Gain

In my Rocker days, in my dreams, gain was about cranking up an amplifier until my guitar would squeal like Dave Gilmore’s or Carlos Santana’s. As an RF engineer gain was to be optimised within a particular band and otherwise suppressed. In my marketing days gain took on the demands of increasing market share. In mid-life gain is usually about weight. Thinking most commonly about money however, I was struck last year by the simplicity of the statement, made by film director Tom Shadyac, that the pursuit of wealth beyond one’s needs is a mental illness. The Biblical account has always been with us …….’What does it profit a man that he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul?’ Today I like to think that I’ve attained a level of maturity that allows me to relate gain to wisdom. Five years after a major challenge, through the gift of 20/20 hindsight, we may gain a change of perception that reveals how we grew and so gained from the experience. Sadly it doesn’t always happen. Bob Dylan recognised this in his Hard Rain lyric ‘I met one man wounded in love, another man wounded with hatred’. What would Dylan have to say about the atrocities perpetrated in the Gaza strip where the Israelis ‘gain’ the upper hand through the systematic destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and proliferation of illegal settlements? What human being could fail to be wounded with hatred? What people could accept such a wound to the collective psyche such that future generations didn’t continue to bear the scars? Here in Northern Ireland I have gained enormously this past year through involvement with a Community Garden project. My first task was to clear away ten years of overgrowth from a former poly-tunnel which nature had reclaimed. Shrub roots had grown beyond the artificial boundaries of their plastic tubs and impervious layers of stone and plastic membranes below, to drive deep into the earth. In a few short years the artificial divisions imposed on nature had healed over. This observation brings hope that even the most deeply entrenched political and sectarian differences can similarly be healed by the relentless march of healing growth. My father used to ask me “How important do you think it will be in 50 years?” He was referring to the healing of the human psyche and the wisdom gains of advancing years. He was also aware that, when the wounding is sufficiently grievous, the normal three score years and ten of a human life may be insufficient for true healing but that change is continuous and inevitable. Let us seek to gain the lasting and priceless treasures of love as demonstrated on the smiling faces of children at play – and perhaps through the passionate wailing of Carlos Santana’s guitar!