Last night was one of those properly wild October evenings, rain thrown sideways at the windows and the wind making a decent attempt at the roof. Inside, the cats and I were warm, fed and parked in front of the telly with a Poirot rerun, which is about as cosy as an evening gets.
One line from one episode has been following me around ever since. Poirot turns to a police inspector and says, “It’s not who he is, but who he is,” with the weight landing firmly on the second who. Then the scene ends. Everyone else in the room stares at each other, trying to work out what on earth he means, and the story cuts away to its usual business, a body on the carpet or a scream cutting through a very expensive railway carriage.
I have no idea what Poirot meant. I suspect that’s rather the point of a line like that. It sounds as though it means something and isn’t obliged to say what. But by the time I’d switched the telly off, it had stopped being about the programme at all and had started turning into something I couldn’t quite put down.
Here’s where it went.
Most of us spend an astonishing amount of time describing what we are. The anxious one. The tired one. The one with the dodgy knee, the overdraft, the habit of starting things and not finishing them. The one who isn’t quite good enough. We say it so often and so fluently that it starts to sound like the full description, when really it’s a list of conditions. Things we have, or feel, or have been through. Weather, mostly.
Who we are is a different matter, and a good deal harder to see, because it doesn’t talk nearly as much. It’s what we care about. It’s how we treat people when nobody’s watching. It’s the thing we made, or the thing we meant to make and still might. It’s the person we planned to be at eighteen, who hasn’t actually gone anywhere. It’s the one who, on a rotten day, gets up and does the small decent thing anyway.
The trouble is the volume. The what is loud. It keeps up a running commentary, and it gets plenty of airtime at three in the morning. The who just carries on quietly getting things done, which makes it very easy to mistake for not being there at all.
I’m no expert in any of this, and I’m not going to tell you what to do about it. I can only say what has worked for me this week. When the commentary starts up, I try to notice that it’s describing a what, and leave it at that. Then I go looking for evidence of the who, and it’s always there, usually in something small. A thing finished. A kindness. A stubborn streak I’d never have chosen but which has got me through some rotten spots. That isn’t a list of achievements. It’s just proof that the person is still in the room.
There’s a test I like, borrowed from how we treat other people. Think of a friend who is anxious, tired, a bit skint and doubting themselves. You would never describe them using only that list. You’d say they were funny, or loyal, or daft in the best possible way. You’d know their who without even trying. It’s only with ourselves that we hand the microphone to the what.
So that’s where one throwaway line from a Poirot rerun took me, probably a good deal further than the writers ever intended. Maybe there’s nothing in it. But I’d rather be somebody who goes looking for the who than somebody who lets the what do all the talking.
The storm had blown itself out by morning. The cats were entirely unmoved. I’m fairly sure that’s who they are.
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