As we heard from Tanya yesterday, we’re in the midst of wedding season, and with it, the accompanying appetizers - hen and stag parties. One of my favourite writers Dolly Alderton mocked up a typical email from a fictional bridesmaid to the hens ahead of their ‘do’. She has this great line: “included in the money you’ve transferred will be a delicious mezze sharing platter, entitling you to one falafel, three olives and half a flatbread each.” There’s talk of threatened eviction for underachievers during game-time, laborious outfit changes and the reserving of a single chair in the club - all tables were taken. (She jests, yet we relate!)
The recent hen-do of my wonderful friend, Rosie, spectacularly swerved these typically millennial pit-falls. Perhaps we can put it down to the unpretentiousness of camping? Maybe it was our dedication to a Harry Potter theme and the omnipresence of J. K. Rowling’s wise words on hen memorabilia? “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Or was it that sign in the loo, “live simply, laugh often, love freely”?
The book I’m struggling to put down at the moment has some light to shine. It’s by journalist and commentator David Brooks. His theory is that there are two mountains we can climb in life, the first is about defining the self and acquiring stuff, the second is about contribution and aligning your life toward some ultimate good. David encourages moving from the first, (where you tend to be ambitious, independent, living for yourself), to the second (living as a gift for others, relational and intimate). This is where real joy, as opposed to its more shallow relation, happiness, is to be found. Joy in nurturing what Brooks calls ‘thick relationships’; people who are on their second mountain are never thinly attached but instead are deeply committed, deeply rooted. This can be to a vocation, a spouse or family, a community, or a philosophy or faith.
I’m convinced I caught a glimpse of the essence of Brooks’ vision in our hen weekend - relationship, community and commitment at the centre. As one of the proverbs from the Bible’s wisdom tradition affirms, “a sweet friendship refreshes the soul.”
Society might praise independence, but I believe it brings only transient happiness – lasting joy, as this brilliant author writes, “is to be enmeshed in a web of warm relationships”.