ALWAYS TRY TO MAKE PEOPLE WALK TALLER

The following is a brief excerpt of a chapter I contributed to Speaking of Values - published online today and featuring the personal values of some amazing people. It's a brilliant read and an important statement on today's Scotland. Each chapter offers an opportunity to contribute to a charity. My nominated charity is Alzheimers Research - this is in honour of my Mum who succumbed to the disease in her latter years. Go to https://speakingofvaluesblog.edublogs.org/charities/

I learned early in life that we are all gifted with the ability to lift or belittle people. I chose to make it my life’s mission to do the former – to make people walk that little bit taller. At school I had experienced first-hand the impact of ridicule, how it sinks the spirits, plants seeds of self-doubt and distorts our development.

I was sacked from my first job because I refused to invite my girlfriends to take part in sex games with the manager. It was recorded as insubordination and would remain on my employment record. In the space of three months I had found myself labelled as a failure in education and work. If I hadn’t had the band the impact might have been far worse. On stage my confidence soared, but each encounter with authority seemed designed to make me feel worthless.

Extraordinarily, even those services that aim to help can get it spectacularly wrong. I had been sleeping on the streets of London for a year when I was finally spotted by a charity. What followed was a well-intentioned attempt to get me off the streets, but it was doomed to fail. Why? It was a freezing night in December when I was picked up and taken to a place in Peckham where, I was told, I would be fed, given a bed for the night and then helped into accommodation. It turned into a humiliating experience. I had to strip, was hosed with a delousing spray and then led to a dormitory that stank and resounded with the sounds of coughs, splutters and angry outbursts. I escaped at the first opportunity. I may have been homeless but I still deserved to be treated as a human being. The whole process had left me feeling utterly devalued. When sleeping on the streets is a better option than entering a system to get you off those streets something is seriously wrong. The assumption that a roof over my head was all I wanted was mistaken. Inside, I was screaming to feel significant and be treated as a human being with a background, talent, ideas and yes, even ambition.

I had a wholly different experience a few years later when I arrived for work at a building site in Earls Court Road. The Welsh foreman, sporting a soft hat, broken nose and shovel-like hands that grasped mine in a firm handshake, greeted me and, wrapping an arm around my shoulder, said: “Come with me, I have something I want to show you before you start.” He led me to a hut and to drawings and a model of the proposed building. “This is what you are going to create,” he said. “Picture it and remind yourself each day that everything you do here is dedicated to making someone’s dream a reality.” From that moment on I felt I was part of a bigger process, a mission to create something out of nothing through intellectual and physical endeavour. I was no bit player. My function, like everyone else's on the site, was vital in turning a dream into reality and for this anonymous dreamer I would “sweat buckets”. The foreman made me feel 10ft tall on my first day and every day that followed.

Continued in Speaking of Values, published published by :- Neil McLennan (Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland), Emma Fossey (Reporting for Business) and Gary Walsh (@curricforequity) and available to download on:

https://speakingofvaluesblog.edublogs.org/charities/