Making Hay... (A First Timer Account of the Hay Festival 2014)
…Involved a 4.30am get up, a 5am departure, 3 hours driving with a wonky sat nav and a cheery conversation with a lovely lady before passing a rickety wooden toll bridge.
I didn’t know what to expect from the Hay Festival. Indeed, its mere existence only came into my sight a year or so ago. I hadn’t even been to a literary festival before. As I jumped out my car at 8.00am, I spoke to two lovely ladies from Bristol just to tell them it was my first time. They were glad to tell me it was their first time too.
Open minded, I had planned to use the tools one only gets as a writer – the ability to thrive with very little sleep – and my day was set. With my first lecture at 10am, and the last at 7pm, I knew it was an 8am start and as it happened, an 8.30pm finish. I had crazily signed up for seven lectures.
I took a leisurely stroll around the site when I arrived and it looked just like it had done on TV the day before (BBC’s The One Show). I started my day off with a much needed latte and sat with like-minded individuals, and I wondered if, when I grow up, I’ll wear colourful scarves, stripy cardigans and woolly socks. Probably.
I sat, sipping my coffee, smug in the knowledge that I was not one of the parents running round after a child, that might be theirs, dressed as The Gruffalo. There is a certain inner glee when having a day away from the kids and knowing you only have to look after yourself.
I boarded my “rollercoaster ride” at 10am. “The End of Population Growth”, a lecture hosted by Professor Sarah Harper from Oxford University, saw me making my way to the Good Energy Stage. The lecture promised new insights into whether or not the world will be overpopulated by the end of the century, and whether more skilled people in the world could help solve the world’s problems. As a writer of a futuristic book series, this lecture proved relevant and I was riveted from the start.
Sarah was fantastic. She gripped my attention from beginning to end with facts and figures – in 2014 we have a world population of 7 billion, compared to 6 billion in 2000, and an estimated increase by 2050 to 9.8/10 billion. She then slammed the theory that the planet would become overpopulated, and stated that in fact, from her research, the population would level out by around 2050. Without giving away too much, the fact that really caused my mouth to drop was the theory that in 2050, there will be 350 million workers in Europe and 2.5 billion workers in Asia. The good news for me is that the facts and figures Sarah provided actually confirmed that the research I had done into Asia and China regarding demography matched the world I had created in my futuristic book series. I was very excited.
Sarah left the audience with a thought. Africa is the only continent predicted to still see increases in population over the next 100 years, and the only way to stop this is by educating women. I completely agree with this. Sarah then asked the audience how many of us owned a mobile phone. Everyone put their hands up. Then she asked, “How many of you want to upgrade a phone in the next few years?” Quite a lot of us put our hands up. Sarah argued that women in Africa NEED mobile phones, it is their lifeline to the world and to education.
Questions were asked at the end of the session – one contributor said that population growth predictions cannot always be accurate due to being unable to predict the unforeseeable, for example, the Black Death. Another man suggested that regarding the situation in Africa, the attitude of men needed to be addressed, as well as educating women, at which a few people in the audience cheered. Overall, it was a great lecture and I left feeling excited for the day ahead.
The next lecture promised to be intriguing. Titled, “The Ark Before Noah”, the session was hosted by a curator of the British Museum, Irving Finkel. Again, any stories of disasters and evacuation on Earth was going to gain my literary interest, so I secured tickets for this sold out event and took my place.
Irving Finkel is not what you would expect. Well, in some ways he is. He’s old. I’m talking white beard, white hair, glasses – well, just old. And he was clearly on a higher intellectual plain than most of us watching and completely dedicated to his profession. But he was also funny. He declared at one point that he had been researching cuneiform tablets for the best part of his youth, so, as he explained, for the last 70 to 80 years. When a powerpoint shot of ‘Mundi’ (the “map of the world”) showed an arrow which had been superimposed onto the WRONG mountain (which was pivotal to the point Finkel was stating), he expertly joked about it (although you knew the poor admin person who made the fatal error would be “in for it” later).
Finkel’s main points were that the Ark, as in Noah’s Ark, the one mentioned in the Bible and which came to rest on the mountain of Ararat (which is northern Iraq today), was in fact circular and had a ground plan of 3,600 square feet (half the size of a football pitch). Finkel had also found that the actual words, “animals went on two by two” inscribed on the clay cuneiform tablet that he had studied, which tallied with Babylonian scripts.
