While sorting through my vinyl record collection recently, I thought I would play, on my still operating turntable, songs by my favourite artists of the 70s and 80s. I wanted to create an atmosphere of nostalgia while categorising the albums, which was never done when we shifted to our new house two years ago.
The first album I opted to play was from Cat Stevens. I was in high school in the 1970’s when such hits like Father and Son, Moonshadow, Lady D’Arbanville, Just Another Night, Peace Train and Morning Has Broken would be played on my, now considered ancient ‘sound system’ in my bedroom.
The song that brought back the most memories when listening to the album ‘Cats Stevens Greatest Hits’ was (Remember The Days Of The) Old Schoolyard, released in 1977. I was 20 years old and was at university when I first heard it. Even at that time my days as a young schoolboy, both in Singapore at De La Salle School and in Perth at Xavier College and Trinity College were remembered with fond memories.
Photo Credit: De La Salle School (Singapore, 1980) schoolyard with classrooms in the background, as I remember it. This year celebrating its 70th Anniversary (frommydeskathome.com)
Playing it again, 45 years later, I was more reflective on the lyrics of the Old Schoolyard song. While the point of the song is perhaps in its entirety rather than a dissection line by line, I found some lessons to be learnt from the lyrics as I sat to listen it. In this essay, I am suggesting that the actions we have experienced during our school days shouldn’t be restrained by our age. I believe, what we have experienced in those childhood years, should continue in our mature age, and even during the sunset of one’s life.
Photo Credit: Trinity's Quadrangle where we played during recess times. Trinity Old Boys Online site [no copyright infringement intended]
There are only three verses and a bridge to the song Old Schoolyard. From the first two verses repeated below, I have identified the actions of the child, which Cat Stevens exposes as he remembers the school days of his youth. The third verse is a repeat of the first verse.
Verse 1
Remember the days of the old schoolyard
We used to laugh a lot, oh don't you
Remember the days of the old schoolyard
When we had imaginings and we had
All kinds of things and we laughed
And needed love yes, I do
Oh and I remember you
Verse 2
Remember the days of the old schoolyard
We used to cry a lot, oh don't you
Remember the days of the old schoolyard
When we had simplicity and we had
Warm toast for tea and we laughed
And needed love yes, I do
Oh and I remember you
For us grownups, we should not lose out on doing more of these four “we use to or when we had” moments mentioned in the song.
“We used to laugh a lot” – Both psychologist and health practitioners laud the healing benefits of laughter. From an article by authors L.Robinson, M.Smith(M.A.) and J.Segal(Ph.D) in www.helpguide.org it is said that laughter draws people together in ways that trigger healthy physical and emotional changes in the body. Laughter strengthens our immune system, boosts mood, diminishes pain, and protects us from the damaging effects of stress.
Photo Credit: Church of the King on Unsplash
The authors concluded that nothing works faster or more dependably to bring our mind and body back into balance than a good laugh. It is said that humour lightens our burdens, inspires hope, connects us to others, and keeps us grounded, focused, and alert. It also helps us release anger and enables us to forgive sooner.
Here's a very appropriate quote by the French singer Maurice Chevalier; “You don’t stop laughing because you grow older. You grow older because you stop laughing.”
“When we had imaginings and we had all kinds of things” – Do you remember the times when a tree branch became a sword, a rolled up cardboard became a telescope, or a bed sheet became a roof for a cubby house in our bedroom, or perhaps pebbles, flowers and mud cakes were laid out for a playtime tea party? As children we would imagine all sorts of things, and even though we may have had less gadgets and toys during our schoolyard days compared to today, children then were no less occupied during their school recess and leisure times.
Photo Credit: Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
I remember playing with plastic toy soldiers and imaging battle scenes, and plastic animals roaming in our imaginary jungle among the grass. We would make paper planes to have them fly as far as possible across the field or use elastic bands to hop and jump into and out of. Playing with marbles and rubber bands were two of my favourite competitive games during my primary school days.
Should we stop imagining as we grow older? I shouldn’t think so. According to the Oxford Dictionary, imagination is ‘The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images, or concepts of external objects that are not present to the senses.’ Also, imagination is the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.
The greatest inventors, scientists, artists, architects, and writers were great in imagining the possibilities. Italian physician and educator of the 19th Century, Maria Montessori was quoted as saying, “Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and strength, use it to create.”
Lisa Grace Byrne from Well Grounded Life says that “When our imagination becomes dulled or listless, we lose what makes our lives full of purpose and meaning. The imaginative functions of our mind help us make sense of the reality around us. Our thoughts are constantly creating stories about what we see, hear, feel, sense, and experience around us. And those stories drive the direction of our lives.”
