Rapture

Ah, Monday morning and aren’t you glad the earth is still turning? The Hadron Collider thingumyjig has not caused the end of the world. Yet. Witness this fragment from the UK Telegraph:

Last week the Welshman in charge of the collider, Dr Lyn "the Atom" Evans, told the Telegraph that he expected to collide the first particles next week, much earlier than thought. But the breakdown, at 11am UK time on Friday morning, led to the release of a ton of helium used to cool the magnets that guide subatomic particles around the machines’s circuit. Engineers had to wait for oxygen levels to return to normal before they were able to weigh up the damage.

Stop for a moment. Two things: 1) ‘the Welshman in charge’. Yes, I have Eisteddfod Druids in the family but everyone knows this is the comedy moment, the Telegraph’s nudge in the ribs. There was a Welshman in charge. It was bound to go wrong. Fnaa, fnaa. Isn’t there also a pop star Professor in there somewhere too? Thank goodness that something which has (apparently) the potential to trigger the end of the world is in good hands then. 2) Consider the enormity of scale: what does the facility to store a ton of helium look like? Talk about caverns measureless to man.

Still, what do I know – this feels just like the credit crunch and banks toppling, things that potentially have a massive impact on our daily lives but are beyond our control. Say helium to me these days and it is less periodic tables than foil balloons and silly voices. ‘Rapture’ makes me think of Debbie Harry, not the end of life as we know it. But somewhere in the back of my mind I have been thinking – surely everyone fretting about the moment they turned this thing on was not the point? Surely the danger point is when the protons were due to collide 15 days later? I know several of you guys and gals reading regularly are engineers and scientists so I’d love to know your informed opinion.

A perceptive friend said during a playdate this afternoon that blogging must be a brilliant way to spring clean your mind. I had to agree with her, with things like this milling around the old grey matter it’s good not to stew – what do you think? In fact, I’d watched a video online a couple of days ago where ‘super bloggers’ were interviewed and one said it was better than therapy. All I know is it’s great fun, and I’ve met a wonderful international group of writers as a result. If these guys who have made a lucrative career of it also get free therapy – good luck to them. I still can’t work out how people get paid to do this, and haven’t ever gone the therapy route (as mentioned in earlier posts, to paraphrase Tom W if you get rid of your demons then your angels may go too). It just isn’t that common in the UK still – the most recent article I read said that people are now beginning to think rehashing and replaying trauma is not a good thing – that time heals and keeping a stiff upper lip is preferable. Perhaps that’s playing to typical British reserve, but I have to say my gut instinct is that the only person who can heal you is yourself.

In fact, the closest I have come to therapy was working with a ‘life coach’ – please no laughter at the back. Business Link (a UK government funded organisation), were giving away a few £000s to every woman starting a new business in Cambridge to work with one, so out of curiosity I thought ‘why not?’ Mine was in the Paul McKenna (celeb hypnotist), mode, very dapper and bright, into cognitive behavioural therapy etc. One of the first things he said to me was ‘You’re not broken’. It was fun working with him, and a good weekly kick up the backside while I was setting the business up, but I mistrusted him at some level from that point, because that was exactly how I felt at the time after putting everything we had into training the pilot, seeing the airlines crash, living with my sainted in-laws for months, my father diagnosed with cancer, unable to finish the beloved Book, and working full time in a poisonous atmosphere with my baby in nursery just to get by until the hysteria stopped and someone, somewhere wanted to hire pilots again. (Pause to catch breath). It was one of those times. Broken pretty much summed it up five years ago. But you keep going. As several of you poignantly commented the other day, the resilience of the human heart is an incredible thing. Every person who has been kind enough to read to the end of this post will, I bet, have had their heart broken at some point in their life and wondered what you did to deserve this and how on earth you are supposed to go on. So, how did you? What gave you the strength, or what gives you the strength to keep going? I’ve always loved the quote from Macbeth ‘Come fate into the list and champion me to th’utterance.’ It is the ultimate two fingered (or single fingered, depending on which country you are reading this in), salute to destiny. Less defiant but equally as helpful, Marcus Aurelius said: ‘Put from you the belief that ‘I have been wronged’ and with it will go the feeling. Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.’ I’m feeling if not exactly broken at the moment, rather bloodied by the whole year long agent number one debacle. The frustration of being two books in, with a book a year lined up and waiting to be written has been something of a killer. But it's not the end of the world - I’m working on letting this go. When you hit a brick wall what do you do? Lie down and give up, or knock through it brick by brick?

TODAY’S PROMPT: Winston Churchill said ‘Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm’. Lyn ‘The Atom’ is apparently dying to get going again. The ability to move on and let go of past failures, injustices and slights is a valuable lesson to learn. With writing you are setting yourself up for rejection after rejection. As previously mentioned I used mine for kindling (you may prefer to knit with yours, use them for origami or compost – but I do encourage you to do something useful with them). These days with so many knee-jerk rejections for articles coming by email I wouldn’t bother printing them out only to burn (not very eco-friendly), but warming your toes in a cold Spanish winter thanks to the pat words of rejection from some magazine in London had a certain ‘salute to destiny’ feel about it. If you are feeling broken now, you can mend – it’s about the only thing I can say with certainty. Licking your wounds may be necessary for a time, but to succeed we have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and start over. (I could do with taking notes myself – not been a good week). ‘To become a champion, fight one more round.’ (James Corbett). It’s a fresh week. Why not take some time today with your notebook and reflect on anything that is holding you back. Then with a brave heart bid it farewell, and turn to a brand new page.