“We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!”
from The Hollow Men by T S Eliot
High school was a bit of a blur for the young Peter. For some reason the eternal principle of cause and effect had not entered his stunted consciousness, and if he had been exposed to its reliable rigour, he would have ignored it with the same levels of hubris, arrogance and smart-arsedness that made most teenagers of his ilk such likeable creatures. Yes, he was a prat and a total dickhead. He had learned that a dubious mix of bombast, smart-mouthedness, and carefully manufactured charm was the easy way to get you through most things. And as for tomorrow, what’s that, and who cares? There were girlfriends a plenty but mostly they were short-lived encounters. The class clown demeanour might ensure some initial popularity, but as that shallow exterior got peeled back it quickly became apparent to most young ladies that there was little of substance lurking underneath. Peter’s home life was a schizophrenic melting pot. His mother was devout Christian and his father was always drunk. Many years later, as he reflected on his own muddled performance as a father, he had to admit that he never remembered getting a single syllable of worldly advice, fatherly wisdom, or anything of that nature from the doomed tragedy that was Eric. On the other hand he suffered no abuse or ill-treatment either. In fact he was unfortunately spoiled and indulged within an inch of his life. Every time he got in a fix of any kind they would reliably bail him out and shield him from the aforementioned universal principle of cause and effect. It was many, many decades later that he finally realised that he was not being helped at all by the toxic nature of such over-protection.
The fact that he was bright was picked up by school testing, exams in the subjects he liked, and the education system’s team of dedicated vocational guidance officers. They spent a reasonable amount of time examining Peter’s files and they could see that there were particular careers that were well suited to his talents. But what the hell did they know? When you’re a spoiled 15 year old brat you know so much more than just about anybody. And of course you always let that perfect template of guidance lead you in all your crucial decisions, i.e. what your mates think! So you waste your god-given talents. You leave school at 15 because the idea of cramping your social life with tedious things like study sounds really boring. You embark on a career you are completely unsuitable for. And you derive all your necessary cognitive assurance from the knowledge you are doing what your mates are doing. Somewhere along the way some of us break free from this prison cell that is youth. And some fortunate souls never enter it, such are the gifts of fate. The stark reality is that if absolutely no effort is made then absolutely nothing will be the certain reward. Life is actually a serious business and we all are interconnected with important others who go through the most incredible hoops to try and give us the best start that they can. And completely apart from all the damage they naively do to us, and we in turn do to them by our stupidity, we live with the ever-present realisation that unless we make an effort internally we remain hollow, hollow, hollow.
In his pursuit of that career that he was not suitable for Peter got an apprenticeship with a large trucking company, and for anybody serious about learning their trade this was the most perfect environment. They were a strong and well managed freight company who were leaders in the industry. They did all maintenance and repairs in house. They also did all body repairs, panel beating, chassis repairs and body building in house as well. There were big trucks, small trucks, old ones, new ones, cars and utes, bulldozers and forklifts. There were no limits to the skills a motivated youngster could gain. The established tradesmen were healthy balance of ‘old school’ hard heads and young knowledgeable whiz-kids. The manager of the whole operation was one of the owners who with his four brothers had been in the industry for three generations. But Roger was not just an experienced and competent manager, he was also someone who took his company’s role in producing the next generation of tradesmen very seriously. As a result he took a hands on, front-line interest in guiding the many young men who came through his workshop not just in trade matters but also in matters of life. Of course all of this enviable environment was simply ‘pearls before swine’ for that monumental tosser that Peter had become.
