OK, I’ve changed my mind. Now the time’s right for some excitement. A surprise. A bit of spontaneity. Perhaps a bit of danger. In cricket that series in Australia sums up how most of us feel: lethargic, disengaged, disappointing. Depressingly the effect of nearly two years of Covid has been to make many of us rather dull.
I had underestimated the importance and the effect of travel and adventure. I realised I was missing the frisson of excitement of being in an airport, the anticipation of airline food (isn’t that crazy when that food is generally dreadful?) and the thrill of taking off. I understood I had aged wearily and become a housebound Victor Meldrew (that geriatric misery of an antihero from a bygone BBC TV series.)
Yet the world is providing us with plenty of excitement and drama. At home we have the impending defenestration of a Prime Minister in the pantomime of British politics (“behind you Boris”.) The sort of thing you’d expect in Patagonia or Ecuador not the UK. In France an election in April which Macron is determined to win. When he called our own Prime Minister “a clown” he showed the sort of restraint and insight a President needs.
In America the mid-terms are impending and as far as the world is concerned the contest will be dramatic and potentially tragic. It’s something we can’t keep our eyes off. In Australia, or as someone described it “the biggest prison in the world,” the politicians are playing their own version of tennis with Novak Djokovic or Mr Forgetful as he’s also known.
Sweep around and in China there’s incredulity at the news about a lady of theirs. MI5 sent out an alert and picture of the woman named Christine Lee on Thursday alleging she was "involved in political interference activities" in the United Kingdom on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Barry Gardner, a Labour Shadow Minister, was allegedly paid £400,000 by Ms Lee over the past years. A spy in plain sight…bizarre.
We are spectators of non-stop high drama and life changing events. But it’s making us even more stressed and depressed.
Yet on Saturday I read about a 19-year-old who’s just broken the record for being the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe. Her name is Zara Rutherford, she took 5 months to do it and she accomplished it in a Microlight. What an adventure. What enterprise. How refreshing.
We have been fed a diet of rules, restrictions, health scares and statistics which has turned many of us into scaredy cats and bores. What a catastrophic cocktail. I met a bright young person who lives nearby waiting to cross the road on Saturday. We talked about how strange the world was. She told me she was supposed to be going to a local comedy club but that she’d probably give it a miss - “too many people crammed together laughing” she explained. I told her to go. I wouldn’t have done that two weeks ago.
It's time to change the way we behave and look at things in a variety of ways. We need to:
Get busy
Get talking on the phone to several friends or better still face to face
Go to one event next week – gallery, cinema, theatre
Go for a long walk
Go out to a restaurant
And then plan a series of “adventures” like going to places you’ve never been before.
Check your adrenalin levels, happiness index and sense of energy. Excitement and the thrill of the unknown are needed. Kerpow!!!
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