04August2005

Over the last few weeks I’d watched them fall helplessly around me. My family, friends and work colleagues. Coughing, spluttering, sneezing, red eyed, croaking as they all attempted to battle with the flu. I was smug. Well should be. After all I had the flu injection. No point in exposing one’s immune system unnecessarily to microscopic viruses that regularly cause this winter epidemic. To some in extreme discomfort I expressed my sympathy. To others whom I had so wisely warned to undertake immunisation and had ignored me, my attitude was “so let them cough on”. And then last Saturday night it hit me. The virus. Aching bones, desert dry throat, hacking cough all at once. After all the precautions, all the gloating, the flu virus had got me. You remember that argument over the half strength flu vaccine. I bet that’s what got injected into me. Sunday morning there I was on my bed of pain. Not even the Wallabies loss at the feet of the Springboks – after all the margin was penalties and drop kicks – brought relief to my reddened watering eyes. Then of course was the anticipated shafts of pain I was going to suffer for my wounded pride from my family, friends and colleagues as they found out I had succumbed. On hearing the news whilst most expressed sympathy I could sense it was either mock or false.

I’m into the fourth day. My forced inactivity has given me an opportunity to ponder some of the great mysteries of life. Could I share some of this pondering with you? Especially the pondering of Gerry Gilmore, Professor of experimental philosophy at Cambridge University. He’s in Christchurch at the moment speaking about the origin and future of the universe. We’re all the stuff of stars. Apparently we were originally stardust formed after the explosion of two stars. All this happened about five billion years ago. The second star then exploded, threw out matter that formed the solar system and eventually mankind. And the flu. Professor Gilmore’s specialty is reality. He says people have made up religious explanations because there’s no other way. We have to come to terms with our own unimportance. I cough and cough again. No one takes a scrap of notice. I am really unimportant. The Professor’s right. He continues telling us reality is largely made up of nothing. Everything in the universe was a defect of nothing. Once you understand that you will understand everything about Einstein and cosmology. Lying here on my sick bed the last thing that I wanted to understand was everything about Einstein. I never really could understand why he had that strange beard. Was it to compensate for his bald pate? Professor Gilmore continues. “Don’t be confused. It’s all very simple. Zoom in on the piece of paper you’re reading. It’s just atoms with enormous gaps.” There’s almost nothing there. Well this may be true if the page you were zooming in on was the one with the real estate ads. If you’re zooming in on the leader page then you can’t convince me that the leading article is about nothing. “No” says the Professor. “It is all about nothing”. So there you have it. We all came from a puff of stardust. Each one of us just a little Tinkerbell. Of course some of us bigger Tinkerbells than others. Like Paul Holmes and Russell Crowe. In the end we’re all unimportant because we’re really made up of nothing. It’s made me feel a lot better.

I hope you think the foregoing was not the meanderings of one whose faculties have become jaundiced by the effects of the flu, large doses of Panadol and the gargling of Cepacol ® mouthwash. You’re wrong. I’m quoting Gerry Gilmore. Word for word. And his final word. “The long term future of the universe is just cold and dead.” As I lie here having survived another round of rasping cough I agree that he just might be right. But then he might not. I recall a verse of that song “Swinging on a star”. And after all - according to the Professor - that’s where we came from in the beginning. And it goes like this.

And all the monkeys aren’t in the zoo
Every day you meet quite a few
So you see it’s all up to you
You could be better off than you are
You could be swinging on a star

Wish I was, maybe next week.