Big Ideas (Some I Understand, Some I Don’t and Some That Make My Brain Explode)
An occasional series on the things that make life confusing, beautiful and faintly ridiculous.
At the time of writing this (2025), I’ve been on this lump of rock we call home for seventy-one summers. In January 2026, I’ll be entering my seventy-second winter, and I hope there are many more left. But who knows?
That’s part of the reason I’m writing this. The older I get, the more I seem to think about things. I’ve come late in life to this literary lark, and I rather like it. Sometimes I think I should have started sooner, but perhaps I wouldn’t have had quite so much to say.
I’m not a philosopher. I don’t have a beard to stroke, a pipe to puff, or a fellowship at Oxford (which is a shame, an All Souls Fellowship would have been nice!) I’m just someone who’s spent a lifetime wondering why life makes so little sense, and why that seems to bother me more than it should.
These essays began as notes to myself, written late at night when a sentence from Nietzsche or a thought from the Buddha refused to let me sleep. Over time they turned into conversations, part diary and part detective work, about what the great thinkers were really trying to tell us and what any of it might mean for the rest of us muddling through our days.
If there’s a qualification at all, it’s curiosity, the stubborn kind that keeps asking questions long after reason has packed up and gone to bed.
So welcome to Big Ideas (Some I Understand, Some I Don’t and Some That Make My Brain Explode).
Bring curiosity. Leave certainty at the door.
There will be tea. Possibly biscuits. And at least one moment when you realise you’ve been staring at the wall, wondering whether the wall is staring back.
The Series
I’ve always loved big ideas, the kind that try to explain everything: life, death, reality, consciousness, whether cats have free will, and why people still think they can win arguments on Twitter.
Unfortunately, big ideas don’t always love me back. Trying to make sense of them is a bit like speed dating with geniuses: exhilarating, baffling and slightly bruising. Or, in the immortal screeched words of Robert Plant, rock god and lead singer of Led Zeppelin, they leave me dazed and confused.
Still, there’s something irresistible about minds that refuse to stop asking why? Even when the answers make your brain melt a little. These thinkers, from the Buddha to Bertrand Russell, from Plato to Stephen Hawking, have all tried in their own way to map the impossible: how to live, how to think, how to make sense of the noise.
I read them not because I always understand them (I often don’t), but because they make the world feel larger and stranger than I remembered. They remind me that confusion isn’t failure; it’s the first honest step toward wisdom.
So this isn’t a philosophy course. It’s not a study guide. It’s more like a slightly chaotic conversation across time, part wonder and part bewilderment, occasionally interrupted by tea breaks and existential dread.
Sometimes I understand what they’re saying.
Sometimes I don’t.
And sometimes it’s so gloriously incomprehensible that I can only laugh, because maybe that’s the point.
Disclaimer
This is intended to be an entertaining and humorous journey through some complex subjects. Occasionally I may (and probably will) get things wrong. I welcome constructive feedback, but I’m not professing to be a philosopher — merely a curious soul trying to make sense of things. Think of this as a guided tour led by someone who sometimes loses the map. 🙂
Next up
👉 The Buddha: The man who went looking for peace and found it sitting quietly under a tree →
About this series
Big Ideas (Some I Understand, Some I Don’t and Some That Make My Brain Explode) is a wandering journey through philosophy, from ancient India to modern AI. Some of these ideas I understand. Some I’m still wrestling with. And some make my brain explode.