A surprising reversal

We brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we shall carry nothing out of it. However, the bit in between immerses us in many variations. I once watched a plain piece of metal being silver-plated. The process didn’t seem to take long. The piece of metal was lowered into a tank. I saw a few bubbles rise to the surface and when the piece was lifted out it was gleaming with a thin silvery coating. We could liken various stages of life to that kind of process.

In my collection of discarded books from local libraries I have a New Zealand Almanac in which I found several pages of obituaries. For one month there was mention of:

• a chief electoral officer;
• an air vice marshall;
• a chairman of  New Zealand  company;
• a leading horse breeder;
• a paramount (Maori) chief;
• and three others, including a former pilot, a recipient of a heart transplant, and the youngest at 2 1/2 months old was the unsuccessful recipient of a liver transplant.

Those and the rest of the obituaries were for people considered to be of some significance, the kind you’d expect to be there in the Almanac. Because I’m stimulated by thinking outside the square, I wondered then who ought to have been in those pages but were not. For instance, there’s a great deal of hype and ballyhoo surrounding sport today. Fifteen make up a rugby team yet it’s the one who scores the try or kicks the conversion who gets the most recognition. It’s the same in most team sports of course. Everyone can’t be mentioned but surely there could be a more balanced appraisal?

The same applies in the wider field of life. I smile when I recall something said one day by the headmaster of the school I attended from the age of 10. It was winter, the cold was biting into our lightly clad bodies as we were lining up to get into the classroom where it would be warmer. As usual, muscle power or the threat of its use, saw the bigger lads in the front. The headmaster looked at us, his long thin nose red from the cold, sporting a small but distinct dew-drop. “Quiet everyone,” he called. And quiet there was. The boys at the front, now with a perceptible forward lean, poised on their toes ready for their motion into the classroom. But then the headmaster said, “Everyone turn around. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Now, the boy at the back move first and lead the way around into the classroom, and the rest follow him.”

Oh, with what childish delight we, at the back, marched past those bigger lads. When we were settled into the classroom, the headmaster looked at us and said, “If you care to read St Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 19, verse 30, you’ll find the origin of the rule used outside today.” Hes smile was only just outdone by the lads who’d marched past the bigger lads. From that time on, the headmaster kept us guessing as to what he’d come up with next as regards the order of things. It stimulated our thinking no end, and in doing so, he won my admiration and allegiance.

He was an ordinary man. The kind, I like to think, who when it came time for him to leave the stage of life, would have heard the words, “The last shall be first, come on in!” And I reckon that all manner of ordinary people would be close behind him.

Dennis Crompton © 1999