How one should live

Once, when I was very small and we were still living in Malta, I watched a star. The star was coming towards me. I followed it with my eyes for a few minutes. Then I noticed that it had lights flashing on either side of it, one red, one green. Naturally, I assumed that it must be an angel, or a fairy, or something else pretty that had wings. I ran out into the garden, my eyes blazing with excitement. I lay down on the grass in the dark. I must have been five or six, and my mother did not mind me being outside on my own, because she could see me by the lounge light. I watched the star come closer. Now, I could see more lights on it. My excitement grew to the point that I wanted to get up and touch the star, but I was afraid of scaring it away. And then it passed me. I watched it go over the roof of our house. When I could no longer see it, I ran round to the front of our house, and I looked for it. There it was, passing over the next house. I wondered whether, if I was good, it would come back and talk to me.

The star never came. The next evening, I saw another. I watched it take the same course over our house, and again I followed it. I watched several more, and as each one disappeared, my sorrow increased. Would I never see the star as it really was?

A week after the first star, I asked my father what it was. He explained to me that it was an airplane, taking people to different countries, or perhaps bringing them back. He explained that the airplane could fly, because the people that built it were very clever. And that, if I worked hard at school, I could be clever too, and make these airplanes or even fly in them.

But although this interested and excited me, I could not hide my disappointment. My father asked me what was wrong. Didn’t I want to be clever and do that too? I told him that I did, but I wished that the airplanes didn’t exist, and that they were fairies instead. He smiled and cuddled me.

I forgot about this for a long time.

Years later, I was sitting at my window in my London flat, watching the airplanes passing over my head. I must have been at least twenty-five, living my own life. I had a good job and was making a lot of money. I was rich, and I was happy. It was only then that I remembered the disappointment I had felt when I discovered that the flying lights were not fairies, but people in tin cans, and how I had wished that they hadn’t existed so that they could be fairies instead. It occurred to me that this is how we live our lives: from day to day we disappoint ourselves and each other, and what for? We never really get anything out of it. We never really achieve anything. We don’t make friends this way, only enemies. We don’t make money this way, or find love. We push it away from ourselves.

I realised that I needed to change. In making money, I had succeeded in being one of the many people that disappoint myself and others every day in the pursuit of that essential Versace dress, those simply divine Jimmy Choos. I realised that I needed to make a life for myself that involved making other people happy, for I knew that only this could make the would make the world a better place.

Now, I’m doing a job I love. I’m teaching language at a little school in London, and I’m much happier than I was before. Although I’m not making so much, I’m not in money trouble. I had been smart enough to save and that tides me over for those little treats that everyone needs from time to time.

So think about it. If it is always that we think for ourselves, think for ourselves through a child’s eye. They make much more sense.