Who Knows His Own Future

It occurred to me that not one of us knows what we are going to become. I used to think it was amazing that I had had no idea I would become a Godwriter™. It finally dawned on me that this was not amazing at all. No one in the world knows what he or she will become.

Did Joan of Arc have any idea of what role she would one day play?

Did Christ know from the beginning?

Did Shakespeare? Van Gogh?

Does anyone know the ways in which he will amaze himself?

Winston Churchill didn't know he would become Prime Minister. No one knew or even gave it a thought.

I know a little bit about Winston Churchill because long ago, I read An Early Life, his own writing about his childhood. I know this book because we would read some of it in my English classes.

Did you know that Winston's father saw the future Prime Minister as a failure? Winston did not do well in school.

To his father's shame, Winston had flunked school three times.

Winston tells a very funny story of an examination he took where he couldn't think of one word to say. After the test was over, he passed in a paper that was blank except for some doodling and an ink blot. (But that year the school passed him on! He thought the teachers probably just didn't know what to do with him any more.)

He would say the trouble with school was that they would ask you what you didn't know. They never asked you what you did know.

He also said his good command of the English language was due to his repeating classes so many times. He had a great command of the English language, and wrote about forty books in his lifetime. My Early Life is the one to read, Sally!

Getting back to Winston Churchill's childhood, in England in those days, wealthy cultured families sent their sons to boarding school as soon the boys reached their seventh birthday. Although these schools were expensive, they were not nice places to be. Headmasters could be cruel. The other boys too. There was flogging and stupidity. But it had status, and it was done.

On his first day at school, the Headmaster gave the little boy who would some day become Prime Minister a page of Latin declensions to memorize. Winston memorized the page very well and recited it for the Headmaster who was pleased.

Winston innocently asked: "But what does O Mensa mean?"

The Headmaster answered: "It means O Table."

The seven-year old boy asked, "But what does O Table mean?"

The Headmaster said: "It's the term you use when addressing a table – when you're talking to a table."

The boy said, "But I never do!"

Then the headmaster, as if he were a Headmaster in a Charles Dickens' novel, loomed his face near to the little boy and said: "Impertinent boys get punished around here."

But Winston overcame everything. He did not have a determined chin for nothing.