‘Suppose you were the ego construct but you didn’t know it,’ I asked ingenuously, ‘what then?’ I winked knowingly at no one in particular, trying to carry it off with aplomb but failing miserably, as I always do. Luckily for me no one noticed and so I was left with my dignity intact, for what that’s worth. Some would undoubtedly say that it is worth very little but we won’t listen to negative stuff like that, will we? That’s a rhetorical question by the way because I have absolutely no intention of listening to them. Not a chance in hell. Some people just can’t help being negative – it’s in their nature. ‘Why can’t they just try to be a little bit more positive?’ I demanded self-righteously. I was seeking the answer to the ultimate riddle in the universe but I wasn’t getting very far. ‘It’s slow progress of course,’ I told myself, ‘it is slow progress but we’ll get there in the end.’ I always like to end on an affirmative note you see. It costs nothing at all and it always brings that special ‘feel-good’ factor. Well sometimes it does, anyway. There’s always a chance that it may, let’s put it like that. Keep your chin up old chap, there’s no sense in going around the place with the long face, depressing everyone you meet. Sunny side out, isn’t that what they say? Let’s not be having all that doom and gloom. For god’s sake what’s wrong with you – pull yourself together… I was having a little chat with myself, trying to put myself right. ‘It’s never as bad as it seems,’ I said brightly, ‘did you ever hear that?’ Suppose you were the ego construct and you didn’t know it’ I suggested slyly – ‘would that be such a bad thing?’ Life’s full of unanswerable questions of course. Sometimes I try to imagine a world in which all questions have answers and all you have to do is ask and then someone – perhaps a complete stranger on the street – will tell you the correct answer straightaway. I also sometimes try to imagine a world in which there are no negative people making negative comments, and where my mind doesn’t make lots of unhelpful negative comments all the time either. I try hard to visualise such a world – I can never quite do it, but I do try. I call this world the Validation World. You know that thing where you’re just trudging along in life, trying to get a bit of validation for yourself, and you just never do? That’s probably a basic human experience in life I’d say – it is for me anyway. It’s a basic life experience for me for sure. Well, in Validation World that never happens. In Validation World you always get validated straightaway, and what’s more you don’t even have to work for it. It just drops into your lap. Like a free lunch. A tuna salad sandwich in a triangular cardboard carton, a Twix bar and plastic bottle of Coke Zero. What more could you ask for? Everyone’s happy and everything’s great and people are saying positive things. The days go by so fast where I am, they go by in a blink of an eye. Even saying that is missing the mark – the days go by as fast as a moth’s flickering wing. That’s why I call this particular place where I am ‘Moth World’. In my own private personal mythology the universe is created by the Great Father Moth vibrating his wings rapidly. Or should that be the ‘Great Mother Moth’ vibrating her wings rapidly? That’s another of those questions, I’m afraid – another of those questions that just can’t be answered…