In his book, The Body Keeps the Score, Dr Bessel van der Kolk explains that under extreme or chronic stress, sometimes caused by trauma, we can lose access to healthy imaginative functions and our stories about the world around us can become negative and fearful. Once those imaginative functions start to numb out—life can have an overarching feeling of dullness.
Photo Credit: Media from Wix
Van der Kolk suggest that imagination is the vehicle by which we bring new life, inspiration, creativity, hope, and ideas into our consciousness. It gives us the capacity to direct our future in positive ways.
While we imagined much in our younger days, we shouldn’t stop imagining as we get older. In fact, it is a powerful way to bring our life back into a healthy, calm, and grounded place. It is therefore important to prioritize our imaginative functions and keep that area of our minds active and healthy.
“We used to cry a lot” – If you were playing on a concreted schoolyard, as I did when in primary school, falling on your knees with hands spread eagled can be a painful experience. Often tears would be shed, which usually required a band-aid applied to the wound by a teacher-on-duty at the principal’s office.
If I were to go back further in time to when I was about five years old, I cried ‘my eyes out’ when I got transferred to a higher kindergarten class mid-term. This was because I did not want to leave my familiar class and friends.
Photo Credit: Media from Wix
Many children going to school for the first time would shed a tear or two as they left the embrace of their parents as they walked through the gates of their new school. Admittedly some parents too would have shed a tear as their children had their backs to them. Those were the days of the old school yard, which still continues today.
Crying would also occur, perhaps not publicly, if exam results were not as expected. During my primary school years, everyone knew where they stood in their academic ranking of the class. Students would be given their ‘report cards’ and each one knew exactly where they stood. If there were 32 students in the class and your ‘report card’ for the year, had you ranked in the 30’s, you couldn’t help but cry, at least on the ‘inside’, for fear of having your ‘report card’ seen by your parents.
During my schooling years, capital punishment and the use of the infamous leather strap was commonly used. At the all-boy’s school I attended in Perth, those who received the strap, as I was one of them, would try to hold back tears after the strap was applied.
There were many other occasions during my school life where crying was experienced.
How about when we grow older? We know that crying is a natural emotional response. Crying usually arises from grief or when extreme sadness is experienced. Researchers from Harvard Health have established that crying releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, also known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals help ease both physical and emotional pain. Some also cry from extreme excitement and happiness.
We shouldn’t hold back in crying. From a Medical News Today article there were eight benefits of crying:
1. Crying has a soothing effect. Crying activates the parasympathetic nervous system which helps people relax.
2. Crying can help people get support from others around them.
3. Crying helps to relieve pain. With the release of oxytocin and endorphins, crying can help reduce pain and promote a sense of well-being.
4. Crying may help lift people’s spirits and make them feel better. As well as relieving pain as released chemicals can help improve mood.
5. Researchers believe that crying could reduce the levels of stress hormones and other chemicals in the body, which in turn, could reduce stress.
6. Aids sleeping. While the article suggests more research on adults, a 2015 study found crying helped babies sleep better. With the calming, mood-enhancing, and pain-relieving effect of crying it is postulated that crying may help a person fall asleep more easily.
7. Crying helps to kill bacteria and keeps the eyes clean as tears contain a fluid called lysozyme which has powerful antimicrobial properties.
8. Basal tears, which are released every time a person blinks, helps to keep the eyes moist and prevent mucous membranes from drying up.
“We had simplicity and warm toast for tea” – There is no doubt from my experience that life during the 1970’s, when I was at school was much simpler to the school life today. Even the curriculum, at all levels of schooling was simpler compared to the today’s school curriculum.
Cat Stevens wrote the lyrics to this song, recalling his time when he was at St. Joseph’s School in London. I suspect that the ‘warm toast for tea’ was reference to the days of coming home from school when his mother would have ready for young Master Stevens warm toast with a thick spread of the best of English jam.
I can’t say I was treated to jam on warm toast after school, however the simple life I experienced after school included stops at various street vendors on their bicycle selling either ice-cream scooped onto cones, or shredded ice-balls with condense milk and syrups of various colours; red, green, and orange. Some days my friends and I would stop by a peanut vendor and buy nuts while waiting for the bus to take us home.
Photo Credit: Media from Wix
As adults, we reminisce the simple things in life. In fact, these are the most achievable things available to us today. We only need to think ‘simple’ and appreciate the serenity of the occasion.
Eric Overby from his book 17:Haiku Poems says, “It’s the simple things in your life that make up the bulk of it. The mundane is where we live, and we end up missing most of it. We find it again in the silence and in the attention of everyday life.”
As we get older, we find that happiness is found in the simplest of things. Remembering the days of our youth when those simple things were treasured then is a good place to start.
Check out Cat Stevens' Old Schoolyard on YouTube https://youtu.be/uNc5ULGO9EM
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