Grand Theory

Grand Theory tries to explain in a sentence what life explains in a decade. It is a fair compression.

The theory's gift is vocabulary. Once you have the word, you can see the thing — in your office, in your family, in the news. Before the word, it was only a vague discomfort after dinner.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

Think of the student the night before the board exam, and the same student the morning after results. One believes time is an enemy; the other discovers it was only a mirror.

Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.