Today, January 25th, in Scotland and throughout the World, we celebrate the life and work of Robert Burns. In recent years I’ve found that I think about him more and this year my unbridled meandering took me to some unexpected places. In doing so I managed to join Burns with some very 21st Century ideas around emotional intelligence and building personal resilience. Here’s how I got there.
Mr McCracken, my old English teacher in Glasgow first introduced me to Burns, but not in the way that you might expect. Burns celebrations were not so culturally embedded in those days as he called him a “third rate poet” conceding only with faint praise that he was a better songwriter. Mathew Arnold, R.S. Thomas and Percy Shelley were more his thing.
His opinion of Burns, although barbed, left an impression nevertheless as I have always paid attention to his songs and it is through his songs that he does what I think good artists do. In every couplet and every verse, he reflects back to us what it is to be human.
The pining melody of Ae Fond Kiss tugs at the heart on its own but add Burns’ lyrics and they reveal a man who knew that the longing for the one you can’t have or have let go, is often a more powerful emotion than the love for the one you are with.
In For ‘A That, he mocks conceit and pomposity and values that which can’t easily be bought namely independence of mind. But it was when I thought about the human capacity for empathy that my mind took a 90 degree turn as I journeyed from Burns, the song, Slave’s Lament, to the 20th Century American jazz and soul song writer, Gil Scott-Heron.
The connection is that Gil Scott-Heron’s surname comes from his ancestors being Caribbean plantation slaves. Upon being freed, it was common for the “emancipated” to take the surname of the plantation owner and in this instance, he was a Scotsman called Alexander Heron.
Several generations later, in a twist of fate that you just couldn’t make up, Gil Scott-Heron’s father, Gil Heron, returned to Scotland briefly in the 1950s to play professional football for Celtic. A homecoming of sorts but perhaps not a reunion that sits easily on the conscience.
Unlikely bedfellows they may be, but I love both Burns and Gil Scott-Heron because they speak to me about who we are. Burns wrote “Oh what power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us”. Scott-Heron’s view 200 years later was, “The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people’s faces”. Both refer to the importance of self-awareness.
Self-awareness as psychologist Daniel Goleman identified in the 1990s is a fundamental component of Emotional Intelligence. And, along with Accurate Thinking and Realistic Optimism, Emotional Intelligence is a key stone of Resilience.
So that’s that. Back to resilience via Burns, Scott-Heron and Me. If you want to find out more about how you can build your personal resilience. Check out my website www.bonmotus.com
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