Imagine it’s your birthday. You’re having a party and just before you blow out the candles on a delicious cake someone halts proceedings to say there’s been a mix-up and it’s not actually your birthday at all.

Well, something like this happened to us recently. It was really quite weird although, to continue the metaphor, we were allowed to stay at the party and eat the cake, it just wasn’t our party and our cake anymore.

But sometimes things just don’t go to plan. Sometimes expectations are shifted so dramatically one has to have a grounding gin and tonic, make a toast to ‘fruitful tension’ and continue proceeding with the inquiring air of Columbo on a case. The ‘letting go’ required in such situations is a release in the egoic sense, opening towards wider horizons and and new eventualities. There’s a particular freedom and something rather healthy about it.

We sailed through the weirdness that night and ended up with some interesting new connections and acquaintances, not to mention some good food and drink. Table 9 at the unnamed event was a hot bed of revolutionary talk and subversive mutterings: ‘maybe this is the beginning of something’, someone said.

So look out for that fertile void because it might be just the thing you need.

Fruitful tension.