Many people spend their lives in a state of unconsciousness suffering from excessive and invasive random thoughts that assail and clutter the mind. Such is the persuasive nature of this clutter that many of us take our thinking to be who we really are. As we grow, we lose sight of who we might really be as we unconsciously absorb and adopt the rituals and dictates of finding our place in conventional society. Our background, education and work shape and mould us into soldiers of the status quo, a wholly man-made construct which obligates all participants to accept its agendas, its behaviours...

The rushing around we experience in our growth years is replaced in our contraction years by the wisdom that rushing gets you nowhere. In our contraction years, we deliberately take more time over doing things, not merely because we can but rather because it is more enjoyable and rewarding. Because we have the time, the contraction years are also a period of many reflections one of which for me was: would I live my life in the same way if I had my time over again? My musing did not take me down the route of fantasy choices such as intrepid explorer, pioneering astronaut or multinational...