The Force

Pass that bit of cardboard over, mate. No, not that one, the other one, that big brown piece next to the pile of Big Issues. It’s going to be a cold one tonight round the back of St Clements Church, I can tell you. My teeth are already chattering like a pair of castanets. I’ll need a good few mouthfuls of Old England sherry before I manage to drop off.

Yes, there’s room for two. You can join me if you want. I wouldn’t mind a chat before we get our heads down. I feel we’re on the same wavelength. What you were saying earlier about seeing the face of God got a lot of sniggers from the others, but I got off on it. In fact I think we’re after the same thing but by different routes. You with your pills and me … well, let me tell you about it.

It all kicked off in a bar in Basingstoke. I was chatting up this barmaid, Crystal, rabbiting on about my job with Integrated Software Solutions of Swindon, when she launched into her own shtick. Turned out she was a real nutter. Wasn’t a cult she hadn’t been into: Wicca, Cayce, Hari Krishna, Tibetan Buddhist Power Chanting – the whole Cook’s World Tour for Weirdos. 

But now she’d given all that up, she said, stripped everything down to the bare essentials. Now she just ‘addressed the universe’. Every morning when she got up she’d ‘commune’ for a few minutes. Like some kid sending a note to a cosmic Santa she’d present the universe with a checklist of what she wanted. A kind of life shopping list. And she’d always end up with the same words each time, like a formula: We expect and demand the best. 

According to her it really worked. The universe coughed up and delivered every time, no questions asked. Well, you had to laugh, didn’t you? I mean, if she’d got the whole universe behind her, what was she doing serving bowls of Planters and halves of Stella in the SleepWell Inn just off the M3? I wasn’t paying that much attention but something must have clicked because after that whenever things got a bit fraught – like when a client was playing up and a contract looked like it was going pear-shaped – I’d hear myself murmuring:  We expect and demand the best. 

After a while something strange started happening, almost like some half-hidden pattern you spot out of the corner of your eye. A tiny trickle of good luck happenings. At first it was just little things here and there, like finding an empty parking place right in front of a client’s offices in a packed town centre. Or like once when I gave 50p to a beggar and then went to the bog and saw a £5 note staring up at me from the tiles.

Then it got to be bigger things too. Like when, against all the odds, I pulled off that Saudi healthcare contract from under the noses of those snotty bastards in DigitUs. And I needed that I can tell you, going on 56 with slyboots Haskins and his cohorts snapping at my heels and the clients expecting me to be the Thames Valley’s answer to Bill Gates. Not to mention the wife always yammering away for more money and the kids looking at me as if I was some turd that had just walked in in a business suit.

So I started doing it more and more: We expect and demand the best. Then a thought struck me: what about the communing with the universe? So I decided to give it a try. Every night before I turned in I tried clearing my mind, blanking everything out and listening out for a response. After a bit it seemed like I was beginning to get something back. It wasn’t a voice, more like a very faint current, a little helpful surge of support. Maybe Crystal was right: the universe was on my side. Maybe it knew all about me, wanted the best for me. Of course it’s interested in other people too, everybody, but maybe they just haven’t woken up or tuned into it yet – or at least not in the right way.

Then I hit a problem. What should I call this big new thing that had come into my life: God? ‘The Father? The Almighty? But I’ve always hated churches and all that religion stuff. So I opted for ‘The Force’. Yes, I know it’s a bit Star Wars, but what the hell? After all, The Force is what it is: the brains and power behind everything, the whole universe stretching out, billions and billions of galaxies for ever and ever … 

I’ve always tended to rush at things and cock them up. To tell you the truth, I was barely reaching my targets at ISS of S. I could already feel the skids under me: a clapped-out 56-year-old slipping further behind year after year. To be fair, ISS tried to help. Sent me on a management development course: ‘Unleashing Your Power Potential’. But it didn’t do me any good. You know, all those buzzwords – ‘empowerment’, ‘focus’, ‘alignment’. It’s just rubbish really, an act of faith.

But there’s no question about the Force. It’s real right enough. It changed everything. It was like I had this dynamo throbbing away inside me generating power. I couldn’t put a foot wrong and, if I did, what would it matter? The Force would put it right in due course – because that’s what it is: a huge, overarching automatic pilot. 

After a bit I started playing around with the communing. I thought: it’s an act of worship in a way, isn’t it? Shouldn’t I be building in something more? So I began chanting. Quietly, of course – I didn’t want the salesmen in the other bedrooms to think I’d gone nuts. Then one day I got this overpowering impulse to kneel down. At first I fought against it. But then, I gave in and just did it, and, boy, did it feel right.

