Philosophical interlude

As a teenager I was quietly self righteous in my views on ethics and principles and that sort of thing. My opinions were formed - I enjoyed telling myself - from a position of rational fairness rather than any particular political or cultural awareness. But I was vaguely conscious that these views often conflicted with those of my elders and betters, and the implication of this was that the responsibilities and complications of adulthood would challenge my outlook. I promised myself that, above all, I would remember how I felt at the time, and not let my conclusions be compromised.

Although it will be a while until my daughter is old enough to be affected by the issues concerned, it is dawning on me that parenthood will inevitably present these challenges sooner or later, and that I had better take stock of my thoughts, and galvanise my answers to all those difficult questions. Am I betraying my younger self if I dismiss my prior views as naive adolescent ramblings?

One relatively small example of these issues is swearing. It used to puzzle me that some words were arbitrarily determined as the evil utterances of the devil, while their synonyms were perfectly acceptable. "Poo", "bum" and "wee" were the innocently amusing alternatives to their darker linguistic siblings, even though the meanings of the sinister, taboo words were identical.

I planned to embark upon a subtle, idealistic crusade to overturn this injustice; gently creating some sort of marxist language in which all words are equal. But now I'm not so sure. As a parent I am forced to admit that I would be mortified to hear my daughter saying the bad words. I suppose the difference is that the general consensus has taken on a greater importance for me. It's easy to not care what people think of yourself, but to dismiss what others think of your offspring would constitute irresponsible parenting.

With this in mind I suppose I owe an apology to my parents, for failing to understand their own appreciation of this when I was young. Then again, I was either respectful or fearful enough to censor my language in the company of those for whom I knew it would be an issue, so perhaps I did understand this principle all along, only now I am more inclined to adhere to it.

All of which is a very roundabout way of arriving at the conclusion that what you say is less important than to whom you say it. "Poo" is a funnier word, anyway.

Perhaps cussing is an innocuous issue, but I think it serves as a microcosm for various others, in that fatherhood has compelled me at least to consider the virtue of pragmatism over principle. Another is appearance. By its very nature, I was more demonstrably rebellious on this subject in my youth. I was fairly close to being a model student at school, but I got told off a lot for failing to tuck in my shirt, or strangle myself by doing up my top button, reducing the circumference of my collar to one smaller than that of my neck. I always listened in class and completed my homework in a timely manner, so why did teachers persist in victimising me over these meaningless concerns?

I am less willing in this instance to concede ground. I still resent these episodes, and I'm still most often situated on the casual side of smart. But I will, for example, tuck in my shirt at a friend's wedding. Once again I think the difference is a consideration for the feelings of others. If my friend the hypothetical groom would rather I look presentable on his big day, then that overrides my need to be slightly more comfortable. And this is the general principle that I hope to instill in my daughter.

One philosophy which I hope never to renege on is a basic but big one: just be nice to people, really. I don't always succeed, but I always at least try to take the unselfish option, and avoid being motivated by greed. Even this principle is one that I have had cause to question. My career hasn't followed the path of which I dreamed. This is partly because I never really established the exact nature of the dream, but on cynical, self-pitying days I can't help resorting to the cliche that the selfish and relentlessly ambitious number highly amongst the successful.

Even if this is the case, though, I still cling to the notion that happiness is better than success, especially if that success is at the cost of someone else's happiness.

I don't yet feel like I've arrived at a coherent set of fundamental principles by which to live, but if I could summarise it all into one catchy motto for my daughter then it would be something like this:

Do what you like as long as you're not upsetting anyone reasonable.

I think it still needs a bit of work. But my teenage self would have been happy with it.