Soul Prepper.

When what you need isn't there.

When I was growing up in a small northern town, I went to a prep room every day.

Not because my Pentecostal family were prepping for the Apocalypse; they were longing for the Apocalypse. Even though we did the drill under the stairs once a week, as End-Time was surely approaching, I was brought up to believe that once the angel had liberated us, we would go straight to meet Jesus. Sitting under the stairs with the gasmasks on would be temporary. This is no laughing matter now. It’s what multi-millions of evangelical Christians believe too. Let the bombs go off. It’s all part of the Plan.

Mrs Winterson wasn’t a prepper but she had her War Cupboard filled with Oxo cubes and evaporated milk, sardines in brine, and strange glass jars of beans that sprouted eyes. All this was leftover from the actual war. My parents were in that war, so their interest in long-lasting consumables was fair enough. She didn’t believe in sell-by dates though, and sometimes 20year old tins of corned beef or Spam were served up when we had no money left at the end of the week.

All I can say is that I am still here.

My prep room was the public library.

I didn’t know it served that function at the time. I do now. What I needed were books- and the ideas, confrontations, challenges and beauty they contained. But we didn’t have books at home, and home wasn’t a place of safety for me. The library was safe. On those shelves was the nourishment that would feed my mind. The medicines that would protect me from the feverish madness of WintersonWorld.

I don’t remember much about half of the things I read. I raided the library like a robber. I opened and closed books as if they were drawers - well, they are, in that so much unexpected stuff lies inside them. I cast aside what was useless to me, and stashed somewhere in the swagbag of my mind, what attracted me. Maybe just shiny objects, maybe real gold. What did it matter? I was building a bomb-proof shelter.

And it worked.

Our world now is means-to-end directed. A has to lead to B. There has to be a plan. We’re constantly asked to focus on our lives . Influencers give us lists to stick on the laptop. There’s always 5 steps to happiness or weight loss or health or wealth or attracting exactly the right dog to join your dysfunctional family.

Prepping is planning.

I am a Virgo so I love a list. I am Little Miss Organised. I never run out of frozen peas or real coffee. The car is always filled when the gauge says Half. I get my work done on time and prepare for meetings. Going with the flow kills me.

OK… But… We agree, don’t we, I think we do, or you wouldn’t be here, that life has an Inside as well as Outside. The everything-on-the-outside nature of society makes people ill. It forces us to be scrambling after the next dopamine hit, unable to sit with ourselves without distraction, crazy for the next guru-guy or guru-girl who will tell us how to Manage or Manifest.

In my view, you don’t run life on the Inside the way you run life on the Outside.

Outside, get organised, turn up on time, wash your hair, clean the house, stock the fridge, pay your bills, and be a good citizen.

Inside, give your dreams space. Encourage your imagination. Don’t boss your ideas around. Let them speak for themselves before you rush to judge them, or try to monetise them. Above all, take some time for reading, laughing, walking, doing stuff that has no importance attached to it. This is prepping.

I realise now that all the time I spent ransacking the shelves of the library, careless of any self-improvement and without an aim, was time spent on what really matters - to develop an inner world that could negotiate, question, withstand, if necessary, reject, the demands and values of the outer world.

Not from a place of cynicism or superiority. I don’t have to be right. I do have to know my own mind.

After all, if I don’t know my own mind I won’t be able to change it.

Soul-prepping is the job of a life time. It’s not a checklist and done. That’s for the outside. Sure, you will have a list of books you’d like to read, or a few things you want to go and see, theatre, exhibitions. But that’s just to get you from A to B, to manage the diary. It’s our engagement with what we read and what we see, what we hear, what we get involved in, that makes the difference. None of this is about something to do at the weekend, or to be a more cultured person. If there is no inner life, there is no life. You might as well be a slot machine.

I asked last week what 3 or 4 books you would take with you in a grab-bag. I asked what images, songs, stories, and so on, you carry with invisibly - what you think about when you need to. I have a game with myself when I travel - so that long or short there’s always a part of the journey where I decide to remember and reflect on something I have read or seen, and just be with it, like a friend sitting next to me.

This world is bewildering and scary. The unstable men in charge are enjoying their power. It’s much easier to destabilise the world than to fix it. Trump has failed in everything so far - his End All Wars in 24 Hours. His Tariffs to make America richer. His Immigration rhetoric which has sent fire to California. Like Netanyahu bombing Iran, Trump bombing Iran is to move our eyes aware from his endless failures. This is man who invents emergencies as diversions. Emergencies as covers for hostile acts against ordinary citizens.

We have to live with this madness. We don’t have to go mad.

Soul-prep will help you stabilise your own world. We need sane people and sane voices. Be the sanity you want to see.

And if you have kids, try to explain that soul-prep is a bit like playing the piano. The sooner you start the easier it is. my generation has forced everything to the outward show - and it’s grotesque, and one of the major reasons, I think, why we are seeing a frightening rise in bogus and weaponised ‘spirituality’ and religion. People do know that life has an inside - but they want the outside version of the inside. Enemies to hate, rules that others must follow, control of women, and war. Oh yes, definitely war.

Do what you can and don’t afraid. Prep that Soul!