Outdoor Focus Summer 2021 Spring 2021 | Page 4

LOOKING FORWARDS

Guild Chair-elect Stan Abbott shares philosophical thoughts about our future …

Many years ago – before even the days of COVID – I was instructed by OWPG President Roly Smith that it was high time I join the Guild .

Given that Roly was , in a very loose kind of way , my employer at the time ( I was editing National Parks Today and Roly was on the editorial board ), I thought this might not be such a bad idea . I duly joined , won an award and went on to organise a Guild media trip to Svalbard , which – along with a subsequent visit to this dramatic Arctic land of ice and mountains – remains one of the true highlights of a lifetime visiting remote islands .
Back in those days I also enjoyed , via the Guild , a highly educative stay at Mar Lodge , near Braemar , and have over subsequent years had the pleasure of sharing my beloved Faroe Islands with many Guild members .
That said , for most of my career , I ’ ve been no more than a fairly passive Guild member – something which only began to change when Dennis Kelsall organised a superb AGM weekend on Jersey .
I have , since then , found myself gradually lured into the mechanics of actually running the Guild , having organised two Big Weekends , as I rebranded our headline annual event , and a third that fell victim to COVID .
So now I �ind myself having agreed to rise in October to the onerous challenge of �illing the shoes of our excellent and highly respected Chair , Peter Gillman .
It is perhaps inevitable that I should now ask myself the existential question : Why ? Why indeed , at a time when more writing , more travel , more gardening and more home improvement are queueing up to �ill my so-called retirement years , am I happy to take on new Guild responsibilities ? Responsibilities geared towards delivering a secure and rewarding future for an organisation whose members are �inding their lifeblood progressively vamped away in a changing economic and creative world .
To answer that , I ’ m going cite Abraham
…. the OWPG has demonstrated these past months that it really can have value , most especially at a time when members may struggle to realise their self-worth
Maslow , the eminent post-War American psychologist , whose Hierarchy of Needs model endures today . Essentially , once we ’ ve secured our physical needs of food , water , shelter and warmth , we can go on to strive for safety , employment and assets .
Then , crucially , we begin to feel an urge to belong : to family or a group of friends or like-minded individuals . Which is where the Guild comes in : Wordsworth might have spent his entire life wandering lonely as a cloud had he not mucked in with fellow Lake Poets , bouncing ideas of each other and perhaps ( well , Coleridge at any rate ) sharing the odd hallucinogen .
The Impressionists initially faced ridicule for the economical style of their innovative work but , with each other ’ s support , proved they were right on the Monet .
The Bloomsbury Group inspired intellectual thought that , through the likes of Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes , went on to profoundly shape so many facets of society today .
To cut to the chase , professional groupings help us to achieve the fourth tier in Maslow ’ s hierarchy : self-worth , accomplishment and con�idence . And perhaps even to arrive at the very pinnacle that is Inner Ful�ilment .
Paradoxically , for those of us who have participated in the regular OWPG Zooms and Blether Sessions , the OWPG has demonstrated these past months that it really can have value , most especially at a time when members may struggle to realise their self-worth as outlets for their work vanish like frost in May .
These online sessions have introduced Guild members of both long and relatively short standing to one another and I for one feel I know more about the work of colleagues than ever .
Good ideas have emerged from such as Jon Sparks ’ s Blether session on how we can build on the Zoom buzz to add value to everyone ’ s Guild membership . Things you can do now to advance this cause include :
4 outdoor focus / summer 2021