Ben Tylecote

We can only truly experience something after coming across its opposite. Recently, that is what I have heard many people say. It is similar to the saying you can only experience the highs after experiencing the lows - a belief that I find to be true. As many people say happiness is not a permanent state, it is something that can be earned.  Personally I relate this to the idea of karma, the idea that bad experiences lead to a good thing and that doing something negative, to someone else, leads to a negative experience for yourself.  That idea is far more abstract than what I propose, although still something I half believe - even though it just probably happens that everyone's life contains ups and downs that some people  happen to attribute to events of the past. My point is that we should remember that everyone's life contains highs and lows. This is a necessary evil introduced by the miracle of evolution. For if everyone was constantly happy then they would have no des...

How common do you think it is that someone less skilled gets the job, or someone less talented wins the competition? For me I realised just how readily this happens in the summer break last year.  It was a sailing national championship, I won’t bore you with details. All you need to know is that I’m a good competitive sailor who is defiantly better than my brother. Ha. This competition is set to last two days, its windy and I’m fit, feeling good. The first race goes, and I capsize after being in the top 5 and end up finishing dead last. It’s fine, I say to myself,  your going to do way better than that in the next races.  Long story short that day went terribly, after that I don’t think I got a single other top ten result. What’s funny is this isn’t the first time this happened – and if I hadn’t figured out what I’m about to tell you it certainly wouldn’t have been the last. What happened on the second day was that I used the technique I'm about to tell yo...