did like the symbolism in the fact that it was growing opposite the doors of a Baptist church. Had they been planted there as a little motif by one of the congregation, to be plucked and carried to the altar at Harvest time?
Plants always make such handy symbols, used to represent everything from nationality to life, death, remembrance, faith and renewal, encompassing within their leaves and petals what seems the entire cycle of human emotional experience. Such is their prevalence in this function that it’s easy to manufacture our own representational plant-life images as we go, in a kind of impromptu, emblematic rendering of the day-to-day world around us.
A personal favourite of mine is the simplicity of the campanula that pops up everywhere at this time of year. In one particular street I walk through on my way to work, I can look down the entire length of one side, along the low outer walls of the front gardens, and see the bluey-purple trail of this little slowcoach as it makes its unhurried progress down the road. Where other plants become impatient, and would, by now, have scattered their seeds to the four winds, spreading far and wide in the process, the campanula seems content to take its time, in no hurry to arrive anywhere in particular at all, and this is one of the reasons I am so fond of it in our own modern, rushabout world.
I know that, were I to carry out a straw poll amongst my classes today on the most popular potential careers, the predominant responses would consist, in the main, of ‘footballer’, ‘singer’ and that ever-present modern-day wannabe favourite, ‘Youtuber’; it seems that most young people would prefer to be the global superstar rather than the local hero.
In this regard too, the humble campanula is a triumph of modesty over ambition. Hanging on to its little crevices, it is the perfect example of how the simple can be just as rewarding as the flashy, and the parochial as fulfilling as the globetrotting.
For this lovely, resilient, patient little flower that brightens my walk to work year after year, it most definitely a case of a simple job well done.