Several things did work in Peter’s favour however. Firstly he was good with his hands. This must have been innate because of the lack of role models he could draw on. Secondly he was reasonably intelligent and he was a quick learner. When this combined with his ‘manufactured charm’ he managed to work well with other tradesmen especially the ‘old school’ ones. He was never going to be a very good tradesman because of his adolescent pride, but he did learn the basics, he remembered most important things, and when he put his mind to it he could be a slightly less than average mechanic. We all know we can’t go back in time to put our big or small mistakes right, no matter how much we wish we could. But many years later Peter confessed to a friend that if he could go back to just one thing it would be to go back and apologise to his then boss Roger for being the the total twat he was at the time. Roger was one of those good, good souls. Furthermore Peter discovered many years later that Roger and his own father Eric were colleagues and mates involved in a large RSL club in the city. Peter had to admit that his success in getting that apprenticeship when he was competing with 100 or so other young males was not because he was so special (which I’m sorry to say was true, he really did believe it at the time), but rather it may have been because of his distant father’s quiet, behind the scenes efforts.
The first two years of his trade learning went by without one the older blokes taking out that ‘little smart-arse’. He dated a few of the office girls and they duplicated the responses of his high school girlfriends. Yes, there was still not much of substance inside. But by his third year a couple of really significant things in his life crowded into his vacuous soul and screamed out for notice in ways that couldn’t be ignored. One of his mates was killed in a motorbike accident. Everybody in their group used to laugh, marvel, and be seriously jealous of his dare-devil riding ability. But one day the back of a table truck stopping unexpectedly meant his luck ran out. The separation of his head from his torso caused a few of them to ask themselves some of life’s big questions – for about a nano-second! Another good mate became such a significant drug user he went through a noticeable personality change and turned into a hollow shell of the charming lady killer he used to be – and they were all affected momentarily by this as well. One other mate went to jail briefly for having sex with a 14 year old girl. Man that story was a total mess for that young bloke’s life and he was never the same again. Hearing about it all had an extremely sobering impact on Peter. And another of his really good friends got his 15 year old girlfriend pregnant and just avoided jail when her father was convinced by her family to settle down, not take him out, and help them deal with the reality that was coming for everyone involved. There were other assorted motor bike and motor vehicle accidents, injuries from meaningless fights, and of course much anger and heartbreak over failed love stories.
In among all that chaos were many reality checks for hormonal young males and Peter certainly one of those. As he observed so many other lives unravel before his eyes he started to think more than just occasionally that there was no reason why his charmed trouble free existence should continue if he kept engaging in all the same risky behaviour. But funnily enough it was something quite boring and mundane by comparison that would have the biggest impact on him
Peter had two networks of mates from his youth that he socialised with. There were of course his mates from high school. But he also had another completely different set of buddies that came from him growing up in the church of his dedicated mother. The levels of aberrant behaviour weren’t all that different between these two groups of mates, it must be said. So what did all that church activity mean to any of them? In fact one of those tragic tales of sex with underage girls from above was actually one of his church friends. But importantly this ongoing contact with these guys meant that he managed to attend church sporadically when he felt he couldn’t get out of it. He, and none of his mates, were in any way committed to any of it. They all felt it was all a bit of albatross hanging around their necks them spoiling all the fun. If they had eyes to see the truth, it was more of a safety fence protecting them from the more extreme excesses. And for many complex reasons Peter couldn’t free himself from that gentle gnawing at his soul that just seemed to persist no matter how loud he got. It was a simple task that jumped up, smart arsed, arrogant teenagers find almost impossible to confront. They mostly know deep down that their bravado is a hollow noisey charade and their souls are empty.
As an apprentice his work environment was a learning tradesman’s dream. The company fleet was huge and servicing was done in ordered, systematic way. His first block of training with a designated experienced mechanic was on cooling systems. He became an expert on radiators, water pumps, brazing, soldering, drive belts, etc. Next came gear boxes, clutches and diffs of all sizes, types and ages. By the end of this block with another guy he could tackle just about anything from the back of the motor to the axles. After that it was front ends with drag links, tie-rod ends, and good old fashioned king pins. Then came engine rebuilds. By this time he was in his third year and his irritating hubris was slowly being knocked out of by those lovely senior tradesmen who were very quick to tolerate nothing. After being told many, many times to, ‘pull your f***ing head you little twerp,’ maybe he was learning something about growing up.
