"Would You Like My Last Polo And A Piece Of Advice"

Sweeties with holes in the middle are a marketing scam. But also...

Somebody probably said, or perhaps lots of somebodies, that as you get older you become more aware of everything you don't know which makes your increasing knowledge seem ever smaller. This is potentially a blessing or a curse.

It's a blessing, like most things, when we let it be. For instance,  what if you happened to be lost in space like Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in Gravity (a rare Hollywood blockbuster recommend from me). It could fill you with awe. Make you think of all the possibilities. It might actually help to keep your feet on the ground. Envelop you in a sense of perspective. Or it could lead to despair and a desire to give up.

Clooney's character, Matt Kowalski, is a seasoned space veteran who manages to be content, relaxed, philosophical, practical and alert...while floating around space stations tied on by , or cut free from, a piece of space string. And we watch Dr Ryan Stone, played by Bullock, learn all of these lessons out of necessity, during the most  incredibly challenging couple of  hours anyone could face, on the runaway roller coaster ride dealt her by fate, and her decision to go to work 375 miles above the earth.

To be honest, the amount of challenges she faces are stretching it a bit...you and I, and I suspect, the average astronaut, would have almost certainly succumbed at the first...but for once I was able to suspend disbelief. The film is a great metaphor for the life that can open up for us if we keep getting up each time we get knocked down. OK, our own choices won't ever seem so dramatic, but in a way, all the while, we either choose to live or choose to die.

And choosing to live does change the way we think. We see that happen to Ryan Stone. And in my own experience, it is a certain fact that my own mental health has improved the more I decide to get up after a kicking. The more I choose to get up.

We all have limits of course. And we all need help along the way. But we do have choices that no one else can make for us, and that can only help us become more firmly attached to the universe even as we float through it. Better that than spinning wildly around in  a death filled panic, or turning off the oxygen and giving up.



The line "Would you like my last polo, and a piece of advice" was chosen  by Joel Fee and is from my song You Know You're Alive.