It was all very interesting and I wished I knew more. The remainder of his talk was a plug of his Channel 4 documentary due to be released later in the year, of which he could not discuss too much, due to the fact the film crew were in the audience and he was not supposed to. He did let slip that the crew had featured him on the Ark (which is being built for the programme), and that he had been asked to “recreate” the scene as Noah. This got a giggle from the audience because everyone was thinking the same thing – it looked like the part of Noah had been made for him. The session was finished with a question from a member of the audience, okay, not so much a question, more of a statement, “I want you to accept God into your life and the teachings of the Bible…” to which Finkel shrugged/ignored and a lot of people (including me) groaned.
After leaving the Oxfam Moot, I was amazed to discover it was 1pm and my stomach reminded me that I was starving. With no time to stop for food, I whisked myself off to the Telegraph Stage for the next lecture, “A Rough Ride to the Future”, by James Lovelock, a visionary Earth scientist. You probably don’t need me to remind you why this is something that appealed to me.
Sat there in the audience, I met one of the most interesting people of the day. (Also one of the most helpful because he donated one of his cookies to me (along with a lady in front who offered cashew nuts) to keep me going). His name was James, and he was a geography teacher from South Wales. When I informed him that the reason I was there was for general interest, to generate creative ideas, and to talk about my book, he became interested in my writing. When I advised it was science fiction, he looked glum and shook his head. This is a reaction I hadn’t expected so I asked him why he didn’t like sci-fi and he explained it was because it went against all his beliefs. So when I told him that the book I’ve written was also on one level a modern day interpretation of the Book of Revelations from the Bible, he wanted to know more. Lots more.
It was great. A proper theological discussion ensued, and he, like a few others, said I was a Christian in denial! I’m not. I’ve just got a general interest in the biblical text, and quite a heavy background in church going from younger days.
We eventually had to be quiet when Rosie Boycott (a director of Virago publishing) escorted James Lovelock on to the stage. At 94 years old, the audience were suitably impressed by the scientist.
Lovelock had, what can only be described, as a “wacky” idea he called Gaia, and which he had written a book about. In summary, the Gaia theory proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. Sort of artificial intelligence. He talked about how since the steam engine, evolution had sped up, particularly in recent years which he called an “accelerated period”.
His discussion wavered a little to discussions about saving the planet, and how for 3.5 billion years the planet had managed to take care of itself, and how we shouldn’t as a human race be attempting to interfere. He said that he didn’t understand why the human race think they can regulate Earth, and that money should be spent instead on looking at threats to the human race, such as starvation risks (ie. with little land in the UK) rather than threats to Earth. Of course, someone in the audience challenged this, saying that surely looking after the planet assured the survival of the human race.
He highlighted that migration to cities was an evolutionary step which fit in with Sarah Harper’s lecture form earlier in the day. She said 90% of the population by the end of the century will be in an urban centre. Lovelock said that in regard to increasing temperatures on the planet, by 2100 there will be a 6 degree Celsius increase in temperature which wouldn’t be a problem as currently Singapore is 12.5 degrees Celsius higher than world averages and people are coping there.
Some members of the audience who had clearly studied some of his work challenged him. He handled the questions well though, and kept me thinking about the idea that Gaia and humans are all interrelated and part of the same system.
Coming up to 3pm, my next lecture was with the CEO of Oxfam (Mark Goldring) and Suzanne Franks (a journalist) on the relationship between the media and public attitude to famine, aid, politics (and fundraising). I managed to nip for a quick coffee before this lecture which pepped me up.
This lecture addressed harsh realities. Whether a reported disaster is manmade or natural depends on the level of support it receives. For example, people are donating to Syria because it appears messy and unsolvable. Less are donating to those suffering in the Philippines which has been devastated by a typhoon. People are becoming desensitized to the images being portrayed, yet those images of starving black babies on the TV still provoke the most charity donations. Pre-alerting people of disasters is not sufficient to gain enough public sympathy. Only when the devastating pictures of dying babies reaches us, do we do something, but by then it’s too late. Suzanne Franks called this “the ask was not desperate enough”. The panel (it was chaired by Nik Gowing) also questioned the advertising of “£2 will save a life” when in fact – it doesn’t. A more complex, sophisticated explanation of where money is going is required in the future. It challenged my assumptions on donations.
