E.M. Forster: It Gets Better

I’m currently reading the wonderful new biography, A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster by Wendy Moffat.

As you may recall, Forster was the author of the novels Howard’s End, A Passage to India, A Room with a View and, of course the posthumously published Maurice.

The book and his experiences at school as a young man in England at the turn of the 20th Century reminds me how timeless the fears of young people are and how prevalent “bullying” has always been for Gay people or people who are just a little different.

In light of the “It Gets Better” campaign to reassure young gays, lesbians and other victims of bullying, this passage, quoted from Forster’s diaries by Moffat, stood out:

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and bies:  school was the unhappiest time of my life, and the worst trick it played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature.  For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.  From this platform of middle age, this throne of experience, this altar of wisdom, this scaffold of character, this beacon of hope, this threshold of decay, my last words to you are:  “there’s a better time coming.”

In other words:  It gets better.

Amen….