And guess what? It worked. I kid you not. Knock and it will be answered, as it says somewhere. And the pay-offs are, well … tremendous. How can I describe them? It’s like power-assisted living, a complete moment-by-moment support system. Like an endless, unstoppable current of power running through you. All you’ve got to do is point yourself in the right direction, align yourself and let the Force flow through you. The main thing is not try to hold it back. You can’t predict the Force or control it. You’ve got to let it take you where it wants to go – because in the long run that’s where you need to go too. 

It changed me. Somehow I seemed to be becoming more alert and alive but also more detached and calm. It was like I was being remade piece by piece from the inside. Take my voice. I’ve always hated it – too nervous and high-pitched. Now I was beginning to sound richer, darker and deeper, you know, like Laurence Olivier or Charlton Heston or someone playing Moses. Then I decided to grow a beard. At first it came out a weird salt-and-pepper colour but then I let it grow and dyed it white. A really weird thing that: a Swindon salesman with an Old Testament beard! Usually men of my age dye their hair the other way. 

But anyhow it seemed to work. My new signings began to lift off, slowly, then almost vertically. I got a promotion, then another and another. They even invented a new title for me: ‘Client Relationship Management Coordinator (Europe)’. And because 90% of our business was in Europe anyway, I was effectively in charge of the whole shebang, running all the other reps including Slyboots Haskins.

The other guys back in the office began dropping into my cubicle last thing at night to talk things over – work problems at first, then more personal intimate things like problems in their marriages. I kid you not, I’ve had some of them in tears. Even Haskins couldn’t hold out forever. One Friday evening he shambled in, a bit shame-faced, and started on about on he was fed up of all the office politicking. It was like he’d finally forced himself to come to confession. 

Not long after I left Gloria and the kids. Just walked out. No big bust-up or anything. I just saw we were through. We were operating under different programs, walking round one another and never communicating. The Force would never have meant anything to her. You’d never have woken her up, however hard you tried. I took a suitcase with a few clothes and rented a room. Everything else I left behind – the house, the car, the building society accounts. Good luck to her, she could have it all.Let the dead bury the dead.

I’ve always been a bit tight with money, but now I began giving away cash by the shed-load – to anyone in the office going through a bad patch, any charity appeals, beggars on the street, whoever. I knew there was always more coming my way. The Force would take care of it. And it really worked. The more I gave, the more I got. It was like having a direct line to Money Central, a perpetual winning ticket on life’s lottery. 

And it wasn’t just money. New situations, new clients always used to terrify me, but now I’ve realised none of that really matters. My life just the company car I’m currently driving. If it gets shunted, I’ll just be given a new one. I’ve no idea what the Force has in store for me, but I’m sure it’s going to be good. There’s going to be a whole lot more, an endless series we can’t even guess at. And I’m looking forward to it – the chance to start over and over again.

The Force has its own reasons. We can’t see the whole pattern, and we’re not meant to. But if you make the effort to tune into it, the Force gives you your own early warning system, little flashes about what’s going to happen. So I was quite ready when the head honcho called me in and told me that the game was up, that ISS was going down the pan. Old contracts coming to an end and not enough new ones replacing them. Most of the staff were being let go. DigitUs were going to pick up the pieces. 

No question about it, he said, I was a born-again star, a late-life phenomenon. But realistically there wouldn’t be any place for me with DigitUs. They were a new start-up, weren’t they? They’d want to grow their own people. I’d be like a big old Moby Dick in duck pond there, wouldn’t I? 

I think he was stunned by how I reacted. Other people were going around screaming and shouting and slamming doors. He probably thought I’d make a scene. But I simply got up, smiled, looked him in the eye, shook his hand and thanked him for this wonderful second chance. Then I asked how he was going to manage, after all he must be really upset himself. I finished by hugging him and saying: ‘John, may the Force be with you.’ His eyes looked like they were on stalks, like he thought I’d gone barmy or was taking the piss. But I really meant it. 

You see, I knew it was the way the Force wanted it. It was all planned. Just another test, just another set-back that would turn out not to be a set-back after all but an opportunity. I should simply swim with the flow. Because it was going to be alright. And it has been, hasn’t it? I mean, if you really look at the big picture, tie everything together and see what lies beneath. 

I’m going to get my head down under the cardboard now but, remember what I said. I’m still a believer. May The Force be with you. We expect and demand the best.