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John Holt, RIP

16/1/2016

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I knew John in the early 1980s in Bradford.  I was at the university and John was a friend of some of my friends.  I liked him. He was gruff, the way male Northerners could be – and can be still.  There was also, I picked up, a sensitivity there.  I forget how many times we met though I remember we had some good conversations and I seem to recall one walk with mutual friends ending up at his West Yorkshire cottage.
 
We lost touch when I moved to London, as I lost touch with other people in that circle: Andy, Sue, Julia, Rose, Paul.  Some years ago I heard that he had become a counsellor in Keighley, and easily tracked him down via the internet and we exchanged a couple of friendly emails.  In a recent telephone call to one of that group – Rose – I heard that John had died just a month before.  He was in his early sixties.  Another search found his website and a reference to a book he had written about both his illness and his work. I ordered it, and have just read it. Fields of Freedom: Breaking through fear in personal and professional life. 
 
Whether correctly attributed to Socrates, the claim that the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’ rings true for many of us.  I also value John Ruskin’s claim that ‘The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way’.  John’s adult life and his book – testament is the right description – pay honour to both these insights.  Early experiences of humiliation (father, school teachers, another boy) left their mark. As an adult his response to these appears fundamentally creative: professional work first with wayward youngsters, then becoming a counsellor and therapist.  His book records a near constant interest in ‘personal development', taking in group encounter (some with the men’s movement) and a good deal of study of various schools of thought and practice from radionic healing to transactional analysis.
 
The book was written with death on the horizon. It is a worthy testament to a life lived with the intention of turning trauma and hurt into a life authentically lived in the service of others. John, I am so sorry that life was cut short.

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