Fingerprints
How many people get to live one life and somehow belong to hundreds?
Fingerprints
I have not felt entirely inside my own body for a while.
There have been hospital appointments & admittance. Blood tests. Lung tests. Symptoms that refuse to settle. The strange administrative labour of illness. The ongoing negotiation between what I want my body to do and what it is willing to offer.
I am tired more often than I admit.
Some days, I feel as though I am living at slightly lower resolution than everyone else. And yet.
Life.
Life, in all its absurd generosity, keeps arriving.
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Since June began, it genuinely feels as though the moon and planets have shifted into a more favourable position for Capricorns. I realise this is not an evidence-based statement. Nevertheless, the evidence of my own life suggests something has changed.
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Earlier this month, I travelled to Italy to spend time with Magda in her new home in the Ligurian hills.
From her windows, the sea appeared and disappeared between folds of green mountains. The light changed so dramatically throughout the day that I was never entirely certain what colour the buildings actually were.
Ochre in the morning. Pink by afternoon. Burnt orange at dusk. Perhaps they were all of these things. Perhaps this is simply what light does? It reminds us that things are rarely one thing.
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While I was there, one of Magda’s closest friends called. They knew their time in this physical plane was coming to an end.
I listened as Magda described the landscape surrounding her. The hills. The sea. The beauty. A kind of heaven, really. Neither of them wanted to say goodbye directly.
So they spoke around it. As humans so often do.
They spoke in the language of love instead.
In descriptions of beauty. In gratitude. In memory. In presence.
It was one of the most vulnerable conversations I have ever witnessed.
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Later, Helen and Raj told me that very few people are invited into moments like that. I had not thought of it that way. But they were right. It was a privilege to be there. To be included in something so open, so honest, so profoundly real.
Perhaps this is what love looks like near the end: not certainty, not wisdom, but simply remaining open.
Staying. Bearing witness.
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A few days later, Helen, Raj and I met for dinner.
For 6 months we had been working towards holding something in our hands: a book documenting the legacy and lessons from the British Museum’s Where We Are... project. A book about authentically co-producing with young people (in their voice). A call to action for funders and institutions to ensure people and projects have what they need to do this work properly, ethically and with care.
And there it was. Weighty. Real.
Lovingly designed by Helen.
A tangible object that, only months earlier, had existed as scattered thoughts, late-night edits and paragraphs written whilst I was profoundly unwell. I could barely believe it. There are very few moments in life when you can physically hold evidence of your own becoming.
A small piece of legacy. A quiet declaration that even during periods when I felt broken, I was still making.
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Then, after a meeting of the Making It Real Board, I wandered over to speak with Margaret.
She was chatting with R and K from Ammersall Court, and I didn’t want to interrupt.
K looked at me and said: “You don’t know this, but you’re my son’s favourite person.”
I stood completely still.
I searched my memory, trying desperately to place her son. “It’s J,” she said. “From the creative sessions at the library. He’s always asking when Smithy’s thing is next. He talks about you all the time.”
Then she said something I don’t think I will ever forget.
“J needs to feel safe. There aren’t many places where he feels like that.”
R nodded. “He feels so safe with you.”
Reader, I could have cried. Actually, I nearly did.
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The comment arrived at exactly the right moment.
Because if I am honest, after hospital and symptoms and uncertainty, I had been feeling a little useless. A little lonely. A little emotionally threadbare. Very tired.
And then, without warning, someone handed me this extraordinary gift: the knowledge that simply being myself, creating spaces, showing up consistently, had mattered.
Maybe that comment has made my month. Maybe my year.
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The following day carried the same strange energy.
I cycled to the station. A neighbour stopped to tell me an outrageous story about mutual connections. Dave from the gym drove past beeping his horn. I cycled past Tommy supporting a school trip.
Later, Liz and I attended an event before escaping for a cool drink at The Little Goat.
At one point she looked around and laughed. “How do you literally know everyone? Every single person who walks in here knows you and respects you.”
The truth is, I don’t know.
Lil’ Smizz would never have believed any of this… That one day she would know so many people across museums, libraries, council estates, community centres, universities, faith groups, hospitals and cafés. Not just in her small corner of the world, but across it.
What extraordinary luck?
Lil’ Smizz would never have believed this future.
That she would one day stand in rooms full of people she loved. That she would know the names of so many stories. That she would belong to so many communities.
That so many communities she would belong to.
How lucky.
How impossibly lucky?
How many people get one life and somehow become part of 100s? Because perhaps that is all a meaningful life really is.
A long series of fingerprints.
Us leaving traces of ourselves on one another. Us being changed by everyone we meet.
I have another 2 days in hospital this week and I am not looking forward to them. But this month has reminded me of something important:
Life is not waiting on the other side of uncertainty.
Life is here.
In Italian sunsets. In difficult conversations. In books finally printed.
In young people who feel safe. In friends who know the truest versions of us.
In neighbours waving from passing cars. In showing up. In your boss texting you to check in, and to be honest.
Again and again.
Lately, I have been thinking about death (as always!). About how we speak of it almost exclusively as an ending. But what if death is simply another beginning?
What if it is, as I increasingly suspect, an earthly graduation?
A new beginning. Another act of becoming.
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I am not looking forward to the the hospital again. But becoming has always been one of the most extraordinary parts of being alive.
Standing in the spotlight and telling the truth. Becoming visible in places where you were once invisible. Loving fiercely, even though love comes with no promise that we will be spared loss.
Remaining open. Even at the end. Especially at the end.
A movement into another kind of light. The people I have loved most have taught me that.
Life is not measured in years, achievements or productivity.
It is measured in presence. In courage. In relationships.
In whether we dared to become fully ourselves.
And perhaps that is why these words have stayed with me:
When you think about what you want to do with your life, do not rule out what scares you.
Because the things that have frightened me most have also made my life immeasurably larger.
And if there is anything this strange, beautiful, heartbreaking life has taught me, it is this:
Stay open.
Keep becoming.
Love anyway.
Put your dirty fingerprints over everything!
