The Life Impossible

by Matt Haig

I am in a pattern, like a number pattern, a Fibonacci sequence – 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc. – and like that sequence things get less surprising the further I go on. But instead of realising the next number is found by adding the two before it, you realise that everything ahead of you has already been decided.

I look at what is happening in the world and I see that our whole species is on a path to destruction. Like it is programmed, another pattern. And I just get fed up with being a human, being this small tiny thing that can’t do anything about the world. Everything feels impossible.

‘I feel like I have a life inside me that needs to be lived and I am not living it.’

It was quite a dramatic conversation to be having in a supermarket. I tried to be polite. ‘Oh well, it’s an interesting island.’

And I had that feeling I often get with mathematics, where the answer is there, and you know the answer is there,

I wondered why every successful businessperson on the planet continued to work and visit offices and stare at computers when they could just quit and eat watermelon in the sun for ever.

You see, if you want to visit a new world, you don’t need a spacecraft. All you need to do is change your mind.

A boy playing in the sand was wondering who would win in a fight, five hundred small cats or one single tiger.

All reading, in short, is telepathy and all reading is time travel. It connects us to everyone and everywhere and every time and every imagined dream.

He was reading me. ‘If you fit in, you disappear, right?’ ‘I don’t know. I have always tried to fit in. I don’t want to go against the grain. It gives you splinters.’ ‘Well, you are different now, Grace. And trust me, it isn’t so bad to be unique. You always know you are there. You know which one you are.’

We passed a ballerina from Paris who was overthinking how to blink.

The difference between a gift and a curse was sometimes just a question of perspective.

There is always an unknown variable, and that unknown variable is often yourself. Embrace the mystery would be my advice. Embrace the impossibility of it all. Enjoy the not-knowing.

‘The ancient Greeks worshipped mathematics because they saw it as representing ideals,’ she said, in roughly those words. ‘And that it was always tied to religion because it was seen as something purer than normal life. That is why Pythagoras was a kind of spiritual leader. But I think La Presencia has given us the understanding that mathematical purity is everywhere. We are inside it. Nothing is random. Not life, not death. Not even randomness. Not even us two here making this dirt into a garden. All of it connects. Everything is part of this whole. This beautiful fabric. Heaven isn’t somewhere else. Nor is everyone we have lost. We are tied to them. The strings are in us. Am I making sense?’