Living life backwards

And a viable alternative to New Year’s Resolutions

It’s more a sense of stumbling blindly forward, toward something that has already been waiting.

Walking into your own story and finding yourself at home there.

Explicitly, I’m always telling the true tale of when my daughter wanted a basketball hoop to practice with. We had a small city garden so I couldn’t fathom how I’d rig one up; as usual at that time we were also on a tight budget…

A week after she’d asked, I had the inexplicable urge to take a different route home and instead of the usual manic uphill cycle I got off my bike and pushed it along streets I’d never explored before. Meandering and enjoying a moment to slow down, there on my path — not too far from home so as to be too heavy to carry — was a basketball hoop with a ‘free, take me’ sign. It had hooks built in and when home it fitted as if by magic onto the pagoda frame already built over the patio. Perfect.

The theory I’m trying to get at feels more structural than fate.

The mulling has come up this week because of a surprising Jane Campion film I stumbled across on Netflix — The Power of the Dog. I unashamedly love Jane Campion films — most famously you’ll know The Piano (also on Netflix at the moment), but Bright Star about Keats is also a true gem.

The Power of the Dog is strikingly memorable because it’s only at the very end that behaviours from the opening scenes become fully contextualised and difficult characters understood.

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