I had something of an epiphany. Well maybe two…

1. The inevitable is desirable

I started reading the Booker Prize 2015 winner, “A Brief History of Seven Killings”. When I say started, I read literally less than three pages. The voice was that of a dead man, floating endlessly as a post-death undead; a ghoul who would live eternally in a bodyless existence, unable to act, but forced to see. And my realisation was this: it is good that I will die.

This is something I had never thought before. Yes I’ve heard “no-one gets out alive” and I understand that I must naturally die as a consequence of living. But this was different, and a liberating notion. It is good that I will die.

My story will end and end it must; living eternally would be awful, appalling; dreadful to continue rolling on a living mass of unrelenting decay. It is good that I will die!

Edit: This perspective also allows ageing to be okay; so many of the messages we receive through society (i.e. undermining marketing) — all point to an ideal that youth is optimal, age is to be avoided, denied! But if you can recognise that the end is a good thing, then so is every part of the story between now and that time.

And this almost excitement I had that there is an ending, in fact inspires me to want to engage more with the story that I can control before that inevitable end. What can I cram in? How much can I cram in? What are my top priorities? What are my burning passions?

2. Any communication can inspire somebody

I also thought about the book itself and it’s effect on me: if it had not been finished by the author, picked up by a publisher, submitted to the Booker competition and selected by the judges as a winner, then I would never have read those first 3 pages and found an inspiring message lurking there for me to grasp. A message that the author cannot possibly have envisaged that he was projecting as he wrote the passage.

My take-away, therefore, was this: every cog has a part to play and every communication is an important contribution for someone. No author or artist or musician or singer can possibly understand the extent or the manner in which their productions will touch, move, inspire the people it reaches — even if only few. Each person’s interpretation is uniquely skewed by their own prisms of reality. It doesn’t matter how they are inspired; it just matters that they are reached.

So my burning passion suddenly became clear: to play my part in inspiring others, making my contributions, however imperfect, regardless of my precise nature, wherever possible… The truth is, I have so many unfinished articles, scripts, songs, artworks, movies, books that I have not wanted to present as they’ve not evolved to the standard I’d like to put forward. But they may nonetheless be of great value to someone else in that form regardless of my reservations.

…so I haven’t finished writing this all quite right, but what the hey, here it is!!