TE Lawrence and me

Holding his hand over a candle until the flesh burned, someone asked Lawrence what the trick was. "The trick," he replied "is not caring." Not caring and caring were what Lawrence did well. On the lintel of the front door at his home at Clouds Hill, he carved, in Greek (not caring who could read it) OU ØPOVTIS - "Don't care" or maybe "Why worry ?" Discovering the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" on the shelves at home when I was 13 or 14, I was entranced, mystified, hypnotised, puzzled. Hating the cinema, I never saw the film, but reading Lawrence, and later every book I could find about him, shaped me as a young adult more than anyone else. He taught me to care and not to care. And not to sit still. It wasn't the foolhardy bravery of his Boys' Own exploits, though the brilliance of his attack on Aqaba takes some beating if you are looking for something stirring. It wasn't even the glamorous lure of the costume he assumed. It was his inner journey, what made him tick (however irregularly), and his willingness to push himself so far beyond any normal limits. He seemed to me to have an inner strength which dwarfed the splendour of his outward achievements.  And from that came his stunning ability to be true to himself, a trait I admired and still do. I am not a psychologist (thank god) or an analyst, and my view of Lawrence is very personal. I think he would have approved of that. There were so many things that he did not care about. Convention. Received wisdom. Protocol. Uniform. Others' expectations. Limitations. Boundaries. His own safety. He was famously unable to conform to military discipline, behaviour, expectations, and dress. He had no desire to avoid privations, and his personal comfort was of no importance whatsoever. He continually impressed the Arabs by doing lightly what they had previously thought impossible. His preface to the Seven Pillars made me howl as a boy, especially his wonderful, wonderful disregard for petty complaints about his spelling inconsistencies. Not only did he not apologise for them: he revelled in them. They were, to him, utterly unimportant. A distraction. And when he lost the completed draft of the book, he simply set to re-writing it from memory. Physical comforts were of no significance to him, and seemed not to appear on his radar at all. He worked through exhaustion and hunger and well beyond. Dangers and physical risks he simply ignored. It was the unbridled ferocity of his inner courage that impressed me far more than the outward excitement of blowing up trains and tearing across the dunes on camels. But he did care profoundly, obsessively, life-long about the things he felt mattered. As a young man he walked thousands of miles (yes, you read it right) in visiting Crusader castles and developing an encyclopedic knowledge of them. And also of the land in which they stood, and of the people who lived around them in the inhospitable desert. Excavating at Carchemish, he mastered not only the language, but also many dialects and customs of the Arabs. And in the desert, he defied the impossible to search for and rescue a young man considered to be of no importance by his companions. One vignette has stuck in my head all my life. It is that of Lawrence, exasperated by continuing Arab objections that something was impossible with their tiresome repeated resorting to "It is written..." On this occasion he snapped, and with considerable force said "Nothing is written". I think they got the message and did not return to the mantra again. And Lawrence had broken the log jam of their negative self-perceptions. He showed them that they could create a better future by writing the script themselves. In my head he has banged the table with that same comment more often than I can recall. Lawrence's work with the Arabs exceeded all expectations. He had united them in a way hitherto thought preposterous. After the war he realised that he and they were to be traduced by the politicians, British and French, who had no intention of delivering on the promises he had made, in good faith, to the Arabs, and which had been instrumental in persuading them to action. He felt, it seems to me, that his integrity and good faith were so fatally damaged by this that he felt the need to back away completely from the fame and glory, and to lose even the name. He became Ross and Shaw (from his own hero George Bernard) and lived a life of attempted obscurity. Lawrence loved physical excitement. In obscurity one of his very few entertainments was the series of Brough motorcycles - Boanerges - "sons of Thunder". It was on one of his exuberant rides that he was killed, avoiding two boys who had appeared in the road ahead of him. So what ? What did any of this mean to me as a kid ? Lawrence gave me a sense of the over-riding importance of personal integrity and self-respect. Being true to what one felt was true, absolutely regardless of cost, inconvenience, even pain. He showed me that people have will-power which they may not recognise, and which they never let off the lead for a run. He showed me that exercising will-power could be intoxicating, while appearing incredible to others. That will-power, once unleashed, could achieve beyond the expected norms. WAY beyond expected norms. Forget norms. He taught me that people matter, even when they are infuriating or hard to understand. Lawrence would set aside all considerations of personal safety in the interests of others. No question. He just valued people. Reading Lawrence was affirmation that it was OK to be me. I was odd then, and am odder now, and that's OK. Strange that TEL should teach me that, but as a kid, when I was being undermined by teachers' expectations and the rigours of a crazy school, Lawrence was a daily comfort and strength, a constant reminder that I could find my own truth and it could burn with an intensity that would outshine received truths as the sun outshines a mere bonfire. And he taught me that it is OK to be obsessive, and that when something takes your interest, you should go for it, put your whole self into it. He taught me that half-hearted is an insult to oneself. It's whole-hearted every time or wholly a waste of time. Yes, it sounds mad. That a kid in Sheffield could find his behaviour and life-style changed by an eccentric Arabist already long dead. But it is true. And the lessons I learned then have been self-reinforcing. Throughout life, if something needs doing I just turn on the will-power and go. Without Lawrence I would have had a poodle will-power. He showed me I have something slightly more powerful and elegant. At 62, I owe Lawrence the most enormous personal debt. In life, he would have had little to say to me, being superior in every possible aspect of comparison. But the inspiration for life that I drew from him, and the influence he had on so many aspects of my living, are beyond anything else. I guess he was just broadcasting on my wavelength, and not many people do that. I could go on. But then I already have.