After that sobering, but very thought-provoking lecture, I headed on down to the Tata tent for a lecture by the QI team (researchers). By this point, I was tired, but soldiering through, and was looking forward to some light relief. After returning to work this week, it also transpired that a lady I work with was at the Festival and had given me a cheery wave from a queue at this point in the day, which not surprisingly, I had failed to notice.
The QI team did not disappoint. I found so much of the lecture hilarious, it was hard not to laugh out loud, but as with the QI show, I can hardly remember many of the most hilarious facts now. Embarrassingly, these ones stayed with me: kangaroos have 3 vaginas. Ladybirds orgasm for 30 minutes and have multiple sexual partners (male and female and at least 30) in a lifetime. If you put a human and a dog in a race, the human will beat the dog after 2k. A therapist once bought a website with the name www.therapist.com and even went as far as adding the word ‘finder’. They reeled off fact after fact, which made for enjoyable watching.
By the time the lecture had finished it was close to 5pm and suddenly there were no more families or children milling around, so easy access to the food court. I had a crab sandwich with lava bread and it was fabulous.
The next lecture was hosted by Rosie Boycott (again, yes, the director of Virago publishing – what are you trying to imply?!) and she was interviewing John Hegarty, an advertising guru. The lecture was titled “On Creativity: There Are No Rules” and he started out by saying that in creativity, you need to reflect yourself in everything that you do. I was so tempted at this point to point out that he was the creator behind Flat Eric for Levis. But instead, I quietly giggled away to myself.
This guy, dressed in stripy socks, blue plimsolls and an odd combination of beige jacket and green trousers (but it kind of worked) said some interesting stuff. He said creativity was about trying to change the way someone thinks or feels about something – not reaffirming their thoughts. I agreed with this – as writers, our notepads are a reminder that we see things in new ways every day. At the end of the lecture, he showed the audience a sketch of a guy with headphones on and stressed the need to take out the headphones and observe the everyday and to not stop looking. I quite liked him, despite his dodgy cartoon drawing of a couple having sex, which I can’t quite recall the reason for. His comments tied in with my philosophy. He said creating a brand was about getting out and speaking to people, being fearless and being irreverent. Brand is made by the people who know about it, not by the people who buy it.
The last lecture of the day with Arianna Huffington was one I had been looking forward to, and being at the festival on my own meant that I could acquire single seats near the front. A 40 year old lady who works as a social worker came and sat next to me and was delighted to tell me that Cerys Matthews and “Susannah from Trinny & Susannah” were wandering around outside with the public. She made me smile.
Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, is quite prolific on LinkedIn, but the truth is, I didn’t know much about her until I read up on her. Her lecture appealed to me because she talked about a book she has written regarding how we define success and create a happier life. Given my recent blog series on happiness, The Art of Happiness, I was keen to see what she had to say. (You can view the entire lecture here).
She started out by talking about the “busyness” of life and how everyone wears “busyness” as a badge of honour and how there is a “sense of breathlessness about our lives”. I liked these statements; they related to me – I know a lot of busy people, but only few productive ones. Arianna went on to stress the importance of having enough sleep in our lives, a theme I’ve heard a lot on over the years. Arianna stated that all her bad mistakes were made because she didn’t have enough sleep.
Arianna then went on to talk about the death of her mother and our perception of death in society. This interested me greatly. I’m a big believer (and this is reflected in my futuristic writing) that future generations will have more control over their deaths and how and when they happen. Arianna explained, very clearly, and in a way that moved me, the death of her mother. How her mother had fallen, and told her children who were in the house that day with her grandchildren, not to call an ambulance, but to open a bottle of wine. How she had been helped into bed, and chatted with her children for 3 hours before she passed away peacefully, on her terms and not in a hospital.
Arianna talked about finding time to relax more, meditation, and switching off from work. I did like the phrases she used, “escort your phone out of the bedroom,” and “don’t rush to your phone in the morning, don’t be at the mercy of the world.” I liked this phrase particularly, and would like to say I have incorporated it into my own life, but can’t really, as I’m sat here at 01.05am writing this blog.
