Life moves pretty fast

This week has involved a complete mix of activities that could be argued to be quite surreal as a combination. I have been to two Arsenal games, an exhibition at the Science Museum on Science Fiction and most poignantly of all had a day with my family where we scattered my Dad’s ashes.

I was trying to think of what I have taken from these activities that I can take into my next days. As a result, my brain decided that there must be profound learning or insight that can be expressed in the form of metaphors for how I have felt. My brain came to this conclusion whilst also deciding whether I was hungry on the way home from the football. Isn’t the human body odd?

Now whether there are or not great learnings to be taken from these things I don’t really know. I cannot claim to be a great philospher or provide enlightenment, however I can simply write what I thought whilst walking along that cold street back from the station. Now these thoughts do contain the word “like”, which I think makes them similies, but may I suggest not getting too hung up on that and just having a read. So here we go:

Firstly, Hope is like Hawking Radiation emitting from a Black Hole – even in the darkest places, it seems counter-intuitive that it exists, but it absolutely does. When you lose people, particularly when it seems against the “natural order of things”, it is shattering to your understanding of where you are in this thing we call life. And yet I have found hope in this dark place. Hope for my young relatives and their futures. Hope for my own chance of finding a new normal – whatever that is. I can’t explain why this is true with a ground breaking equation like Stephen Hawking but the root calculation is somewhere buried in the understanding that to “have faith that the universe is unfolding as it should” is to appreciate we are all part of something greater than ourselves. Therefore we can never know what might occur today or tomorrow but we can hope it will be good.

Secondly, Love is like a sandcastle on a beach. The beach holds the potential to build as many sandcastles as you can imagine – love has infinite capacity. Yes the castles might be fragile, they will be quirky and weird, and there is an inevitablity that at some point they will fall back into the sea, but the memory of the joy at building them cannot be washed away and the fun at thinking about what the next one might look like and just going through that process of exploration can bring a smile to your face. Build sandcastles. They are good for the soul.

Finally, (and I am copying this one from many other people), emotional capacity is like a bucket of water. Sometimes it can take a lot and sometimes it will quickly overflow. The best version of you at any one time is the one you have capacity for in that moment. The good thing is that the people who love you, love you no matter what capacity you are working with or what version of you you are that day, can help expand that capacity because they will work hard to help you. That is a splendid thing.

I think this is all true.

And I enjoyed the chips.