There were in the fleet many old, but still very productive, J4 Bedfords which were driven by a standard 300 cubic inch straight six petrol motor. For Peter these old motors were the perfect place to learn about engine reconditioning. Depending on their mileage many of them were brought into the workshop and given the standard rings, bearings and valve grind. For Peter three months were spent on cylinder heads and learning to clean, polish, grind and lap in valves, and then he was moved to engine blocks. Because of their sheer size these blocks were left in the vehicle and dismantled accordingly. Some required new pistons and gudgeon pins but the ones Peter worked on needed only rings and bearings. One the important parts of this process was checking that the new rings in the bore and measuring the gap between the two ends. This was measured in thousandths of inches. Feeler gauges were used and if any were oversized, the ends would be filed down to the required tolerance. In three months Peter worked on about a half a dozen of these. None of the rings he tested ever needed any adjusting and he wondered why he was bothered doing it. So on block no 7 he did the wrong thing and didn’t perform that task. He simply put them in and began assembling the motor.
The head was on, the manifold was installed, and the cam followers were in when Peter got a huge shock. There on the firewall at the back of the engine bay was a small plate riveted to the wall. It said ‘head - 40 thou; bore + 20 thou’. The 40 thou referred to the fact that the cylinder head during its last rebuild had 40 one thousandths of an inch shaved off its surface to even out normal wear and tear irregularities. This wasn’t a problem. The + 20 thou however was a different breed of fish. During its last rebuild the wall of the cylinder bore was deemed to be worn and was basically drilled out a small amount and standard oversized pistons were put in. The 20 one thousandths of an inch was quite normal. The problem for the young dickhead Peter was that the rings he had put on these oversized pistons were standard size and not the correct ones for this motor. And if he’d done the proper measuring of ring gap he would have picked up they were way too small and that the correct oversized ones were needed. He hadn’t done what he was supposed to, and now he had to face the inevitable calling out of his wrong actions. There would no escaping the consequences. If he said nothing and just kept working on the motor it may have functioned for a while, but it would end up using lots of oil, and in the search to find why, his sin would ultimately be exposed, albeit way, way down the track, and after costing his employer much, much more in unnecessary costs. Almost certainly its truth would be exposed. His heart sank, his soul ached, his stress went off, and he knew he was in deep shit. So what does he do?
After some reflection he took the only path he knew was right and went and explained to the foreman what he’d done. Somewhere in his hubristic self absorption there dwelt a modicum of residual moral fibre that had come to serve him well at this point. To bury his head and run from his major stuff up would’ve been cowardly in the extreme. And the practical implications for his employer did weigh on his conscience. There was no explosion. He was told to just go back and start disassembling the engine. Word quietly made its way around the workshop and Peter was avoided by everyone. No eye contact was made, no verbal exchanges were offered, and Peter quite rightly felt he was sent to the leper colony. He noticed Roger and the foreman Ron engaged in some in depth discussions in the office and had no doubt what or whom they were talking about. For his part Peter’s smart mouth suddenly became remarkably silent, and he just kept his head down and worked. One of the older tradesman walked up and said the only thing anybody said to him,
“This is big Peter, you’ve really f***ed up. Learn from it, that’s all you can do.”
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Whether it was the very next weekend Peter wasn’t sure but it was very, very soon after. Quite by coincidence he found himself begrudgingly sitting through yet another totally boring sermon, to keep his mum happy. His church attendance had been irregular in the extreme, but right now he found it all even more challenging and difficult to endure. There were thoughts of all the bad stuff that had so recently happened to his mates. There was the realisation that only extreme good luck had saved him from similar outcomes. There was the awareness that he knew in his heart that he was a total prick. There were his memories of every cringe-creating stupid thing he’d acted out. And they all combined in his frazzled soul with the large guilt from his work debacle.
The preacher who was on that day was not particularly dynamic or charismatic. He was just an average Jo. But on that day he decided to preach on forgiveness. He used as his text Psalms 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Peter heard things like the following.
“There is nothing that you have done that God can’t forgive.”
