“I hold a torch, it’s not one that I consciously picked up, carry or even want to bear, but a torch it is.

My torch brings light into my life, brings understanding into even the darkest hours. I could name it, call it say, my intelligence, my curiosity maybe, but somehow those names aren’t enough.

I cannot do anything, be anything other than I am.

So, to name this would be to place it outside of myself and that definitively would not be so.

I’m talking here of me being a pain in the ass, a pest, a nuisance, a person who once their teeth are into something will not, indeed cannot let go.

I’m sure you recognise what I mean.

I enjoy this, maybe not every moment of my waking hours, but I enjoy bringing into light the hidden, the unseen, the murky treacherous depths that glide between us, elide, elude us until light comes to bear.

I’m sure that my torch shines on the deliberately hidden, the shameful, the hurtful, my searchlight is not always focussed and can bring these blinking, head down into glare.

My quarry is not these unless you and I have contracted to bring these into the open and down to size; my quarry is the muddy waters we generate to hide our hands as we do our dirty deeds.

Collusive relationships, dependent relationships are always muddy, murky somehow never quite clear.

I work to bring all of my relationships to clarity, to bring light into our days, if you are working toward all that you can be, then you may be able to help me be all that I can be.

I cannot imagine anything finer in my world.

As you might guess this can bring me into conflict with others, the world.

I feel this, I chose at some point that I can no longer remember a ‘hard row to hoe’ a difficult way to be in the world.

I am trapped by my pathology, by my inability to change and by my not wanting to be different.

I get to be called arrogant and carry arrogance as I supposedly view the world in some better way, this is not me.

My way of being helps only me to view my world with clarity; my insights can only be of use if you recognise yourself within them.

Unfortunately, I sometimes forget this and tilt into battle with the passion of a giant killer.

I then become entangled with the obscured needs of co-dependent relationships that organisations need to thrive and become interesting places to work in: ‘Mary has a bigger working space than me’ ‘Harry earns more for a less important job’ I say unfortunately I sometimes forget, because I enter these situations thinking that they and I have contracted to ‘do business’ Instead we have contracted to do ‘other business’ any time that we can get resolve our deeper issues, our psychological issues then the ‘do business’ becomes muddied, dirtied to hide our hidden contracting of ‘other business’ 

You know this, I know this, we enter a room and find somebody there to fall in love with, somebody to hate, to fight, others to cow, another to play the fool with and maybe just maybe somebody we can ‘do business with’

These are the relationships that I can forget about, even more foolishly at times I refuse to play, hence I’m not a team man or player.

I love to work as part of a team, I enjoy it as long as I feel we are focussed upon a task, as soon as I feel we begin to form collusive relationships, I’m gone, the team is over.

I am no longer able to operate at a fully functioning level; I’ve been there, hated it and want to bring into consciousness the games operating.

This does not endear me to others.

I have been accused of having difficulties with organisations, or is it organisations have difficulties with me?

This generally happens when I recognise the difference between what an organisation says and what it does.

I do not always enjoy being reminded of the disparity between what I say and what I do and maybe asking for professionalism from professional’s organisations is asking for too much.

From experience, the caring benevolent bureaucracies are the worst at taking in criticism of themselves, they retreat behind time wasting manoeuvres, long gaps between letters, staff being ill, taking holidays, files being mislaid.

This may be factual, though if so, there is a high rate of illness, inefficiency and holiday leave in these organisations.

My experience of public ‘people’ companies is that the ‘truth’ exists elsewhere out there in the ether, to say sorry for a mistake, to correct an error, is not acceptable perhaps this exposes too much their own vulnerability of being human, as people companies they somehow hold that they cannot make mistakes, that bad things happen between themselves and others who they are supposed to protect.

My way of being, bringing light into these situations’ occasions conflict, my purpose is not to place judgement or value upon situations, rather to understand.

Instead as organisations are encouraged to blame, judge and value they place my enquiries within their framework and then we begin to miss each other further.

I miss them by expecting a possibility of understanding of events that occur between us and they miss me by expecting criticism of themselves.

I can do this but I do not initially want to move into this position, after time though I recognise that I am manoeuvred into that position: it is what they are used to and expect and they can then ignore my views, complaints and wishes.

The game continues, I get to feel ignored and we’re back into ‘doing other business’ Isn’t life great.

We band together for protection, much as we did back in the caves, huddling together for warmth, comfort and fearing the ‘outside.’ 

For us to continue to behave in this way within organisations does not credit us, we can only crowd together ignoring the stink that individuals bring into the mob as we did then and ignore that the stink infects us all.

It is not enough to pretend that that the stink does not affect us, that it does not exist. We can help each other without making judgements about the stinker: their stink maybe unknown to them and exists outside of them, to help them clean up their act, aids us all in cleaning up our own.

Ahh, solutions are so easy.

I get to be the outsider again, I see the problem and forget the needs of individuals who band together inside, cosy, warm and huddled against the outside threat.

I’m sorry, I must apologise for I have pushed them further back into the cave.

This was not my intent; I carry this torch to bring light, to want to illuminate the darkest corners and to scare away the demons.

I do not always recognise the need for stink, the need for muddiness in order for you to do ‘other business’ rather than ‘do business’ this need for stink baffles me, we can do whatever we want to do without this.

Then though, there would be no guilt, this a luxury few would discard, could discard, for without guilt where would be the long self pitying remembrance, the spinning moments of generous self doubt over motives and means.

If we could be but delivered from those who would want their decadent cake and eat at themselves eh?

Come comrades let us drink to the impoverished, let us carry our torches into their nights of coal black, let us hold the mirror whilst they run screaming from true reflection…”

Such a speaker cannot exist, such a torch is carried by those who would wither in small rooms, fret in fashioned phrases set by those here today come tomorrow of morality spread by innuendo rather than open discourse.

Pity them not, they have chosen this path, long, uphill and purposely arduous, still, don’t destroy them either, nurture them as you would all the misguided, all towns need them to stand in the street and point at the emperor’s nakedness and if he isn’t naked: more the better.

Neil Benbow

©neilbenbow2026