Sex and Billy Graham

How does he keep it up?  He has been at it for decades, and still, night after night, he performs, unabashed and unabated, before an audience of thousands.  And at an age too: grey-haired and with a grandfatherly twinkle in his eye, he is well into his seventies.  It is an impressive feat.

Billy Graham's apparently unstoppable daily round of global evangelism is clearly part of his power. He is a living demonstration of the life-giving force he affirms.  But he is just one albeit high-profile representative of an entire class, of a philosophy even - whether articulated as such or not - which has nothing to do with the spirituality he would doubtless claim as the source of his own dynamism.

Graham and his ilk possess a doggedness, a blind, blundering persistence which propel them night after night on to their respective stages, before their audiences, however big or small.  It gets them up early in the morning to take yet another flight to yet another land where they must perform.  It gives them the willpower to push the poor, complaining flesh yet again, yet harder; it enables them to shoulder aside all the doubts and despairs which afflict every one of us at times; its deep-seated ineradicable force keeps them powering forward every waking moment.

We encounter these extraordinary people everywhere, in every situation.  Indeed, by a kind of Darwinian evolution, every niche will have at least one such a person who by virtue of their single-mindness rises to visibility as the dominant figure in that area.  But they are by no means restricted to the marginal, to being whales in fish tanks.

As a rule their drive and obsessional nature informs every activity.  If they desire something they will ask and ask and ask until they are given it simply to get rid of them. When they want a job they will apply for hundreds, ring endlessly potential employers, turn up uninvited on doorsteps, network unceasingly.  They get the job.  If they fall in love, they never give up, never take the resolute 'no' or 'never' as an answer.  They persist, they endure, they embarrass by their unshakeability.  And in time they impress.  Because like Graham's energy, their unswerving fidelity is the highest proof of their feelings.  In their devotion to a person, they pay the highest compliment, they give the gift of their lives.  And they win.  Eventually, everybody else gives in.  They win because they do not, and because once they have communicated that fact, it is only a matter of time before the other party capitulates.  And since it is only a matter of time, it may as well be sooner rather than later.  So the power feeds itself; the stronger it is perceived to be, the more effect it has to make it seem stronger.

Because these people have achieved a kind of perfection in their approach, the arena of their virtuosity is ultimately irrelevant.  Whether they are the world's greatest preacher, a monomaniacal collector of matchboxes or an unremitting priapist, we lesser mortals of boringly moderate tastes and drives can only stand back and be impressed.  We know too well that unable to keep anything up for long, we can never hope to keep up with them.

(25.11.89)

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