Today, I heard from a former patient of mine that he/she has passed a milestone in their life. I’m not going in to this in detail for reasons of patient confidentiality, but suffice to say that tonight I feel I’ve genuinely helped someone take a major step towards their new life.

Chuffed? Too right I am!

It’s Tuesday afternoon and with a colleague we’ve been overseeing a couple of students sitting exams. There is something special about watching students you have nurtured to the point where they feel confident enough to sit an exam. Its an even better feeling when you’ve marked the test and they’ve passed. Often not surprising when they don’t.

Many of my students have past alcohol/drug and mental health issues so to get them to where they are now (from where they were a few months ago) is something special. Alan Watts talked about the iniquities of the Western system of schooling and the presumption of progression along a (semi) pre-determined path, and yes, it does have some merit, but personally, I think that life shouldn’t necessarily have to follow such rigid lines.

Am I advocating a simpler, more meditative lifestyle? Perhaps, or perhaps I’m simply saying that it really is possible to ‘achieve’ without having to follow the pack. This is obviously nothing new, but just occasionally I think we need to take stock of where we are in life, where we fit in, how we live our lives. This may require us to devise new ways of working.

Just like Schrodinger’s Cat, in life we can go one way or another, but at some stage there is a point where we *may* go one way or the other but haven’t yet done so. The question is: what way will you go?