Do you think people change?
They do if they are willing to but basic characteristics remain. Even those qualities we consider harmful stay with us from birth till the end. What changes growing up is our awareness of our qualities and our behaviour. Don’t despair though, if we are conscious and mindful enough we can put the devil to sleep for good, or at least for longer periods.
Then there are those little signs in childhood that foretell the future, showing us our more mature selves. We rarely pay attention to these moments but looking back after a few decades, suddenly everything makes sense.
Once upon a time…
When I started learning how to read in elementary school, the teacher asked me to read something out loud. The text included a name – Richard. I read it as any English speaker would. My insolence took aback the teacher. Why? You may rightly ask. The trouble is that I’m Hungarian, and our pronunciation of the letter combination ‘ch’ sounds like ‘h’ in Hello.
I was eight years old, but the teacher felt it justified and necessary to make me feel ashamed about what I had done. She then went on to my mum, asking where I had learnt to be so disgraceful as to give voice to a Western language. My mum, also a teacher, said she had no idea and wasn’t bothered by my teacher’s overzealousness.
The context
Think of the ’80s, years before the change of regime (1989) in Eastern Europe, when the Communist rule still felt like a permanent and unchallengeable reality. It was a society where you either belonged to the party and openly represented its values or you were against the system – a Western spy in disguise.
Those times ended in 1990 in Hungary but in other parts of the world, it’s still how many are forced to exist. People report each other for thinking differently, so you know better than speaking up openly. As a child, I didn’t fully understand our circumstances and I didn’t feel that it influenced my life but by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, I was old enough to feel the significance of what was happening.
Until today I know how far I can go with expressing my views and opinions, to whom I can speak openly, and when I have to stay silent if I don’t want to put my family in danger. Apart from carrying the traumas of parents and grandparents, it’s because although the system had changed, certain traits of it remained deeply rooted in our society.
The consequences
My then slip of the tongue raised the alarm and the teacher wanted to know what influence I was under. Not much. No one spoke languages in my family, we hardly ever watched TV or foreign films, I was out of the house all the time, growing like a wildflower. I will never know for sure what happened, my only guess is that I could see or feel into the future for a second.
For decades later, I ended up in the ’School of Spies’, already consciously and openly opposing the current regime of my country which had been in power for close to twenty years.
The School of Spies was the nickname of the School of Oriental Studies, which, when established in 1916, trained imperial administrators, military officers, doctors, and teachers in the languages, customs, religions, laws, and history of Asia and Africa, to strengthen Britain’s political, commercial, and military presence in the colonies. Africa was added to the School’s name in 1938, being now called the School of Oriental and African Studies.
The past of SOAS doesn’t lack controversies due to its link to the colonial era, but its current alumni do their best to use their acquired knowledge to the benefit of us all, worldwide. As many of them are employed by organizations and governments, dealing with cross-border matters, the nickname remains – the School of Spies. Whether it’s justifiable or not, I can neither confirm nor deny.
Today
I’m spending the weekend in the forest, which many cultures consider to be the dwelling place of mysterious creatures. It’s the home of the supernatural that people both respect and fear.
We tend to forget that we are also part of nature but in moments when we subconsciously connect to it, inexplicable things may happen. Like when I got a glimpse into my future. Of course, it could have been an accidental slip of the tongue, who knows?
To be continued…
