Lucky Old You

Being here, now, conscious, on earth, is itself a fantastically favourable combination of circumstances.

Happy Tuesday!

And a warm welcome from the Palace — it’s been a while.

For those of you new around these parts, welcome 👋 My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor, cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel, half of the team behind BBC Radio comedy Foiled, Expeditions Manager at British Exploring Society, and Advanced Wilderness Therapeutic Guide in training.

Yes, that is too many hats.

In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.

Sometimes I stand in awe of the Northern Lights; sometimes I change nappies.

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This is a Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity

No — I’m not selling timeshares in the moon. I am talking literally: this (and this) is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

(So is this.)

Since my New Forest Night Shift journey last summer, I have been drawn to aphorisms that don’t, at first, sound like they belong attached to the mundane majority of our lives.

Paradoxically, that’s exactly why they fit even our most banal moments perfectly.

The lesson I took home from the Forest — ‘I am unbelievably lucky and infinitely grateful’ — is irresistibly true in every moment, even our most prosaic, painful or pathetic.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl expresses the grown-up version of the same idea with far greater authority than me, finding meaning in suffering, even as he, his family, his people are subjected to systematic genocide.

We could have been anything. We could have been nothing. We are unbelievably lucky to be something.

Likewise: ‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ — irresistibly true in every moment.

Do you see what I mean?

This is a moment.

This is another.

That one’s been and gone already. It’s not coming back. It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Meanwhile, ‘opportunity’ is defined as ‘a possibility due to a favourable combination of circumstances’.

Yet, in popular parlance, we tend to set a snobbishly high bar for ‘favourable combination of circumstances’ and miss the fact that our very being here, now, conscious, on earth, is itself a fantastically favourable combination of circumstances.

From the unlikely physics of a Big Bang that generated more matter than antimatter, leaving behind just enough star dust for existence, all the way up to the equally unlikely meeting of your mum and dad, and the sperm that met the egg.

Lucky old you.

And yet, somehow, we act as if only a few rare moments in life — the sliding doors of a dream job offer, surprise invitation, or winning lottery ticket — are worthy of being called ‘opportunities’.

The rest we treat as filler, as if everyday existence weren’t itself the most extraordinary long shot in the cosmos.

Don’t wait for the stars to align — they already have.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Congratulations.

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This little story was heavily inspired by my agrypnotic readings of Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals while sitting up in the early hours with my two week old son sleeping on my chest.

Specifically, this passage, where Burkeman quotes a nineteenth-century Japanese statesman on the profound topic of afternoon tea:

Great attention should be given to a tea gathering, which we can speak of as ‘one time, one meeting’ (ichi-go, ichi-e). Even though the host and guests may see each other often socially, one day’s gathering can never be repeated exactly. Viewed this way, the meeting is indeed a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.

If a cuppa with friends is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, then why not everything?

This story was ‘written’ by dictation into my phone while walking around the park with my son in a sling sleeping on my chest — our new morning ritual that gives C an hour of solitude in which to make a down payment on her spiralling sleep debt, and gives man and boy the opportunity to scuff through fallen leaves together.

The two months since I last wrote to you have, as I’m sure you can imagine, been full of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

I hope this story reminds you that it needn’t take the birth of a newborn baby to wake up to the realisation that every moment is an opportunity in itself and we are unbelievably lucky to be here at all.

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Thank You

Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚

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As always, thank you for your eyeballs and thanks for your support.

diwyc,
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