Perspectives and pianos

May 06, 2026

∙ Paid

You’ve heard the story, I’m sure, when people are on their deathbeds and asked what advice they have, they say ‘Prioritise relationships over work, express your feelings honestly, have the courage to live your life honestly rather than living up to other people’s expectations’.

I feel sorry for those people on their deathbeds, busily going about the business of dying, being mined for wisdom at such an intense time of their lives…

I think about it a lot. I have had a deep fear of death since the age of 10. I used to, nightly, have a moment of terror when I would be overcome with this sense of an abyss of nothingness.

I think it has left me with a strange perspective. When we talk about saving our planet (which is really about saving ourselves) I get it, and most definitely agree with treading as lightly as feasible on this earth.

Yet, I also have this voice that reminds me that we are all on a rock hurtling through space around a sun that will one day implode so, regardless of our efforts of washing our aluminium foil after the barbecue and popping it in the recycling, we cannot avoid that.

I have a theory that war is created by men who are desperately fearful of death. So they seek to alleviate that fear through taking control of it. By deciding the where, the when and the how of death they get to create an illusion of certainty and control.

Being the wager of war may be raised under the guise of safety for a nation, but I wonder if it has more to do with a personal drive for certainty.

This week I heard Jimmy Carr say, ‘The opposite of faith is certainty.’ That idea is something I’ll certainly be pondering over for the weeks to come. Is that concept something that you are familiar with?

I mentioned my theory to a friend at the weekend and her theory was that men are ready to create war because they are not the creators of life, so they disregard the uniqueness of, as Mary Oliver would say, our ‘one wild and precious life’.

I think those death bed musings are all worthy insights. Alongside those, I also wonder on a regular basis how I can make the most of being alive. Humans have the ability to absorb the wildness of being alive through 5 amazing senses. I believe a poet’s life is living in the awe of this fact and being unafraid to live into the acuteness of that.