We went to see Mamma Mia the movie yesterday and I have to say, despite not being an Abba fan, I loved it. It was a wonderful, joyous creation full of imagination, humour and creativity; a real celebration of life and the art of movie making. It was great to see three 50 something actresses having such a good time. For those of you who, like me, had no idea of the plot, a young girl is about to be married and wants to meet her dad. She has found her mother’s diary and has worked out that it could be one of three men who haven’t seen the mother for 20 years and she invites them all to her wedding. She naively believes that she will ‘know’ her father on sight, and of course does not. The film follows the consequences of this impulsive action.

It is interesting to examine this a little more deeply because what she has done is pull the cork out of the genie’s bottle and unleashed a force of chaos and randomness into her life. Regularly readers will recall the impact of this on my computer the other day. The thing is, both she and I thought we knew what we were doing, and once the sequence was initiated we rapidly lost control. In the movie, as is their wont, it all ended happily, real life can be somewhat messier. On the other hand if we try to retain control all the time then not only is life a little monotone, but we bar the door to serendipity. Periodically it is good to take a chance and do something that you can’t control, to surrender power to someone or something else, and then see where that takes you. Today might be a good day to take a chance…

“To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.” Richard Bach