Stephen Whitehead
I was born in Southport, Lancashire (UK) in 1949 – a member of the post-war baby-boom. Leaving school at the age of 15 (with no qualifications and yearning to be in a pop group) I immediately went to work in my family’s florist shop (I can still put together an attractive flower arrangement!). By the time I was 26, I was married, had a two-year old son (Gavin) and together with my wife, Rosemary, was managing Cavalier Steak Bars/Pubs for Tetley’s brewery in Leeds, Yorkshire (The Jubilee, Headrow, and the Woodside Tavern, Horsforth). In my early 30s I got into running and athletics coaching, becoming a BAAB Senior Athletics Coach and studying part-time at Carnegie College of Physical Education (Leeds Polytechnic). My main athlete was my younger brother, Peter, who went on to 4th Place in the World Athletic Championships (Marathon) Gothenburg, 1995 and competed for the UK in the Atlanta Olympic Games, (Marathon) 1996. My experience of sports coaching was the trigger for my first big career move when at the age of 37, I left the world of pubs/restaurants and started out as a Lecturer in Sport and Leisure at Thomas Danby Further Education College, Leeds.
My decade at Thomas Danby was one of the most important in my life: I studied for a PGCE (Huddersfield Poly), an MA, and finally, a PhD (both at Leeds Met. University) graduating from the latter with Distinction (no edits) in December 1996. During this frantic and often intense decade I also experienced several relationship changes and had three more children (Jay, Robert and Eleanor). This hectic personal journey continued through my 50s and into my early 60s eventually settling down with my wife, Mam, in Thailand.
I first came to Thailand in 2001, fell in love with the country and made my permanent move here (Chiang Mai) in 2008 at the age of 59. I have now travelled all over East and South East Asia. Although Bangkok has an amazing vibe and I find Taipei a most amenable city, Chiang Mai (where I live with Mam and my stepdaughter, Idea) has both my home and heart.
The Professional
I have been a florist, guitarist/drummer, pub/restaurant manager, athletics coach, amateur (but competitive!) road runner, life/relationship coach, school teacher, FE lecturer, HE lecturer/professor, writer, educational management consultant, company director, and even, for a brief spell back in my mid-30s, a local politician. But don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with all the details of my many career changes and professional identity transformations, I’ll just give you a potted summary since the age of 47.
After graduating from my PhD in December 1996, aged 47, I lectured part-time in various UK universities including Leeds University Business School, before being appointed full-time Lecturer in Education at Keele University, UK in September 1997. My doctoral thesis was titled
Public and Private Men: Masculinities in Further Education Management (still available in Leeds Met Univ. library, I am told). By the completion of this thesis I was a fully-fledged feminist; in academic terms, a feminist poststructuralist (with leanings towards feminist postmodernism). My PhD research provided the basis for many of my subsequent writings and publications, including my first major academic book: Men and Masculinities: key themes and new directions (Polity, 2002).
So, in essence, I was a sociologist, a specialist in the critical study of men and masculinities (still am). However, back in the late 90s there were no jobs available lecturing on men and masculinities, so when Keele offered me the job of Lecturer in Education, I jumped at it. By the time I took early retirement from Keele University in March 2009, I had been promoted to Senior Lecturer; had over two dozen academic journal articles/book chapters published; had seven books published (academic and mainstream, one of which received world-wide publicity and was translated into 15 languages); was Director of Keele’s MBA Education programme and co-Director of Keele’s EdD programme; and had acquired an international reputation as an expert on men and masculinities and gender identity.
Moving to Thailand didn’t stop my career progression nor slow down my writing. My 14th, 15th and 16th books are all schedule to be published by Routledge during 2022.
My most significant professional events (excluding book publications) since March 2009 (e.g. ‘retirement’) were as follows:
Moving to Thailand didn’t stop my career progression nor slow down my writing. My 14th, 15th and 16th books are all schedule to be published by Routledge during 2022.
My most significant professional events (excluding book publications) since March 2009 (e.g. ‘retirement’) were as follows:
What’s next?
Not sure – I have enough going on plus I must retain time for my daily exercises (walking, weights and cycling), meditation, sleep, and enjoyment of my garden.
The Practice
There is a lot I can say about life, living it, and surviving if not flourishing, but I won’t. I’ll keep it short. If you want to know more read my books, book me to do professional development/Total inclusivity Training at your school or organisation, or simply read some of my 10,500 Quora answers to questions ranging from sex, love and relationships, to career progression for retirees. Either that, or send me an email.
