The Joy of Insignificance

As we were flying back home from what had been a week on an island (my first time abroad in 5 years), hovering in the air, the depths of the ocean looked like nothing but sky. It was like a reflection when I looked down, a mirror image. Engulfed in blue, I noticed that the sky was everywhere and I was in it, like some giant fish bowl. I was just this teeny tiny spec floating above the earth, above these teeny tiny countries on this teeny tiny planet, and I couldn’t have been more happy to be so insignificant.

How easy it is to get lost amongst the day to day of your commute to work, microwave meals, laddered tights, brushing teeth, curfews and deadlines and complaining about how you hate all of these things. Often I spend my time waiting on the next trip or holiday or the weekend, as though I'm not nineteen years old with my whole life ahead of me. And maybe it’s the realist in me, maybe it’s my Dad's practicality in me, maybe it’s simply down to my star sign (Capricorn, for those that care), but I’m constantly planning ahead. I am far too sensible at times. Dreading the hangover before the nights even begun, leaving 30 minutes early on the off chance that my bus crashes, ruining a perfectly good outfit with a big jacket just in case it gets cold later on, in the middle of summer.

And yet I spend my days reading memoirs and stories about rock stars and writers and how they survived in 1970s New York with nothing but a blank canvas and some paint. About their years living with a big group of friends in a flat in London just so they could afford the rent. So, not to sound like one of those cringe neon signs you see girls taking pictures in front of that states “ no well behaved women made history” but I can tell you none of these fascinating stories began with getting a mortgage at age 20 after saving up since they were 12 years old. Certainly, none of them ended with “ so that’s when I learnt that admin was my one true passion in life”. None one of them travelled the world whilst meticulously following their 5 year get a job, get a house, get a man, get a child, life plan.

So whilst I stared out of the window, wide eyed at the vastness of this life, the little patches of land that are ruled by corporations, politics and wars, where people are falling in love and having affairs, where people are eating and others are starving, where people are dying and babies are being born, I made a little promise to myself. That when I land, I will refuse to fall into the trap of settling in a life that is expected of me, going for the easy route. In the end, I am just a teeny tin spec, none of what I do really matters in years to come, our entire species will be wiped out. So why would I not try just try? After all, the sky is my limit.