I know the perfect Steve Chapman. He always comes up with Steve Chapman-like comments. He is an unending source of Steve Chapman style ideas. When I want a Steve Chapman perspective on something of mine, he’s the guy. He writes a blog that is the quintessence of Steve Chapman-ness. He also talks like Steve Chapman, walks like Steve Chapman and even looks exactly like Steve Chapman. He does all of this without having to try. He is Steve Chapman through and through. No-one else I know comes close. I also know the perfect Kay Scorah. Just as Steve Chapman is Steve Chapman I can depend on her to be 100% Kay Scorah. She is ineluctably, irredeemably and effortlessly Kay Scorah. And in a similar vein, blessed that I am, I also know the complete Neil Randhawa, the authentic Conrad Keating, the total Mark Skipper and the only proper person to go to for an injection of Jorge Alvarez.
I am challenged, however, when it comes to Robert Poynton.
I seem to have a much slimmer grasp of who he is than I ought to. My ideas about him can be horribly distorted, lurching wildly from massive exaggerations of his shortcomings to drastic overestimates of his capabilities from one moment to the next. As if I really have no knowledge of him whatsoever.
I spend a good proportion of my time and energy wishing him to be otherwise, trying to make him be (or appear) a certain way. I find myself thinking that if only he were able to do this a bit better, or stop doing that, or act a bit more like so and so, then he (and I) would be better off.
What would it take, I wonder, for each of us to really know who we are and accept that?
If I could truly realise that I need to be and become who I am, rather than hope (or pretend) to be someone I imagine, what would then be possible….?
