With all the track problems this year I understand why it’s called a rat-race. Every day we scurry to the station and onto ever-more decrepit trains. We struggle to contain our growing frustration as the delays spiral. Month after month, with no end in sight. I remember when the line first opened, the fastest in the network. Now it’s just one more sorry ship we cannot flee.

If I understand Darwin right, a species survives when its members find enough food to persist and reproduce, and then mutate over generations to better fit with their environment.

The universe is a Darwinian symphony. It began with a full spectrum blast, before resolving into a standing chord perfectly fitted to its cradle. As the universe cools, new notes emerge and maybe even persist for a time. All notes are contrapuntal, but only a few form the chords and discords needed to transform the ever-evolving concert.

Ideas too are polyphonous. We focus on the melody but accompanying it is a chorus we mostly feel. Some ideas persist and maybe even reverberate through our minds. The most beautiful harmonise with our soulsongs. And very occasionally, something will emerge with the depth and dissonance to corale entire communities and transform the song of all humanity. For a time.

The last European adherents of the former world religion Manichaeism believed that, with persistent cultivation, anyone could achieve three levels of initiation: perfect, believer, and listener.

Last week on the train, stalled yet again, I heard someone on their phone.

“That sounds about right.”

What did they hear? Was it just their own song played back? Was it another 7th in an ever diminishing chord to help us rats quietly into that good night? Or maybe, just maybe, it was an exclusive preview of the odd tone we’re all desperately waiting to move us all anew.

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Audio: Led Zeppelin (1971), ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in Led Zeppelin IV. Sourced from the Internet Archive.

Image: 12th Century fresco of Serbian Bogomil priests. Sourced from Mart Atanassov.

Audio: Claude Debussy (1894), Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Sourced from the Internet Archive.

Getting a home loan feels… strange.

It’s different to other loans we’ve had. Unlike our student loans, we have to pay a miminum amount each month no matter how much we earn. Unlike family debts, there is zero latitude if we run into a bad patch. And our credit card company probably can’t throw us out of our home. But it’s more than that.

Decades of our lives will go by before we are free of it. Each month we will make our repayment, and our total debt outstanding will drop a little — before rising again when the interest kicks in. 300 steps forward, 299 steps back. Then each quarter we’ll balance our books, and plan where to rein things in, and where we can relax and celebrate a little. And then twice a year our mortgage broker will check if we’re struggle, and entice us if needed with any better deals on the market. But it’s more than all that as well.

This loan is changing who we are.

When I first saw a science video of a couple of rats dumped into a maze, I was surprised at how animatedly and dextrously they swarmed in search of their prize. As if they were almost enjoying it.

We won the auction. We took possession of our land. We’re in the prime of our lives, and finally we’re in the home-owners club. For the next quarter century we’ll be living the dream.  It takes effort to stay in any dream, right? 

Getting this loan makes us ache body and soul. But that’s ok — it’s well-designed and we’ll no doubt get used to it soon.

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Image sourced from The Humanity Development Library 2.0 (For sustainable development and basic human needs)