What it Means to be Human. Robert Rowland Smith

      The second reason is that, by bringing a real person into the picture, we can gain some initial purchase on what a human being might actually be. For a human being is always a particular human being, not some vague notion of a human being. I often think of an article by the British novelist Zadie Smith, reflecting on the process of writing. She talks about how you always start out with the ambition of penning the perfect book. From the moment you write the first word, however, it becomes this book and no other.

      Behind the idea lies, I suppose, a simple logic. That first word limits the range of options for the second word, the second for the third, and so on, until you have a paragraph which determines the next paragraph which determines the next, until you have a chapter. Then each chapter conditions the chapter after it, until the whole thing is done. A book has to follow an internal sequence to reveal its own identity. By definition, this identity will differ from the identity of other books, and so become unique.

      As the book, so the human being. None of us has an ideal, perfect or general self. We have the self that we have, with its irreducible specificity, its one-of-a-kind combination of history, biology and character. What’s more, our choices narrow as we grow older, making us even less likely to deviate from who we are. The golden thread that leads from the beginning to the end of our lives only becomes finer along the way. So that is why in this chapter I’m looking at a human being in all his book-like individuality.

      The third and most important reason for choosing my father is that his story gives us a first answer to the question that will serve as a prompt to all the chapters ahead. The question is: ‘What does it mean to be a human being?’ Each chapter will offer a different response. In the case of my father, that response goes something like this: ‘Being human means dealing with our fate.’

      My father’s fate was a heavy one. It wasn’t just the MS with which he had to contend. Yet how he contended is what matters. It matters for us all. Whether our fate is lucky or unlucky, we are dealt a hand. We might be born into poverty or affluence, good or bad health, peace or war – but the playing of that hand is up to us. And so it is that tension between being determined by our circumstances and determining ourselves which is an essential part of being human.

      Mutiny in the body

      The ‘sclerosis’ in multiple sclerosis or MS refers to lesions resulting from damage done to the sheaths encasing the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. This damage affects physical coordination, speech, ability to concentrate, memory and more. Maybe all diseases are strange, travelling as covertly as spies and silently infiltrating our systems. What makes MS especially mysterious is that it seems to result from a mutiny in the autoimmune system. Rather than do its job of protecting the body, the autoimmune system revolts and attacks. But not only that:

      Unknown but not unguessed at. The medical literature points to both genetic and environmental factors, though the evidence for either remains inconclusive. It is not a lifestyle disease. Nor is it considered heritable, even though there’s some debate about your increased likelihood of getting it if you’re related to a sufferer. As Colin’s son, I am acutely aware of this possibility, though I’ve never shown any symptoms and have reached an age at which they’re less likely to appear. That does, however, raise the question of just how closely related he and I are.

      Institutionalised

      Colin’s parents, Rowland and Beatrice, divorced early in his life. At the tender age of eight, Colin, an only child, was packed off to an English boarding school in leafy Sussex, called Hurstpierpoint College. This was in 1945, just as the war was ending. I picture the school as a rural haven from the disarray in cities to the north. It was set, as if to a metronome, to the consoling tempo of public-school life – cricket matches, prayers, tea, weekly baths. But rationing was still in force, those baths were cold, and the school will have had its share of bullies. Female presence was limited, and academic study came a long way ahead of emotional development.

      Beatrice, his mother, went to live a hundred and fifty miles away in Birmingham. Rowland took a new wife and had four more children. To begin with, they set up in Hove, adjoining Brighton, and a mere ten miles from Hurstpierpoint. Later, they moved to handsome surroundings in Bungay, Suffolk, which was scarcely any nearer than Birmingham, and required of my grandfather a lengthy commute into Liverpool Street station.