So you may have been wondering why, I’ve been posting less than my usual brilliantly inspiring ideas over the past few weeks (the adjective conjunction ‘incoherent gibberish’ comes to mind) and you can probably guess that it hasn’t entirely worn off, but I’ve got good reason.

And it’s quite simple: We’ve had a baby!!

Wow, I’ve been keeping that to myself for far too long. I was hoping that having a baby (I didn’t actually have it my lovely and beautiful wife did) wouldn’t really have any negative impact on my life or lifestyle whatsoever, I know that it was a bit of wishful thinking, but I’m honest enough to admit when I might not have gotten it completely correct, and now is one of these times (it happens quite often actually, anyways, moving swiftly on).

So I can confirm after rigorous research, it’s official; permanent sleep deprivation does affect your cognitive abilities! (but I guess you knew that). I’ve been reading a book recommended to me by a friend and editor of my upcoming book (the working title is: ‘Dangerous Kabbalah – the Urban Guru’s manual to creating a Person Utopia’ )

Anyways – I’m reading ‘How Proust can change your life‘– and so far, between nappies and midnight feeds – it’s been a really lovely and interesting read.

But the main issue that it’s raised is the writing style – it’s really well written, the author has a subtle almost invisible fluidity, it’s personal, intelligent and it’s written with humour and sophistication.

I suppose this was meant to be a less than subtle hint from my editor about how to improve my own writing style ha? So I think the message I’m hoping to take away with me is, just to be myself, just to let all the ideas in my head out, and to fill in all the bits of inner conversation that I usually drop out of my attempts at writing stuff. (So - randomly jumping from one subject to something else seemingly unrelated without giving the reader a chance - here we go - and also trying to put into practice the above lesson, i’ll let you know almost everything I was thinking for about 10 mins this morning…)

To my horror, on my way to work, I found the words ‘Star trekking across the Universe always going forward cos we can’t find reverse’ stuck in my head and instead of punishing myself for randomly remembering such meaningless trash, I decided instead to think about it a bit, sing it, play with it, it may have come to me for a reason, my mind, my deep subconscious might be trying to tell me something?

This thought was briefly interrupted by the appearance of the Sabi Rock guy near Trinity Way again (and I beeped to show my support, as is my custom now) and there it was again, ‘star-trekking across the universe’, and suddenly I got a little flash of an insight, that taste of a new idea ruminating in the back of mind, like the salivation induced memory triggered by an anticipated food about to enter your mouth: We are all travelling though the universe right now!

And that we all are bits of star dust etc, the world we inhabit is just as much a part of ‘the Universe’ as much as the moon, Pluto and supernovas.

But more than that, there is no reverse, there is no going backwards, time stops us from going backwards, the past is the past, forwards is the only direction we are going, it is the only direction we are heading and that’s not a bad thing !

So this stupid trashy song is really teaching me and reminding me of something very profound, that ‘The Universe Am I’.

Why is this important or significant?

Society is a construct, a whole bunch of social norms (and idea) that we buy into, in the culture we live in we have agreed priorities based on our collective view of the world.

Those priorities shape the way we live but they are based on a view of the world which is subjective and very limited. Most of us, get so caught up in the mundane stresses of our lives, worrying about petty politics, pushing our way forward in the traffic, stressing about what other people think about us, building images of who we are.

But that’s because we’ve got a limited uninformed view of ourselves and the universe. Because we feel that we are the centre of our own universe, we forget the bigger picture, and that is that we are really part of the Universe, an almost infinite and expanding vastness, where the earth is a fascinating but tiny speck of dust in comparison.

Being aware you are indeed the Universe, part of something so utterly vast, puts things in perspective.

The universe is intelligent, with solar systems, ecosystems everything works and you are part of it, the air you breathe the body you inhabit, every cell and fibre of your being is part of this infinite and ever expanding unknowable space called the Universe.