This is a slightly-redacted version of a talk I gave to 400 fourteen/fifteen-year-old students. A spoken event is different from a written event. But I hope this gives the gist.
I’m going to talk about acornology. It isn’t a GCSE subject but it absolutely should be because – and dare I say this is an academic establishment? – it’s more important than Maths, English, History, Physics, Geography – possibly even Latin.
And I am going to talk to you as adults. Now I don’t think anyone can become an adult until they are about thirty – it takes time to find out who you are, to step free from your past and to live from your truest self.
But who knows? Maybe you will break the mould.
One of the signs of being an adult is the ability to deal with difficulty, because life is difficult – and somehow, we need to be able to handle it. Most of us when facing a difficulty either ignore it, run away or collapse in a heap. I’ve done all of those.
How do you handle difficulty, when things don’t go your way? Ignore? Run away? Collapse?
What we always need to remember is the acorn… and acornology.
Have you ever seen an acorn? It is hard and it is shiny. And when you look at it, there is no clue as to what it is going to become. Anyone know?
That’s right…an oak tree. The hard shiny acorn cracks – and becomes an oak tree.
Now imagine a scientist with no knowledge of acorns. She discovers this hard shiny object, thinks it looks lovely and then notices with dismay that sometimes it cracks, which is terrible. She wants to preserve it! So she discovers the chemical composition of the object and manages to stop the natural process. Now her acorns don’t crack! Wonderful!
What she didn’t know was that acorns have to crack to become oak trees, to fulfil their purpose.
I always think of this when I drive in the school gates here and see the lovely oak trees on the left. Each of them an acorn that once dared to crack.
And I think we are a bit like acorns. We have to crack in order to grow.
Of course, none of us want to crack. Like the acorn, we’re terrified of cracking. Cracking is for wimps. We have an image to maintain – we want to be cool, popular, successful, strong. We want to be tough and shiny like the acorn.
No one wants to crack or admit difficulty. That would be weak, wouldn’t it? People would think less of us, wouldn’t they?
But if the shiny acorn doesn’t crack, there’s no oak tree.
And what if we’re like the acorn? What if the difficulties we face actually help us to grow? Hard to believe, isn’t it? But what if it’s OK to crack sometimes and ask for help? What if that helps us to grow as humans?
If the acorn just thought, ‘I must be strong and never crack!’ we’d have no oak trees. …because oak trees only grow because it allows itself to crack.
I don’t know what difficulties you face – but I’m sure you face some right now. Everybody faces difficulties – even the people who look like they don’t. They do.
I don’t know where you’re cracking. Maybe you’re jealous of a friend…maybe you’re anxious about something, maybe you’re anxious about everything…perhaps you worry what people think of you…maybe your mum and dad don’t get on, that’s difficult…or someone you know has died, that’s difficult…or maybe you don’t think you’re good enough, or feel that somehow you’re bad…maybe you’re fearful of being exposed and hold back from people, stay o the edge of things…or fear failing an exam or losing a friend…
Whatever the difficulty you face, whatever the crack in your life, remember acornology, remember the acorn – where the crack is not the end but the beginning.
I know this. I’m a therapist, so I see people with a lot of cracks. And people say, ‘Oh, it must be difficult seeing nutters all day!’ and what do I say? I say ‘No, that’s not how it is at all. I don’t see nutters – I see the healthy, the sane; I see people who are actually facing their difficulties, not running away, but facing the cracks. Because when you face them, and it takes courage, they become a path to something good.’
Like an acorn becoming an oak tree.
Remember the scientist who managed to stop the acorn cracking. She thought she was saving it…but she wasn’t. The crack is how the acorn grows.
This is why celebrities have big PR teams, handling their social media accounts and photo shoots – they are there to hide the cracks, sometimes quite literally. They want the message to be, ‘I’m fine, I’m great, I’m happy, I’m perfect – look, no cracks at all!’
We don’t have PR teams but we can still hide what we feel; we can even hide from ourselves.
But learning to handle difficulty, learning to look after ourselves when life falls apart and turning the crack into something good – this is at the heart of becoming an adult.
One thing I do at the end of each day is name one thing I’m grateful for – there are always too many to mention; and then one thing I found difficult. And when I find the thing I found difficult I ask this question: ‘What in that situation did I fear?’ There’s always fear involved when we crack.
And the thing about fear is this: it’s almost always lying to you. Fear is probably the biggest liar you know.
So we’re thinking about what we do when difficulties arise.
Sometimes difficulties that appear like monsters at 3.00 in the morning disappear with the morning mist. But if the difficulty hangs around for a few days and we can’t break free then maybe it’s good to find someone we trust and talk about it. We’re never alone with our difficulties. There are people who can help. Or perhaps you’ll find the answer in the sky or in a long walk or in a prayer or in something someone says. We’re not alone when the cracks appear.
In a short while, we’re going off into groups to talk about what we do when life gets difficult. When instead of feeling shiny and hard, we crack.
But what we’re learning is that maybe the crack isn’t the end of the story; in fact maybe it’s the beginning of one. As referenced in the great subject of Acornology – when the shiny acorn cracks, it becomes what it was meant to be, a beautiful oak tree.
You will be beautiful too.
