How To Pick A Fight With A Word

It’s easy to imagine that our existence is inevitable. I grew up imagining that significant events were inevitable – my birthday once a year on 15 April and Santa Claus coming from Lapland every Christmas – and I could choose to be happy or sad with such ‘inevitable’ things. Then, before I knew it, the ice-cream melted and Santa never even existed. And lately I’ve noticed how, with hindsight and analysis, events that seemed evil at the time could, in fact, have been avoided – wars, famines, murders, suicides, holocausts and so on.

Now inevitability makes me sad. And frustrated. But, according to my fresh calculations, the word ‘inevitability’ – which seemed to leave no space for challenge – is, in fact, an impostor. So maybe it’s time for a rethink.

To avoid inevitability, you simply need to isolate the inevitable thing at hand and challenge it. The worst that can happen is an accident where you end up falling flat on your face. And that really isn’t so bad – most of the best things in life happen by accident, after all. So there’s no reason why I shouldn’t take this approach even further by writing an ‘accident’ of a book and waging a war against inevitability.

Anyone can fight against fate. The other day I overheard my Polish cleaner singing one of her songs during her cleaning activities. She’s addicted to music, but claims she has an allergy to hi-fi equipment and needs to sing to herself constantly. I asked her to explain the message of the song to me and she explained, in very plain language, that all good pop songs have the same basic premise, namely that active sex is better than watching porn and bird hunting is better than watching National Geographic. Shakespeare said as much in his ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy, so it must be true. I mean, even if it does turn out to be just one heroic attempt per lifetime, that’s all the more reason to save it for a good cause.

So, I’ve written this book to change the world. Or at least to get some money to save a few elephants and buy some presents for all the women I’ve hurt.