“There is no life you have lived, or past memories that you carry, that He won’t simply wash away and forget forever.”
“Never think you are beyond the limits of His grace because the reality is that there are no limits to that grace. There is nothing you can bring that He will thrown back at you to make you feel ashamed.”
“We all have things in our past that we wish weren’t there, and we know we’ll never be able to change them, but lay them at the foot of the cross, and they’ll be taken as the Psalms say, ‘ As far as the east is from the west.’”
“Why is God doing this? It’s because we can only make a better future when we know we are free from our past. He doesn’t want us to keep feeling guilt and shame. He wants us to feel completely free. As John 8:36 says, ‘So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.’”
“And just what do we have to do to earn this total forgiveness. Absolutely nothing! We only have to acknowledge that we need it and reach out and take hold of it. We will never, never be rejected.”
Peter, instead of squirming and trying to distract his thoughts like he usually did, on this occasion was actually listening. And what he was hearing was speaking straight to him. He had probably heard most of it many times before and had ignored it, but now it was different. Instead of feeling the sublimated guilt he usually knew when he was exposed to this stuff, he was actually feeling a warm kind of peace slowly descend on him. Could it be true? Could God accept a complete dickhead like him? Was it possible to move beyond your shameful past and make a better future? Could that be true for someone as stupid, ignorant and as obnoxious as he had been? Well there was only one way to find out, wasn’t there? He found himself actually talking to God and saying that he wasn’t sure how it was supposed to happen, but right now he knew that it, whatever it was, was what he really needed. And at the end of that sermon he walked out into the sunshine a bumbling, stumbling, uninformed, but somehow, sort of believer.
He kept all this to himself initially. The first active thing he did was on Monday morning. He walked up to Roger and Ron who were talking in the office before work. He said, “I’m sorry Roger. I know I’ve made a big mistake. I promise I’ll try harder.” Goodness knows what they thought. It probably never entered their thinking that the little smart arse pratt they so regretted giving a job to had gone through a major transformation. Anyway Peter walked back to his truck feeling at peace. He knew in his heart that there was a firm, clear and unequivocal path before him. He knew what he needed to do now. It wasn’t long before the other tradesman began to realise that Peter was a somewhat different entity. After a couple of days that only mechanic who had said anything to him simply tapped him on the shoulder as he walked past, looked back, nodded and briefly smiled at Peter. Nothing more was said but Peter got his message. And that particular truck went back on the road with no engine problems. Peter was then moved on to suspensions. Perhaps as punishment. Man o’ man those massive leaf springs were heavy!
He only ever became just an average mechanic, and after a while he left it to go to uni as a mature-age student and ended up becoming a school teacher. Telling his mates however, way back then, of the change he’d gone through was way more dramatic than anything that had happened at work. They were incredulous to say the least. “What, you’re not going screw anyone till your married?” “You’re not going to smoke dope any more?” “You’re not going to get smashed any more?” “Man, welcome to the life of the boring git; gawd, what are you going to do with yourself?” Peter didn’t feel any need to debate the facts with them. He did try to keep in touch with most of them, but that gradually unwound as his days and nights became filled up with different things like Bible study groups and prayer meetings. He did later see some more of their lives spiral out of control, but he gave up trying to explain to any of them what had happened to him. They were just not interested. And he picked up early that nobody likes being ‘preached’ to. One of his good church mates went through similar changes to Peter around the same time and that opened up new futures for both of them. And the formerly extremely hollow soul that he used to be now moved forward at peace, and filled with other influences.
Now whatever you may think about religion, and more particularly Christianity, the truth is that at its core the grace and forgiveness of “The Gospel” that is supposed to be the central pillar of belief is one of the most liberating principles in human thought. Ask any psychiatrist and they will tell you that our mental hospitals would instantly be emptied of many, many ill people if only those troubled, damaged souls could fully realise and imbibe the significance of forgiveness and a new start. And for the over-indulged but now humbled Peter it was to remain a constant, elemental, and live concept as he plunged headlong into the fog of manhood.
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