when sides align
Image credit: rubiks cube by Creaticca Creative Agency from the Noun ProjectI saw a guy last night on the tube, solving and then resetting a Rubik’s Cube, over and over again. It took him about 30 seconds to solve before he mixed the squares up and started over. He never looked at the cube for longer than a few seconds, and it seemed that the task had merely become one of dexterity practice. I watched him from the other side of the carriage and thought “huh.” I had seen two other men doing the exact same thing in the last month, on the tube, late at night. Is that weird, does it mean something, or both?
Perhaps it’s just a London thing; get on a tube at 11pm and you will inevitably see a guy solving a puzzle from the 80s, one that I know I will never be able to master because my mind is just not wired that way. I have a better understanding of the patterns of people, rather than inanimate objects, which I am fine with by the way. Naturally seeing three guys in a month doing this very specific thing, made me think about coincidences and patterns on a universal scale, which I am not certain I believe in. And it’s funny really, because I do have a cursive belief in fate and purpose; in the sense that we all have control over those things in our lives to some degree. Perhaps that belief is rooted in my religious upbringing (it totally is) and it’s probably one of the few things I am happy to keep. Having a purpose or at least searching for one, has always given me direction, even if it was never clear where exactly I was headed. Not unlike this blog post really, so I’ll get to the point.
I am leaving London and moving to Melbourne, Australia. After months of searching for some indication of what I should do next, battling the strongest bout of depression I’ve ever had, and losing days at a time in a kind of dark swamp of sadness, I came up for air and met an opportunity with a clear head. I applied for a visa and I got it, so I booked my ticket, and in t-minus 7 weeks, I will be off to the great Down Under to find myself, or whatever.
But back to the Rubik’s Cube analogy. What I realised is that last year, I would have seen this little trick on the tube and thought “Oh London, you strange and wonderful creature”, and then congratulated myself for continuing to live in this creative, wonderful city of my birth. But that’s not what happened; instead I saw each man and thought, “Interesting”, and then went about my business. When it got to the third viewing of this act, I finally noticed my own lacklustre attitude towards the city; that I had become lazy with my caring about it. Everything had become a little grey, a little dull, even though it wasn’t. It’s me that has become this way, and it’s me that needs to do something about it, to inject some colour back into my life before I fade away. I’m an unsolved Rubik’s Cube I think, just as we all are, waiting for all my sides to align again, to find some semblance of sense and order.
Or I’m just a girl who needs a break. One of the two really.