Life is like a one-way street⌠or perhaps, not so much a street as it is a network of forking motorways running over a chain of hills and dips of valleys with a littering of ruminant poo to top it all off. Every waypoint has a valve â once you have passed it; you cannot turn back. And youâre mostly not driving, but drifting through it. You have a limited amount of fuel on this journey, the exact amount of which is not known, and there is no refuel available. You only get one shot at everything you come by, and you have to get it right. Problem is, you wonât know whether youâve gotten it right until you realise you had it wrong. âWe live everything as it comes, without warning,â wrote Milan Kundera, âthere is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison.â Unless youâre in luck and youâve a series of rights and youâre able to enjoy sustained resounding successes. Or you could have hit upon a wrong which starts a series of wrongs, in which case, youâre screwed. Or you could have had a mixture of rights and wrongs, and youâre so obsessed with not wanting to screw your next potential right up that you end up screwing it up for precisely the wrong reasons.
In my life I have managed, most of the time, to get it right. That is, until recently, when I was besieged by the second scenario, out of which I am in the processes of extracting myself, and am now strategising how to avoid the thirdâŚ