What I will say is that life is most definitely more than about work, material accumulation, contented relationships or a satisfying sex life. All these are important at different times in our life journey, but as a 70+ male I can tell you that none of these will trump loving oneself and being contented in one’s identity.
As for identity, we are all work in progress. We are all constantly changing and in ways we cannot begin to understand or appreciate until well after the event. Who you are today is not who you will be tomorrow and certainly not who you will be in a decade’s time. What you desire and yearn for today will disappear from your mind in time. Everything passes, including sexual desire, material desire, love desire, status desire. You will eventually reach your old age reduced to the core of you. Hopefully, that core will be good, kind, wholesome, healthy and empathetic. If not, then you will pass on carrying a lot of unpleasant baggage.
Try and avoid that if you can.
I think I have avoided all that negativity (recrimination, bitterness, disappointment, regret, guilt) but if so it is largely because of those I’ve had around me during my own life journey; friends, partners, family, children, work colleagues, mentors, teachers, students and soulmates. And also because of Buddhism. Well, not just Buddhism but a complex if unfathomable spiritual mix of Buddhism, Hinduism and Animism. If you want to learn more about how these apparently contradictory spiritual discourses intact, just visit most any temple (Wat) in northern Thailand.
For my own life, I now enjoy being teetotal, celibate and free from worry about money, status or tomorrow. The sex monkey thankfully disappeared off my shoulder a few years ago and he’s not coming back. Corny as it may sound, I now get more pleasure watching a butterfly hovering on a flower, listening to a bird singing in the trees, or seeing the sun rising in the East.
Buddhism
how it has changed me.
- I have learnt to go with the flow of life and events.
- I don’t try to change that which cannot be changed.
- I have learnt that my first reaction is not always the best one.
- I am more relaxed and at peace with myself.
- I am able to pray for the well-being of others and pass on good karma, positive energy by doing so.
- I have learnt to be comfortable with who I have become.
- I have learnt that to forgive all things and all people everything is the only way to peace.
- I have learnt that it is important not to let anger and frustration overwhelm me.
- I have learnt that I must try to do good wherever possible.
- I listen to my body more, and to my inner voice.
- I make plans but do not worry when they come to nothing.
- I am more likely to accept what happens to me and around me.
- I recognise that life is ultimately going to be painful at times. There is no avoiding pain and suffering only accepting it as the true reality for most people.
- I do not worry about that which is beyond my control.
- I am happier and more content.
- I have developed my sixth sense more and learnt to follow it
- I am not absorbed by the acquisition of money or material things.
- I recognise my desires and have learnt to live with them.
- I know I cannot live as a monk but I do know I can live a more spiritual life.
- I know that peace on earth can only come from peace within each human being Peace cannot be imposed on us by politicians or ideologies.
- I have come to understand God not as a being but as the life force, the positive energy that enables the world into existence and maintains its balance and harmony.
- I have learnt the if we as a society or as an individual break or damage that harmony through negative actions then so will negative consequences come back to us – this is the basic law of karma – you reap what you sow.
- I have learnt not to fear death.
- I have learnt not to pontificate about Buddhism but to live it daily.
- I have learnt to know when I am angry and frustrated and to allow that anger and frustration to dissipate – leave me.
- I have learnt that only with a quiet mind can I truly be awake.
- I have learnt that most of us do not have a quiet mind – or any inner peace.
- I have learnt that without inner peace we cannot be awake to the life itself.
- I have learnt that the more I attach to myself, to material things, to that which gives me a sense of identity, the less likely I am to be at peace with myself.
- I have learnt that to love another you have to first love yourself.
- I have learnt that drugs do not work – meditation is far more powerful.
- I have learnt that sex can have a spiritual dimension.
- I have learnt that it is possible to have a soulmate in this life, maybe more than one.
- I have learnt that only through silence can I hear that which tries to speak to me
- I have learnt to accept that I am fundamentally weak, as are all human beings.
- I have learnt that intellectual knowledge is not enough in itself. We have to be humble enough to say ‘I do not know and cannot know everything’.
- I have learnt that every religion is the same in that it offers a path to the spiritual world around us and within us, and a pathway to enlightenment and inner peace.
- I have learnt to live in peace with my desires and ego, but not to let them determine who I am or what I can become.
- I have learnt that there is more to this life than can possibly be known and that we should not try to know everything but to accept our lack of knowledge.
- I have learnt that whatever I have learnt is only thoughts and words in this life – I actually know very little. It doesn’t matter. I have enough knowledge to live my life in a better, more enlightened way.
- I have learnt to forgive myself when I fail to heed and follow what I have learnt.
