Of the 50 or so columns that appear in this space each year, this is the most difficult one to write. The Christmas break is hard upon us, and everyone in Bermuda has spent themselves into near-bankruptcy and has no interest in being made to feel guilty about it. So — I thought instead I would write about what I have learned this year and see if I can provide inspiration that way.The main thing that 2006 has underlined for me is the importance of stability. For one reason or another, the planks on which I have built my life have been removed, one by one this year, for reasons having nothing to do with me. Only one plank remains, and you’re looking at it. Writing, the one career my schoolteachers expressly recommended I avoid, is the only constant in a life that has become completely unmoored.

This is not whining. I have no complaints to lay before you. I have my health and some very good friends, and can pay my bills. Everything else is vanity. That politics and other incomprehensible human activities have placed me in limbo at first worried me keenly. It was so very hard, at first, to think about the future when none of its parameters were plain.

I would have torn my hair out, but I don’t have enough left to tear. I quit my job, and then unquit when my employer helped me to understand that wouldn’t solve any of my problems. I thought about leaving Bermuda before the Police came to take me to the airport, but then realised that you only run away from a problem when it has become permanently insoluble. I ranted; I raved; and then, exhausted, I tried thinking of something else.

What finally helped was going away. Overseas, I had other things to think about than my Bermuda woes, and all of a sudden, those woes seemed less woeful. When the trip ended, I came back determined not to think about things, and just to live in the moment, which all the wise men counsel as the way to go.

And you know what? It worked. I abandoned my traditional approach — think, plan, act — and replaced it with a new philosophy: que sera, sera<$>, whatever will be, will be. As the song has it: the future’s not ours to see, que sera, s<$>.

It took a bit of doing, because I’ve spent my life disapproving of the lack of a Plan B, let alone a Plan A. I would find my mind venturing, as it always had, to thoughts of what comes next. An example: my apartment is a catastrophe, but there’s no point in fixing it, because my tenure may (or may not) have evaporated. Whenever I used to look around at the apartment, my mind would start spinning one of two alternatives: fix it and damn the economic consequences, or move. Neither suited me.

But, under the new regime, a third possibility presented itself: ignore it. So the next person through my front door, probably me, will plummet through the rotten boards to their death, so what? So the paint is peeling, so what? So I hate the limbo I’m in, so what? You may already think like this, in which case this won’t sound terribly revolutionary, but for me this is a sea change, the abandonment of just about everything I have ever believed.

The key words there are “just about everything”. I haven’t stopped living up to my obligations, or valuing friendship, or anything that affects other people. I’ve just decided that to live in Bermuda, one must adopt its motto: quo fata ferunt, wherever the fates may blow us.

Intellectually, I can’t say I approve of such behaviour. In fact, I tend to think that under most circumstances, it’s a recipe for catastrophe. But I no longer live under most circumstances; I live under a specific set of circumstances imposed on me by a solution other people have forged to a problem they think they have.

It’s very liberating. Instead of allowing myself to use my condition as an excuse, I have started using it as a justification for interrupting the internal dialogue, the constant back-of-the-mind nattering that distracts the process of thinking. I can’t say I’m making better decisions, or any decisions for that matter, but freed of the pressure of not knowing, I have come to enjoy the uncertainty. I count my blessings daily and here’s the proof that it works: I don’t even care that it’s Christmas, which usually drives me to distraction.

I became a godfather last week and spent ten minutes alone with my as-yet-unnamed goddaughter. She lay in a plastic box, fast asleep, two days old, utterly unaware of the machinations of mankind. Looking into her little face, I first thought how lucky she was to be two days old, and how it would be all downhill from there. And then my new thinking kicked in, and I realised that was wrong. Good, bad or indifferent, the little girl has her whole life ahead of her. If it is half as interesting as mine has been — or is — she’ll be lucky indeed.

And on that note, may I wish you the very best that Christmas has to offer and a sensationally good New Year. Maybe this is a time for you, too, to start thinking about changing some of the thinking that hasn’t worked so well in the past, and adjusting with grace to whatever ugly circumstances life has inflicted on you. It’s working for me.