Arianna used a train analogy to describe kicking people off the train who are toxic to your life, and don’t bring any positivity. She said to, “escort them out of the compartment.” She also said, “no brilliant jerks allowed”, a term used to describe those that are brilliant at their jobs, but total jerks in the office. This is because of the damage to morale in the team which cannot be restored, which I kind of already knew due to an article I’d read a few weeks previously in ‘The Lawyer’ magazine. It was a privilege to see her so close up.
What was also really interesting were the comments that came from the audience, and which aren’t on the recording of the event. Someone asked her how she could claim to be an authoritative source on redefining success, when she was already extremely successful herself? Another person discussed the trials of their own daily life, a mix of long hours running a design agency, and someone else discussed long working hours and a long commute. Both asked the same question – how do you fit in time for mediation and relaxation?
At this point, I wanted to shout out and tell these people to simply change their lives if they’re not happy with them. Yes, it’s hard to do and a risk, but how will you find happiness if you don’t try?
The audience member that really moved me was a young guy who had just graduated from University. He said all of his friends were getting internships, had better grades than him, were getting jobs, whereas he wasn’t. I was moved because I wrote a blog post on this subject last year (So You Got Your Exam Results. Now What?/ Where did I put that manual on Life?), and as I sat there in the audience, situated in South Wales, I thought back to the statistic I’d read when writing that article – that suicide rates in Wales had increased in men by 30% in the previous two years.
I don’t recall what Arianna said to this guy, but if I hadn’t been so tired, I would have said something. And I would have kept it simple: never judge yourself based on someone else’s success.
Arianna ended her session with a great piece of wisdom – “live as if everything is in your favour.”
As I left the festival, the sun came out and I took a leisurely drive to visit my sister who lives a couple of hours drive away. Was it worth the long trip? Absolutely. Will I go again? Absolutely, I’m already looking at becoming a ‘Friend of Hay’.
If you’ve stuck with me and read this entire blog post, then I think you should go too.
Read about the Hay Festival here.
Follow me @JWilbyPalmer
Author update - you can now purchase my debut novel 'Where Were You When the World Ended?' from the Amazon Kindle store.
I didn’t know what to expect from the Hay Festival. Indeed, its mere existence only came into my sight a year or so ago. I hadn’t even been to a literary festival before. As I jumped out my car at 8.00am, I spoke to two lovely ladies from Bristol just to tell them it was my first time. They were glad to tell me it was their first time too.
Open minded, I had planned to use the tools one only gets as a writer – the ability to thrive with very little sleep – and my day was set. With my first lecture at 10am, and the last at 7pm, I knew it was an 8am start and as it happened, an 8.30pm finish. I had crazily signed up for seven lectures.
I took a leisurely stroll around the site when I arrived and it looked just like it had done on TV the day before (BBC’s The One Show). I started my day off with a much needed latte and sat with like-minded individuals, and I wondered if, when I grow up, I’ll wear colourful scarves, stripy cardigans and woolly socks. Probably.
I sat, sipping my coffee, smug in the knowledge that I was not one of the parents running round after a child, that might be theirs, dressed as The Gruffalo. There is a certain inner glee when having a day away from the kids and knowing you only have to look after yourself.
I boarded my “rollercoaster ride” at 10am. “The End of Population Growth”, a lecture hosted by Professor Sarah Harper from Oxford University, saw me making my way to the Good Energy Stage. The lecture promised new insights into whether or not the world will be overpopulated by the end of the century, and whether more skilled people in the world could help solve the world’s problems. As a writer of a futuristic book series, this lecture proved relevant and I was riveted from the start.
Sarah was fantastic. She gripped my attention from beginning to end with facts and figures – in 2014 we have a world population of 7 billion, compared to 6 billion in 2000, and an estimated increase by 2050 to 9.8/10 billion. She then slammed the theory that the planet would become overpopulated, and stated that in fact, from her research, the population would level out by around 2050. Without giving away too much, the fact that really caused my mouth to drop was the theory that in 2050, there will be 350 million workers in Europe and 2.5 billion workers in Asia. The good news for me is that the facts and figures Sarah provided actually confirmed that the research I had done into Asia and China regarding demography matched the world I had created in my futuristic book series. I was very excited.
