…let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. –
Franklin D Roosevelt
As children, my wife and I often holidayed in the north-west Highlands with our families. Then when we met at university, our shared love of the area was one of the things that we found we had in common, and we agreed that we would love to live there at some point.
We brought up our family in the Biggar area, during which time business took me around the world, including a weekly commute to Paris for two years. Following the events of 9/11 which I witnessed first hand while in New York on business, my company transferred me there and we lived just outside New York for a number of years before returning to Scotland.
We talked often about retiring to the Highlands but as we got older gradually such conversations started to include difficulties: things like proximity to towns (in case we needed immediate hospitalisation), increasing age of immediate relatives (regardless of the fact that only my incredibly fit mother-in-law remains alive), being available for our kids (despite the reality that they both live in London); but it was always fun to speculate on what might be.
Serendipity is a strange phenomenon. I was in the middle of restructuring my business and as we sat over dinner that evening, the realisation dawned on both of us that there was no reason whatsoever preventing her from applying for the position other than us taking some radical lifestyle decisions.
So for the first time in her career, my wife applied for a post from an existing job, she was interviewed and was offered the job – the phone call doing so arriving as we drove through Lochcarron. The next few weeks passed in a blur. We found an amazing house to rent, with an equally amazing landlady, in one of the most stunningly beautiful parts of the world I have ever been; and as I write this the sun has broken through the clouds onto the five Sisters of Kintail.
So is this a travelogue in support of VisitScotland? Far from it. The events of the last few months have shown me that there is no limit to achieving your dreams. I mentioned I was in the middle of restructuring my business and that was true, but in making the move, the restructuring has taken shape in a way I would never have imagined. I have new products, new contacts, and with the help of technology I’ve adopted a new way of working that has given me renewed energy and enthusiasm.
We have divested ourselves of the accumulated detritus of years of family life, both physical (why did I have three copies of exactly the same edition of an Agatha Christie whodunnit?) and emotional (kids – if you need us, you know where to find us), although disposing of bulky household waste now involves an 86-mile round trip.
We have joined a community that has welcomed us and, being from a country background ourselves, we understand that it will take time to become part of that community, but we are quietly absorbing the best way to do things in our new life.
But nothing exists in a vacuum and what my wife and I have done has echoes of the political decisions facing Scotland in the coming two years. We had a very comfortable existence, we knew where we were and where we fitted in, my wife had taught for years in the same school since our return from the US. My business contacts were established, my involvement in Scottish rugby deep-seated. We knew where to get medical help if needed, we had the resources and infrastructure we thought indispensable to supporting our very comfortable lifestyle. In short, possible change was a challenge and a threat.
When we mentioned our intentions to friends and family, most were supportive, some thought we were mad, a few were envious of what they saw as a courageous decision to do what we wanted to do but were questioning of how the inevitable upheaval would affect us, and the uncertainty that the future would bring.
It is not nirvana. Distances are brutal, shopping alternatives much reduced, the cost of fuel ridiculous, and don’t even think about being stuck behind a camper van on a single-track road, but we feel fulfilled because we are doing what we want to do and we have changed our lifestyle to fit.
For Scotland, the coming referendum is a time for people to ask themselves what it is they want to do, and what they want to be; not to be put off by what they might lose, but to consider what they might gain; to look at the way things have been done up until now and ask if there might not be a better way and to consider that change can be an opportunity rather than a threat. It might even be the opportunity for us to finally see our neighbours as ‘differently equal’.
But most of all it is a time for the people of Scotland to think long and hard about what their lives should look like and what their society should be. In order to do that let’s have debate, discussion and considered argument, using imagination, logic and constructive passion and not petty-minded invective, falsehood and declamation.
Bill Mitchell is a founding director of Optimum Organisation Design Ltd, a member of the SRU senior panel of officials, and a born-again Highlander
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