Here's to you

THIS IS THE MAGNUM OPUS OF MY LIFE. I’m sorry if that sounds presumptuous, but with this topic it’s hard to avoid coming across in that way. But on second thoughts, why should I care how I come across? It's far more important to set out my personal philosophy without self-censorship.

My philosophy works for me, and it may work for others. That’s at the forefront of my thinking as I write. True, I'm not in this game to change minds, but I do wish to make this text available to every open mind. In fact, I’m dedicating it to the reader. As it was written, it was all about me; now that it's written, it's all about you.

Mission possible

I used to swear that if there was anything we didn’t need, it’s another ‘ism’. And yet here we stand at that crossroads. The girl at the start of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Universe?—she is me (you get to be Arthur Dent). Stranger things have happened. You’ll recall another young woman in a café scribbling down on serviettes ideas for a series of children’s books. Now look at her—richer than the Queen of England!

In my own restaurant-at-the-end-of-the-universe, middle-age has brought me to an unusual personal perspective. I’ve developed my own take on Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. It’s pretty much unique—truly a case of ‘and now for something completely different’.
 
And like Thaddeus Golas, Tom Campbell, Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) and others, I feel that I owe it to the greater universe to get those thoughts out there, so I hereby devote myself to that mission. For the benefit of all, I promise to make it readily available, and to continue refining, retuning and revising my magnum opus (I’m up to the second edition).
 
Given that this text is mainly for my own edification, is there any point in sharing it with anyone? In other words, will it be profitable for you, or a waste of time? To help you make up your mind, let me provide an inkling of where this is headed—a kindly teaser, if you like. There follows a brief note of explanation from your well-wishing sponsor.

As mentioned earlier, I consider it my life’s work to tease out the strands of life’s larger questions. The philosophy that I’ve arrived at could be expressed in just one sentence: Life is a single-entity achronological simulacrum. Or, if that’s too much of a mouthful, here it is in a single word—one originally coined by Neale Donald Walsch. It’s . . . wait for it . . .  Applorange.  

 

Enough on my plate

I’m not here to convince or debate. I’m not going to prop up what I say by dragging out a phalanx of previous thinkers—giants on whose shoulders I propose to stand and rant. I am not claiming to have developed—or be developing—a watertight system of thinking, or a way of apprehending reality. 

True, that is the direction in which I want to head, but all I wish to do here is document my journey. I don’t see it as my job to make my discoveries fit in with what has gone before and thereby satisfy the conventional view. I won’t take it on because I don’t consider that my brief. I’ve enough on my plate as it is. Others may have a go later. That’s up to them, and they’d be welcome. By all means, if anyone out there is that way inclined, take up the cudgels on my behalf and run with them (it’s supposed to be good exercise). 

As for me, I’m grappling at the limits of my strength with ideas that, for me at least, lie at the highest possible heights of comprehension—the Everest of what is humanly possible without oxygen. You take a step then rest five minutes. Lurch forward another pace and rest some more. It may seem as if I have it altogether, but that’s an illusion. I can only only hold a line or two of this text in my head at any one instant (this book is a manual for me to read and learn from just as well). But in saying that, I’ll pretend that I know what I’m talking about—which I do, just not everything at once—and I’ll do my best to present this narrative as best I can.
 

Auf wiedershen

And that’s the preamble to the ramblings over also. The first book is done. I’ve brought Theo up to the headiest of heights, but I won’t be so irresponsible as to leave you up there high and dry. The second part of my mission is to bring you down safe and secure.



In the book that follows, we’re going to have to process the journey. There’s a lot to unpack and internalize before we’re fit to be released into society and the world the world at large. Let’s debrief.

The pages we’ve passed through you may think of as a greatest hits package. I grant that in style it’s a bit of a rock opera. What follows now will be the loose jamming that happens backstage after the concert is over: the gradual unwinding.

Or, to use another analogy—one that we’ve made a lot of use of—we’ve just sat through the main feature and have now selected another option from the menu. This book is unique in that you get to rerun the entire movie alongside a running commentary. We’ll ask for input from the producer, the director and an actor or two. 

I suggest that you make yourself comfortable—maybe get yourself a refill of popcorn (just go easy on the coke). You see, our next job is to work out how the theory translates into practice. It’ll be a Talmud of sorts. I want to follow up some of the consequences of our new home-spun philosophy. I bet that, where the rock and a hard place meet, and where The Theory of Everythink evolves into the ideology of Ism, it will lead us to a veritable bizarro world of conclusions.

Be seeing you.