Sarah left the audience with a thought. Africa is the only continent predicted to still see increases in population over the next 100 years, and the only way to stop this is by educating women. I completely agree with this. Sarah then asked the audience how many of us owned a mobile phone. Everyone put their hands up. Then she asked, “How many of you want to upgrade a phone in the next few years?” Quite a lot of us put our hands up. Sarah argued that women in Africa NEED mobile phones, it is their lifeline to the world and to education.
Questions were asked at the end of the session – one contributor said that population growth predictions cannot always be accurate due to being unable to predict the unforeseeable, for example, the Black Death. Another man suggested that regarding the situation in Africa, the attitude of men needed to be addressed, as well as educating women, at which a few people in the audience cheered. Overall, it was a great lecture and I left feeling excited for the day ahead.
The next lecture promised to be intriguing. Titled, “The Ark Before Noah”, the session was hosted by a curator of the British Museum, Irving Finkel. Again, any stories of disasters and evacuation on Earth was going to gain my literary interest, so I secured tickets for this sold out event and took my place.
Irving Finkel is not what you would expect. Well, in some ways he is. He’s old. I’m talking white beard, white hair, glasses – well, just old. And he was clearly on a higher intellectual plain than most of us watching and completely dedicated to his profession. But he was also funny. He declared at one point that he had been researching cuneiform tablets for the best part of his youth, so, as he explained, for the last 70 to 80 years. When a powerpoint shot of ‘Mundi’ (the “map of the world”) showed an arrow which had been superimposed onto the WRONG mountain (which was pivotal to the point Finkel was stating), he expertly joked about it (although you knew the poor admin person who made the fatal error would be “in for it” later).
Finkel’s main points were that the Ark, as in Noah’s Ark, the one mentioned in the Bible and which came to rest on the mountain of Ararat (which is northern Iraq today), was in fact circular and had a ground plan of 3,600 square feet (half the size of a football pitch). Finkel had also found that the actual words, “animals went on two by two” inscribed on the clay cuneiform tablet that he had studied, which tallied with Babylonian scripts.
It was all very interesting and I wished I knew more. The remainder of his talk was a plug of his Channel 4 documentary due to be released later in the year, of which he could not discuss too much, due to the fact the film crew were in the audience and he was not supposed to. He did let slip that the crew had featured him on the Ark (which is being built for the programme), and that he had been asked to “recreate” the scene as Noah. This got a giggle from the audience because everyone was thinking the same thing – it looked like the part of Noah had been made for him. The session was finished with a question from a member of the audience, okay, not so much a question, more of a statement, “I want you to accept God into your life and the teachings of the Bible…” to which Finkel shrugged/ignored and a lot of people (including me) groaned.
After leaving the Oxfam Moot, I was amazed to discover it was 1pm and my stomach reminded me that I was starving. With no time to stop for food, I whisked myself off to the Telegraph Stage for the next lecture, “A Rough Ride to the Future”, by James Lovelock, a visionary Earth scientist. You probably don’t need me to remind you why this is something that appealed to me.
Sat there in the audience, I met one of the most interesting people of the day. (Also one of the most helpful because he donated one of his cookies to me (along with a lady in front who offered cashew nuts) to keep me going). His name was James, and he was a geography teacher from South Wales. When I informed him that the reason I was there was for general interest, to generate creative ideas, and to talk about my book, he became interested in my writing. When I advised it was science fiction, he looked glum and shook his head. This is a reaction I hadn’t expected so I asked him why he didn’t like sci-fi and he explained it was because it went against all his beliefs. So when I told him that the book I’ve written was also on one level a modern day interpretation of the Book of Revelations from the Bible, he wanted to know more. Lots more.
It was great. A proper theological discussion ensued, and he, like a few others, said I was a Christian in denial! I’m not. I’ve just got a general interest in the biblical text, and quite a heavy background in church going from younger days.
We eventually had to be quiet when Rosie Boycott (a director of Virago publishing) escorted James Lovelock on to the stage. At 94 years old, the audience were suitably impressed by the scientist.
Lovelock had, what can only be described, as a “wacky” idea he called Gaia, and which he had written a book about. In summary, the Gaia theory proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. Sort of artificial intelligence. He talked about how since the steam engine, evolution had sped up, particularly in recent years which he called an “accelerated period”.
