WELCOME TO THE 2014 EDITION OF RARE RISING STARS
When Raph [Mokades, Managing Director of Rare] asked me to
edit the publication this year, I was more than a little bemused.
I had never edited anything other than academic essays and
I had never even been to the Rare Rising Stars ceremony.
Only now, with both of these boxes ticked, am I fully aware of
the magnitude of the task I was set, and the honour that was
bestowed upon me.
To call it an honour is no platitude. Hearing and sharing
the Stars� achievements and successes has been a sincerely
humbling experience, and I need only two words to summarise
why: excuses and excellence. Let me explain.
Like the Stars and, I�m sure, many who will read this, I have
faced my fair share of difficulties and hardships. I grew up in
Camberwell, South London and home life was tough � I avoid
the phrase �broken home� as it implies that the environment my
mum struggled and strived to create was somehow defective:
the love she showered upon my sister and me was anything but.
Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that mum was unlucky in
love, and that this had its own consequences.
One of those consequences was that I became homeless in my
late teens � getting heavily involved in drugs and on the wrong
side of the law in the process. It wasn�t particularly glamorous
or noteworthy stuff � I can count the number of times I truly slept
rough on one hand, and most of this short nine-month period
was either spent living out of my old navy blue Ford Orion or
in a homeless hostel. Nevertheless, when I�ve looked back on
the things that I didn�t achieve and the dreams I didn�t fulfil, very
occasionally, in my mind, I�ve allowed my experiences to be an
excuse for my shortcomings.
What is so remarkable about the Stars, then, is that they refuse
to allow anything to be an excuse for underachievement � not
pressure, nor poverty, nor lack of precedent. They maintain their
focus and do what needs to be done.
In amongst Raph�s kind words (
click here), he mentions some of
the things I have tried. The full list is probably ten times as long.
At 18, I was, simultaneously, an IT administrator, PE teacher
and contract cleaner at a local primary school. If you can name
it, I�ve probably had (or thought about having) a go at it. It has
taken me over 30 years to start to have an inkling of what I
might be good at and where my strengths might lie.
The thing that has struck me most about the Stars is that, at
such tender ages, they not only have strong ideas about what
they want to do, but they are already excelling in their chosen
fields, and normally in more than one field. If they can re-draw
the boundaries of possibility for me, and raise my expectations
of myself at 33, imagine the effect they are having upon the
next generation. They are inspiring in the true sense of the word
� living proof for all around, young and old, that there need not
be any excuse for not achieving excellence.
Carlton McFarlane