Morale

Morale is what keeps you going. It is a very delicate thing – it can be high in an instant, and you fly with it, as if it gave you the power of flight, the power to soar over the fields full of the crops of sadness and despair, or knock you down and pummel you into a hole of misery and doubt. And all as if by the touch of a button – an invisible button, one of many buttons, and you are never quite sure which one to press – a lottery of buttons that regulate your spirit in a haphazard and illogical way. And sometimes if you hit on the right button that same button will not have the same effect another time – the magic ceases to work in proportion to the number of times you press it, as if obeying a celestial law of diminishing return. Your morale is beyond your control; it controls you. Or perhaps not completely. Sometimes, you can beat morale at its own game. You can will it to work for you. There are some things your morale cannot resist – the first light of day as the earth jumps to meet the sun, when the light soars like a musical note, a warm room with a good book, a caressing voice, something nice to eat, taking on a little job successfully that you long put off because you did not know how to tackle it (What satisfaction to see that door fixed! What joy to see that new shelf put up!). Then, there are times in the day when you are left without resources – the long, dark afternoons and the wet miserable streets, the sight of people sitting in a bar or café, talking the afternoon off its feet, the smell of fresh bread you cannot eat, pulling apart a fresh, warm loaf in the street and filling your mouth with crispy smooth chunks. And you are down and out, and it seems as if nothing really matters. All you can do is plod on into tomorrow, without thinking, without feeling – you want to be alone, you do not want to see anyone, you do not want to hear the banal simplicities of people who do not know what it is like to have no tongue. If they knew! And you realise it is all up to you. You are alone in the middle of a plain – tired, and thirsty and not sure what direction to take to get off the plain before the sun burns you up. You have to decide; you have to concentrate and make the effort. The alternative is to sit down and let the blazing sun of your emptiness burn you up. It will not give up. You have to move, keep moving, and be smart enough to move in the right direction. There are no guarantees – you get guarantees with dishwashers, not with the instinct to make it all right. And so your instinct tells you what direction to take and you follow it…