His discussion wavered a little to discussions about saving the planet, and how for 3.5 billion years the planet had managed to take care of itself, and how we shouldn’t as a human race be attempting to interfere. He said that he didn’t understand why the human race think they can regulate Earth, and that money should be spent instead on looking at threats to the human race, such as starvation risks (ie. with little land in the UK) rather than threats to Earth. Of course, someone in the audience challenged this, saying that surely looking after the planet assured the survival of the human race.
He highlighted that migration to cities was an evolutionary step which fit in with Sarah Harper’s lecture form earlier in the day. She said 90% of the population by the end of the century will be in an urban centre. Lovelock said that in regard to increasing temperatures on the planet, by 2100 there will be a 6 degree Celsius increase in temperature which wouldn’t be a problem as currently Singapore is 12.5 degrees Celsius higher than world averages and people are coping there.
Some members of the audience who had clearly studied some of his work challenged him. He handled the questions well though, and kept me thinking about the idea that Gaia and humans are all interrelated and part of the same system.
Coming up to 3pm, my next lecture was with the CEO of Oxfam (Mark Goldring) and Suzanne Franks (a journalist) on the relationship between the media and public attitude to famine, aid, politics (and fundraising). I managed to nip for a quick coffee before this lecture which pepped me up.
This lecture addressed harsh realities. Whether a reported disaster is manmade or natural depends on the level of support it receives. For example, people are donating to Syria because it appears messy and unsolvable. Less are donating to those suffering in the Philippines which has been devastated by a typhoon. People are becoming desensitized to the images being portrayed, yet those images of starving black babies on the TV still provoke the most charity donations. Pre-alerting people of disasters is not sufficient to gain enough public sympathy. Only when the devastating pictures of dying babies reaches us, do we do something, but by then it’s too late. Suzanne Franks called this “the ask was not desperate enough”. The panel (it was chaired by Nik Gowing) also questioned the advertising of “£2 will save a life” when in fact – it doesn’t. A more complex, sophisticated explanation of where money is going is required in the future. It challenged my assumptions on donations.
After that sobering, but very thought-provoking lecture, I headed on down to the Tata tent for a lecture by the QI team (researchers). By this point, I was tired, but soldiering through, and was looking forward to some light relief. After returning to work this week, it also transpired that a lady I work with was at the Festival and had given me a cheery wave from a queue at this point in the day, which not surprisingly, I had failed to notice.
The QI team did not disappoint. I found so much of the lecture hilarious, it was hard not to laugh out loud, but as with the QI show, I can hardly remember many of the most hilarious facts now. Embarrassingly, these ones stayed with me: kangaroos have 3 vaginas. Ladybirds orgasm for 30 minutes and have multiple sexual partners (male and female and at least 30) in a lifetime. If you put a human and a dog in a race, the human will beat the dog after 2k. A therapist once bought a website with the name www.therapist.com and even went as far as adding the word ‘finder’. They reeled off fact after fact, which made for enjoyable watching.
By the time the lecture had finished it was close to 5pm and suddenly there were no more families or children milling around, so easy access to the food court. I had a crab sandwich with lava bread and it was fabulous.
The next lecture was hosted by Rosie Boycott (again, yes, the director of Virago publishing – what are you trying to imply?!) and she was interviewing John Hegarty, an advertising guru. The lecture was titled “On Creativity: There Are No Rules” and he started out by saying that in creativity, you need to reflect yourself in everything that you do. I was so tempted at this point to point out that he was the creator behind Flat Eric for Levis. But instead, I quietly giggled away to myself.
This guy, dressed in stripy socks, blue plimsolls and an odd combination of beige jacket and green trousers (but it kind of worked) said some interesting stuff. He said creativity was about trying to change the way someone thinks or feels about something – not reaffirming their thoughts. I agreed with this – as writers, our notepads are a reminder that we see things in new ways every day. At the end of the lecture, he showed the audience a sketch of a guy with headphones on and stressed the need to take out the headphones and observe the everyday and to not stop looking. I quite liked him, despite his dodgy cartoon drawing of a couple having sex, which I can’t quite recall the reason for. His comments tied in with my philosophy. He said creating a brand was about getting out and speaking to people, being fearless and being irreverent. Brand is made by the people who know about it, not by the people who buy it.
The last lecture of the day with Arianna Huffington was one I had been looking forward to, and being at the festival on my own meant that I could acquire single seats near the front. A 40 year old lady who works as a social worker came and sat next to me and was delighted to tell me that Cerys Matthews and “Susannah from Trinny & Susannah” were wandering around outside with the public. She made me smile.
Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, is quite prolific on LinkedIn, but the truth is, I didn’t know much about her until I read up on her. Her lecture appealed to me because she talked about a book she has written regarding how we define success and create a happier life. Given my recent blog series on happiness, The Art of Happiness, I was keen to see what she had to say. (You can view the entire lecture here).
She started out by talking about the “busyness” of life and how everyone wears “busyness” as a badge of honour and how there is a “sense of breathlessness about our lives”. I liked these statements; they related to me – I know a lot of busy people, but only few productive ones. Arianna went on to stress the importance of having enough sleep in our lives, a theme I’ve heard a lot on over the years. Arianna stated that all her bad mistakes were made because she didn’t have enough sleep.
Arianna then went on to talk about the death of her mother and our perception of death in society. This interested me greatly. I’m a big believer (and this is reflected in my futuristic writing) that future generations will have more control over their deaths and how and when they happen. Arianna explained, very clearly, and in a way that moved me, the death of her mother. How her mother had fallen, and told her children who were in the house that day with her grandchildren, not to call an ambulance, but to open a bottle of wine. How she had been helped into bed, and chatted with her children for 3 hours before she passed away peacefully, on her terms and not in a hospital.
Arianna talked about finding time to relax more, meditation, and switching off from work. I did like the phrases she used, “escort your phone out of the bedroom,” and “don’t rush to your phone in the morning, don’t be at the mercy of the world.” I liked this phrase particularly, and would like to say I have incorporated it into my own life, but can’t really, as I’m sat here at 01.05am writing this blog.
Arianna used a train analogy to describe kicking people off the train who are toxic to your life, and don’t bring any positivity. She said to, “escort them out of the compartment.” She also said, “no brilliant jerks allowed”, a term used to describe those that are brilliant at their jobs, but total jerks in the office. This is because of the damage to morale in the team which cannot be restored, which I kind of already knew due to an article I’d read a few weeks previously in ‘The Lawyer’ magazine. It was a privilege to see her so close up.
What was also really interesting were the comments that came from the audience, and which aren’t on the recording of the event. Someone asked her how she could claim to be an authoritative source on redefining success, when she was already extremely successful herself? Another person discussed the trials of their own daily life, a mix of long hours running a design agency, and someone else discussed long working hours and a long commute. Both asked the same question – how do you fit in time for mediation and relaxation?
At this point, I wanted to shout out and tell these people to simply change their lives if they’re not happy with them. Yes, it’s hard to do and a risk, but how will you find happiness if you don’t try?
The audience member that really moved me was a young guy who had just graduated from University. He said all of his friends were getting internships, had better grades than him, were getting jobs, whereas he wasn’t. I was moved because I wrote a blog post on this subject last year (So You Got Your Exam Results. Now What?/ Where did I put that manual on Life?), and as I sat there in the audience, situated in South Wales, I thought back to the statistic I’d read when writing that article – that suicide rates in Wales had increased in men by 30% in the previous two years.
I don’t recall what Arianna said to this guy, but if I hadn’t been so tired, I would have said something. And I would have kept it simple: never judge yourself based on someone else’s success.
Arianna ended her session with a great piece of wisdom – “live as if everything is in your favour.”
As I left the festival, the sun came out and I took a leisurely drive to visit my sister who lives a couple of hours drive away. Was it worth the long trip? Absolutely. Will I go again? Absolutely, I’m already looking at becoming a ‘Friend of Hay’.
If you’ve stuck with me and read this entire blog post, then I think you should go too.
Read about the Hay Festival here.
Follow me @JWilbyPalmer
Author update - you can now purchase my debut novel 'Where Were You When the World Ended?' from the Amazon Kindle store.
Hi, I'm so glad you enjoyied your visit. I actually work at the hay festival, I was one of the yellow vested stewards working on the elmley stage.
ReplyDeleteWe love hearing people say they are going to come back, it means we (the festival) did our jobs properly.
Also next year we will try and make it less muddy lol
Hi there, I am delighted you took the time to comment! One thing I failed to mention in the above was the fact the event was very well organised. There were a lot of people but I always comfortably made it in good time to the next lecture. A big well done to you and the organisers! If you manage to stop the mud, I'll be impressed!
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