I’ve had a theory for a long time that we live our lives backwards.
Not an eloquent theory –a wafty little feeling. And I don’t mean in a Benjamin Button metaphor of growing younger through time.
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.
This story doesn’t really answer my theory either. It’s a law of attraction story, a serendipity story, some would say an angel or God story – of which I could honestly list dozens, as I expect, could you.
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.
The film’s title is explained in the final moments, with a mere hint at its meaning emerging in the fourth quarter. Yet you’re drawn along throughout with a quiet, mounting tension that is genuinely gripping. There’s no overt plot structure – no chunky question that needs answering – and typically for Campion, nothing is predictable.
Jane Campion gives the viewer an immense gift by managing this backwards plot so seamlessly.
She has structured things so that you’re left with a profound feeling of understanding – of being the understander. In the brain, synapses going off like New Year fireworks – in the heart, little OOOHS and AHHHHS of satisfaction.
Is it this satisfaction we’re all looking for with the endless retrospectives and best-ofs published on the cusp of a new year?
The media scrabbling for fresh phrases to wrap up and tie a nice ribbon of sense around the months that have flown frankly too fast; making it seem as easy to gift wrap your future self?
Annually, my dear Dad would get out an enormous, torso-sized clipboard reserved especially for the purpose and add a fresh sheet of giant paper to write down the highs and lows of the past 12 months – red for bad and black for good. Births, marriages and deaths (often guinea pig deaths) along with special firsts, certificates and new friends. Many events met with raucous arguments about whether they deserved red or black pen – because let’s face it, everyone sees the past through their own unique inner movie.
I think of New Year as an annual, collective re-hoping; hoping again that we’re capable of positive change.
Hoping again that we’re capable of authoring our own lives.
And yet, is it only me that feels a bit squeamish about actual New Year’s Resolutions? All those promises just waiting to be broken? And January the worst possible month to get ambitious in – too much dark, too many left over Christmas chocolates to make viable promises.
So I’m adopting a proactive, Campionesque ‘understand the beginning by the end’ plot-line approach to my re-hoping this year. A short and sweet imagining of the year I’d like to look back on in another 12 months’ time.
It’ll be a loose sketch: a few achievable goals, a mini adventure and much more fun. But no timeline, no deadline, and absolutely definitely no January targets.
Ending the year with this space to think differently has been a surprise blessing. More than anything, I’m incredibly grateful to have your support alongside me on the new journey. Thank you.
I really hope you have the pleasure of silly-happy JOYFUL celebrations to welcome in your brave re-hopings for a beautiful new year. As my Ma would say, Dream, and Dream Extravagantly!