Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist who deserves a lot more attention than I’m able to give her today. I came across her because in 1985 one of her characters declared an intention to watch only films that obeyed three simple rules – one there had to be two female characters; two they had to have a conversation about three something that wasn’t a man. Unfortunately, in the strip, there are no such films and the character goes home disappointed. I mention this partly as a rail against an industry where it is still unremarkable to have films that fail this test and partly as an apology that today’s assembly fails miserably whatever the Bechdel test equivalent for assemblies would be. I’ll try to do better next time – possibly by spending longer on Alison Bechdel.
Instead I’m leaping into Shakespeare, and the link is that the problem with Shakespeare is the frequency with which his plays fail the Bechdel test. He’s not all bad, though, and one thing I like about Shakespeare is the way he names his plays – it’s straightforward, no messing around. Macbeth? It’s a play about a Scottish fellow called Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet focuses on the love affair between Romeo and, unsurprisingly, Juliet. Othello? A play about Othello. There is, however, one play that I feel lets him down – Julius Caesar isn’t really about Julius Caesar. Before the play is half over he gets murdered – I’m sorry about the spoilers, but this is a historical event that took place in 44BC and if it’s coming as a shock then you need to do a bit more to keep up with world affairs. There is, if I’m honest, a scholarly debate about whether the play is about him anyway, whether he’s such a character that it keeps on being about him when he dies, but the other side of the debate is that the play is really about his assassins – Brutus and Cassius, and the man who master minded the whole thing and then stoked a civil war by raising popular unrest against them, Mark Antony.
Today, however, I want to look at one of Brutus’ lines, from the second half of the play – he and Cassius are in a war against Antony and his protégé, Octavian. Cassius wants to be cautious, withdraw, pull back, but Brutus says this:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”
Let’s unpick this rather wonderful speech and make sense of it. “There is a tide in the affairs of men” – you’ll know from geography that the tide is when the water in the oceans goes up and down, you might know that it’s every twelve hours due to the pull of the moon, you probably don’t know that not only do you get a bulge of water on the side pointing towards the moon, you get one on the far side of the earth too. Brutus is saying that life has good times and bad times, busy times and quiet times, times of opportunity and times without – they don’t depend on the moon and they certainly don’t oscillate every twelve hours, but how things are now is not how they always will be.
“Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” The flood tide is when the water is flowing in, the sea level is rising, it’s the chance to move forward, be dynamic. Brutus is saying that opportunities don’t stay around waiting for you – you need to take them whilst they’re there. “Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries” – if you don’t take the flood tide then you can end up with your ship grounded as the water ebbs away around you, your life stays still and opportunities dry up. “On such a full sea are we now afloat; and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.” Now is the moment, now is the chance, now is the opportunity.
You are in a flood tide – there are lots of things going on, I’m sure it sometimes feels like life is manically swirling around you, opportunities are everywhere, choices to make, chances to take, perhaps there is too much going on and you long for simpler days when you were younger. I sympathise, but it won’t last forever – the opportunities that swirl around you now will pass, and if you don’t take one, go with the tide, you’ll be left, bound in shallows and in miseries – which would be kind of rubbish. I’m saying you should take your opportunities. I’m also, if you notice saying you should enjoy having so many opportunities because when you’re old and grey and wrinkly like me there won’t be so many. Like many of those over-endowed with years, I’m unsympathetically saying you should enjoy being young when you can.
Well, I am saying that, but I’m not unsympathetic. I know it must feel like there are too many choices and I know that if you have a wide range of options it can be difficult to even begin, you sit there looking at the things you might do, weighing up the possibilities, hoping that inspiration will strike. The trouble is that when you’re on a tide, time spent making a decision is time not spent doing any of the things you could do.
To think a bit about decisions, I’d like to tell you a story about a man – he’s about 5 years younger than me and born in Grenada in the Caribbean. I’d usually take an opportunity to tell you about Grenada, but I think we’re going to run out of time, so I’ll save that for a future assembly – maybe the one with Alison Bechdel if I can find a link - and fast-forward through the life of Johnson Beharry to May 1st 2004 when he was a private in a tank regiment in the British Army fighting in Iraq. That morning his tank was ordered to rescue a foot-patrol that had been ambushed. As his tank passed a roundabout, they became aware that the road to the front was empty of all civilians and traffic - an indicator of a potential ambush – and almost immediately, the vehicle was hit by multiple rocket-propelled grenades, destroying the radio, incapacitating both the tank commander and the gunner and leaving Private Beharry in charge without any communications system to get help or advice. He did not know if his commander or crewmen were still alive, or how serious their injuries may be. As he assessed the situation, the vehicle was hit again. Further damage to the tank from these explosions caused it to catch fire and fill rapidly with thick, noxious smoke. Beharry opened the armoured hatch cover to clear his view and decided that his best course of action to save the lives of his crew was to push through, out of the ambush. He drove his tank directly through the barricade, not knowing if there were mines hidden beneath to rip the tank apart.
Johnson Beharry is a bit amazing – he won a Victoria Cross for this and another piece of incredible bravery – but what I’d like to think about is that decision. The tide in the affairs of men had brought him into an ambush, taken away his commanding officers and communications and massively reduced his visibility. I’m sure that if it was me there I’d have been paralysed, not just by fear – although that too – but by the number of choices available to me. There would be so many things to think about and I’m sure you could spend hours working out which one would be best but under fire from rocket-propelled grenades you have seconds before the flood is past and the voyage of your life is bound in shallows and miseries.
How do you get through that indecision to making a choice with not just your life but those of your crew on the line? Well, another person who has to make fast decisions under pressure – although on a completely different level of danger – is a quarterback in American football, and one of my favourite quarterbacks from a few years ago was Cam Newton who led the Carolina Panthers and electrified the league. He said “Control what you can control. Don’t lose sleep worrying about things you don’t have control over because, at the end of the day, you still won’t have any control over them.” I think Beharry thought a bit like that and so this is how I imagine the choice-making went (and I emphasise that this is me imagining – I’m not a soldier, I’ve not heard Beharry speak about this).
So, you. There is a tide in the affairs of sixth-formers which taken at the flood leads to fortune but it is a flood tide filled with choices and my observation is that many of you are paralysed by the need to make a decision. I’m particularly thinking about the UCAS process which seems to be sucking your time like a thirsty vortex – it’s a process filled with important decisions that you need to make, but every moment you spend making the decision is one less moment doing something that might actually get you into the university you choose to apply to. Time spent on your UCAS form is not time studying, working to get those grades. In a way it’s time wasted.
So, let’s take those five points that imaginary Johnson Beharry went through and apply them to your situation:
Opportunities can create indecision paralysis – they can make you freeze – but you need to cut through that, time spent deciding is time not doing. Like Brutus you must seize the tide, like Beharry make a decision and go with it, like Newton don’t waste sleep on things you can’t affect. There is a tide in the affairs of sixth formers which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; on such a full sea are you now afloat; and you must take the current when it serves. The way to get to your dream course, your hoped-for future, is to make your decisions quickly and use the extra time to study.
Footnotes
1. Johnson Beharry's story is told and explored in more detail in An Ordinary Soldier.
2. Julius Caesar gets a mention in both Miserable Scholarship and Vacational Tricolon, both times without Shakespeare to help him out.
3. Shakespeare is fairly passim across the assemblies, Romeo and Juliet comes up in Christmas Stories and Macbeth in Juggling.
4. Othello and the Bechdel test both get a fleeting mention in Peanut Butter Falcon
5. The title "Taken at the Flood" has previously been used by Agatha Christie who comes up (also for a stolen literary title) in Small and Scorching