Bring on the Evolution

Isn’t it strange how we can have entirely different conversations and not see the link between them? I remember a few years ago, I had two conversations – on the same day – with two different sets of people and didn’t see the link until much later.

The first conversation took place over lunch at my alma mater’s Founder’s Day. The chap I was talking to was telling me about his barge trip to France a few weeks ago. Apparently he has been doing this for the last fourteen years but normally goes to Burgundy. This time he took a trip along the Rhone and came across some little villages that were really ancient – some going back a few hundred years BC! He was telling us how whole parts of the villages are just as they were and how fascinating this was.

John, who was sitting next to him, then told us of a trip to the south of England he made with his wife and how the people there still operate as they have for generations, if not centuries. The example he used was how the locals seem to hate summer when all the tourists arrived because all their stools in the pub were taken out to make room for them. In the winter, their stools were brought back in and they could carry on drinking their ale, probably daily, in exactly the same way as their forefather’s had before them. Little, it seems, has changed their way of life over the centuries – except in summer!

I had forgotten about this conversation when, in a completely different conversation with my now late mother in the evening, she was saying something along the lines of that there is no rest for the wicked. No, she wasn’t talking about me – well, not on this occasion, anyway! She was saying that when she had grown up there was no such thing, formally anyway, as self-development and how today one cannot rest on one’s laurels and think the same way as one did yesterday. In her terms, we have to be prepared to change what and how we think about things all the time and just when we think it is okay to take some time out on this, something will happen to jolt us into thinking again. We continually need to raise our awareness about ourselves and how we interact with our environments.

Maybe we all need, in metaphorical terms, to make way for the tourists – to make way for the good without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Even in Cornwall I think some things have changed, perhaps imperceptibly over the years. Whilst their lifestyles may have changed little, except when the damn tourists are around, their education has been different, the types of jobs they do are probably done at least a little differently. Perhaps their thinking hasn’t and that’s why they malign the tourists. But the old publican has changed, hasn’t he? He has noticed that if he takes the stools out then there is more standing room for patrons and he can therefore sell more beers!

So, while the changes in thinking may have been slow in some parts of the world and in centuries past, we experience change in a wave-after-wave, wall-to-wall-like manner. And, in order to keep up with this, it is necessary for us to raise our awareness and to continually adapt our thinking. In the end, isn’t it all about the quality of our thinking?

Moreover, we now read that by changing our thoughts, every cell in our body actually changes. Maybe this explains why, when the thoughts of man changed (slowly) over the centuries, so did the evolution of mankind. Now that we have to continuously assess and improve our thinking, does this mean we are evolving quicker? Daily?

By the way, please check out the talk I will be giving leading up to the Rugby World Cup – I found it fascinating putting some anecdotal evidence of the type of things we can learn from these outrageously talented people. Please use the link below to find out more.

Wishing you all the best for September – Gee! Where has this year gone!