Five minutes later Nora was back in the hotelโs vast conference room. At least a thousand people were watching the ๏ฌrst speaker conclude her presentation.ย ๎ขe author ofย Zero to Hero.ย ๎ขe book Dan had beside his bed in another life. But Nora wasnโt really listening, as she sat in her reserved seat in the front row. She was too upset about her mother, too nervous about the speech, so she just picked up the odd word or phrase that ๏ฌoated into her mind like croutons in minestrone. โLittle-known factโ, โambitionโ, โwhat you may be surprised to hear is thatโ, โif I can do itโ, โhard knocksโ.
It was hard to breathe in this room. It smelled of musky perfume and new carpet.
She tried to stay calm.
Leaning into her brother, she whispered, โI donโt think I can do this.โ โWhat?โ
โI think Iโm having a panic attack.โ
He looked at her, smiling, but with a toughness in his eyes she remembered from a di๏ฌerent life, when sheโd had a panic attack before one of their early gigs withย ๎ขe Labyrinths at a pub in Bedford. โYouโll be ๏ฌne.โ
โI donโt know if I can do this. Iโve gone blank.โ โYouโre overthinking it.โ
โI have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.โ โCome on. Donโt let us down.โ
Donโt let us down. โButโโ
She tried to think of music.
๎ขinking of music had always calmed her down.
A tune came to her. She was slightly embarrassed, even within herself, to realise the song in her head was โBeautiful Skyโ. A happy, hopeful song that she hadnโt sung in a long time.ย ๎ปe sky grows dark /ย ๎ปe black over blue / Yet the stars still dare / To shine forโ
But then the person Nora was sitting next to โ a smartly dressed business woman in her ๏ฌ๎ies, and the source of the musky perfume smell โ leaned in and whispered, โIโm so sorry about what happened to you. You know, the stu๏ฌย in Portugal . . .โ
โWhat stu๏ฌ?โ
๎ขe womanโs reply was drowned out as the audience erupted into applause at that moment.
โWhat?โ she asked again.
But it was too late. Nora was being beckoned towards the stage and her brother was elbowing her.
Her brotherโs voice, bellowing almost: โ๎ขey want you. O๏ฌย you go.โ
She headed tentatively towards the lectern on the stage, towards her own huge face smiling out triumphantly, golden medal around her neck, projected on the screen behind her.
She had always hated being watched.
โHello,โ she said nervously, into the microphone. โIt is very nice to be here today . . .โ
A thousand or so faces stared, waiting.
She had never spoken to so many people simultaneously. Even when she had been inย ๎ขe Labyrinths, they had never played a gig for more than a hundred people, and back then she kept the talking between the songs as minimal as possible. Working at Stringย ๎ขeory, although she was perfectly okay talking with customers, she rarely spoke up in sta๏ฌย meetings, even though there had never been more than ๏ฌve people in the room. Back at university, while Izzy always breezed through presentations Nora would worry about them for weeks in advance.
Joe and Rory were staring at her with ba๏ฌed expressions.
๎ขe Nora she had seen in the TED talk was not this Nora, and she doubted she could ever become that person. Not without having done all that she had done.
โHello. My name is Nora Seed.โ
She hadnโt meant it to be funny but the whole room laughed at this.ย ๎ขere had clearly been no need to introduce herself.
โLife is strange,โ she said. โHow we live it all at once. In a straight line. But really thatโs not the whole picture. Because life isnโt simply made of the things we do, but the things we donโt do too. And every moment of our life is a . . . kind of turning.โ
Still nothing.
โ๎ขink about it.ย ๎ขink about how we start o๏ฌย . . . as this set thing. Like the seed of a tree planted in the ground. And then we . . . we grow . . . we grow
. . . and at ๏ฌrst we are a trunk . . .โ Absolutely nothing.
โBut then the tree โ the tree that is our life โ develops branches. And think of all those branches, departing from the trunk at di๏ฌerent heights. And think of all those branches, branching o๏ฌย again, heading in o๎en opposing directions.ย ๎ขink of those branches becoming other branches, and those becoming twigs. And think of the end of each of those twigs, all in di๏ฌerent places, having started from the same one. A life is like that, but on a bigger scale. New branches are formed every second of every day. And from our perspective โ from everyoneโs perspective โ it feels like a . . . like a continuum. Each twig has travelled only one journey. But there are still other twigs. And there are also other todays. Other lives that would have been di๏ฌerent if youโd taken di๏ฌerent directions earlier in your life.ย ๎ขis is a tree of life. Lots of religions and mythologies have talked about the tree of life. Itโs there in Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity. Lots of philosophers and writers have talked about tree metaphors too. For Sylvia Plath, existence was a ๏ฌg tree and each possible life she could live โ the happily-married one, the successful-poet one โ was this sweet juicy ๏ฌg, but she couldnโt get to taste the sweet juicy ๏ฌgs and so they just rotted right in front of her. It can drive you insane, thinking of all the other lives we donโt live.
โFor instance, in most of my lives I am not standing at this podium talking
to you about success . . . In most lives I am not an Olympic gold medallist.โ She remembered something Mrs Elm had told her in the Midnight Library. โYou see, doing one thing di๏ฌerently is very o๎en the same as doing everything di๏ฌerently. Actions canโt be reversed within a lifetime, however much we try . . .โ
People were listening now.ย ๎ขey clearly needed a Mrs Elm in their lives.
โ๎ขe only way to learn is to live.โ
And she went on in this manner for another twenty minutes, remembering as much as possible of what Mrs Elm had told her, and then she looked down at her hands, glowing white from the light of the lectern.
As she absorbed the sight of a raised, thin pink line of ๏ฌesh, she knew the scar was self-in๏ฌicted, and it put her o๏ฌย her ๏ฌow. Or rather, put her into a new one.
โAnd . . . and the thing is . . . the thing is . . . what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isnโt. Because too o๎en our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement โ an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isnโt something you measure, and life isnโt a race you can win. Itโs all . . . bollocks, actually . . .โ
๎ขe audience de๏ฌnitely looked uncomfortable now. Clearly this was not the speech they were expecting. She scanned the crowd and saw a single face smiling up at her. It took a second, given the fact that he was smartly dressed in a blue cotton shirt and with hair far shorter than it was in his Bedford life, for her to realise it was Ravi.ย ๎ขis Ravi looked friendly, but she couldnโt shake the knowledge of the other Ravi, the one who had stormed out of the newsagentโs, sulking about not being able to a๏ฌord a magazine and blaming her for it.
โYou see, I know that you were expecting my TED talk on the path to success. But the truth is that success is a delusion. Itโs all a delusion. I mean, yes, there are things we can overcome. For instance, I am someone who gets stage fright and yet, here I am, on a stage. Look at me . . . on a stage! And someone told me recently, they told me that my problem isnโt actually stage fright. My problem isย life fright. And you know what?ย ๎ขeyโre fucking right. Because life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesnโt matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree. I wanted to be many things in my life. All kinds of things. But if your life is rotten, it will be rotten no matter what you do.ย ๎ขe damp rots the whole useless thing . . .โ
Joe was desperately slicing his hand in the air around his neck, making a โcut itโ gesture.
โAnyway, just be kind and . . . Just be kind. I have a feeling I am about to go, so I would just like to say I love my brother Joe. I love you, brother, and I
love everyone in this room, and it was very nice to be here.โ
And the moment she had said it was nice to be there, was also the moment she wasnโt there at all.
