Roads to Joy

Clearly, one needs to be of a certain age to be interested in getting together with a bunch of similar-aged gentlemen of a Monday morning to discuss a panoply of topics that might concern one or another of us. Being retired helps too, of course — busy working people would not be able to spare an hour out of their Monday morning to chat around the table.

But I’ve surprised myself by how much I enjoy these sessions, which I’d approached initially as a kind of duty. Though it is a duty of care, for the social cohesion of the older members of the community, it’s also a matter of learning, whether it’s about the vagaries of social media, or some ancient history, going back to the 1830s when the little village became the smallest Royal Burgh in Scotland.

This morning we chatted a bit about how social media might be affecting our brains, and the brains of our children. I extemporised, suggesting that in biological evolutionary terms, there won’t be any effect for thousands if not millions of years of social media involvement, but that in a social evolutionary context, in the sense of ‘nurturance’ rather than ‘nature’ as it were, we are already deeply into a dramatic shift in our behavioural patterns. Social evolution, the appropriate of cultural memes by our acquisitive brains, is increasingly rapid, and getting faster and faster. But we mostly agreed that social media is something we can take or leave, and frankly, we mostly leave it, except when it’s useful.

Many’s the time, for example, that I’ve availed myself of useful information on crucial repairs of our ancient motorhome, Harry Hymer to us, thanks to the Facebook Classic Hymers Technical group and its vast archive of information for old Hymermobile owners. And our own extended nuclear family members tend to send WhatsApp messages to each other. I can’t say I’m particularly interested in other Facebook pages, however, though I know they’re there. As for the twitterati, or Xers as they may now be called, I can’t be bothered. Some of us gentlemen, however, may feel a bit at sea, though the consensus around the table seemed to be that if we have a question, we’ll more usually ask a person face-to-face than start doing the social media rounds. Call it age or habit, but that’s what we do.

On the history side, there’s a lot of fascinating material about these parts that’s not necessarily collated yet, but resides in the consciousness, or in the personal archive, of some of the older folks hereabouts. We delved into a bit of it this morning. We all agreed that It’s probably a good idea to get that history down somehow, before it trickles off into oblivion, awaiting a future historian’s efforts to dredge it up again from whatever sources they can find.

And so the chat circles around the table, on these mornings, as we ponder a great variety of matters of interest. I thought I might just record my own joy, along with a quick snap of the coffee presentation, which by the absence of mugs from the tray indicates that about a dozen of us had gathered together this morning. It’s a joy of fellowship, I guess, of enjoying contributions from each other to the developing conversation.

But as we left, one of the gentlemen looked at me and thanked me for the joyful (his words) conversation! So there you have it, a bit of joy offered and received with some validation as well.