My Word | Seven decades of climbing stairs

I’ve learned to read and write and count and tie my shoelaces and make baked beans on toast and drive a car and ride a motorcycle and how to make babies and play a guitar.

I own a nice house and a cool set of black polo neck jumpers that keep me warm in winter.

So, I’m standing tall. What more do you need?

Surely that’s enough for one crowded life?

But I’ve always had a nagging suspicion there’s something more to this rag-tag journey we’re all on than acquiring skills and polo neck jumpers.

There has to be something that explains what driving a car and cooking baked beans and making babies is all for.

Something hidden behind a curtain like a key that opens the door to a tower with a staircase and handrail where all the answers are written out on slips of paper like Christmas cracker jokes and displayed on shelves at different levels of ascending importance.

So, when you get to the top of the tower, you find the answer to the meaning of life.

The trick is, you have to know which question the cracker joke is answering.

For instance, if you find the answer “Ears” on a slip of paper — you may die without ever finding the question: “What would bears be without bees?”

It’s a tricky thing this meaning of life business.

The other problem with the tower of meaning theory is that the higher you go, the steeper and heavier things become.

All those polo neck jumpers and bad habits start to weigh you down.

So, after 70 years of head scratching, I’ve realised, along with the Buddha, that the best way to reach the top of the stairs is to let go of the handrail and admit that life is a slow process of surrendering little pleasures.

We start by giving up thumb-sucking and involuntary bowel habits.

It feels good but it’s just not healthy or sociable.

We then face giving up bags of sticky lollies and jokes about bums and associated noises for the same reasons.

We eventually have to give up kissing in public, drunken renditions of Khe Sanh, and wearing tight trousers all because they are unhealthy and unsociable and eventually weigh you down with guilt and embarrassment.

Twenty-five years ago, I stopped smoking.

Today I may be still smouldering at the edges, but I’m still breathing.

Now, as I reach the first step of my eighth decade, I’m giving up another burdensome pleasure – alcohol.

If I want to reach the top of the tower and ask the right question, I must have a clear mind and a steady step.

I’ve had a mighty good time with champagne and wine, but it’s just another love in a long line of dangerous romances that have to be turfed if I want to get to the top of the tower.

I stopped drinking three weeks ago and things are getting clearer, but I can’t see the top just yet.

But I’ve found a good question: Why couldn’t the skeleton go to the Christmas party?

I’ll leave you to find the answer.

It’s actually quite profound.

John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.