This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.
45 years ago I met a man whose story intrigued me. His name was Dr Wlod Otocki and he came to Cheltenham once a week to give Russian conversation practice to me and colleagues when we were training at GCHQ. I only knew him for six months or so and he died in 1985.
I think his story haunted me over the years because it was hard to believe. He was born in Russian-occupied Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, lived in Kyiv during the Russian Revolution, fought in Poland as part of the resistance during World War Two, took part in the Warsaw Uprising, was a prisoner-of-war more than once, then spent the post-war years in London with the Polish Government-in-Exile. He was clear that his vocation was to live long enough to document everything from those times so that the Soviets could never deny the truth of what had gone on in Poland.
What’s always intrigued me is this: what drove him to really dangerous choices that put his life on the line repeatedly? Which choices would I make if I were faced with the violence of corrupt government power and could either avoid conflict or stand up to it? Am I brave enough?
This month sees the beginning of Lent in the Christian calendar – which, surprisingly, is not about having a break from chocolate or booze. In fact, Lent creates space for asking hard questions. Strip away the ‘stuff’ of life that distracts me from facing up to who I really really am and what really really drives me; then I might have to face hard choices.
It’s no coincidence that the first words of Jesus in John’s Gospel have him asking a hard question: “What are you looking for?” We could paraphrase it: “What do you want from your life?” “What actually is really driving you?” According to the other gospels, Jesus could do this because he had already had to face them himself in the desert: “What is your kingdom really about? A quick route to glory or the road to a cross?”
Such questions probe our fundamental motivations – but they open up the mind and imagination to the possibility that there might be more to my existence and our common life in society – to truth, integrity, courage, failure and fear. Very contemporary.
I want to know more about what made Wlod Otocki choose. But, I also want to examine myself in order to sort out the truth from the fantasies that so easily obscure reality.
