Do we all have one of those 'Eureka' moments in life?

The Real Mackay by Dan Mackay

Bill deBuys, the renowned American writer and conservationist, once began a book with the sentence: “A species of hope resides in the possibility of seeing one thing, one phenomenon or essence, so clearly and fully that the light of its understanding illuminates the rest of life”.

What was it he saw, I wonder? Or did he have some sort of Eureka moment of discovery? An ‘I’ve found it’ revelation?

I’m not sure if deBuys was in the bath when he had this moment of inspiration, as Archimedes had been before him when he made his mathematical discovery of displacement and screamed “Eureka, Eureka!”

Everyone loves a good soak in the bath, although there are exceptions. The French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed to death as he lay in his bath whilst being treated for a fungal skin condition. It was not the classic route to martyrdom although it was, perhaps, symptomatic of the reign of terror through which he lived… and died.

Our own Neil Miller Gunn, the Dunbeath-born Highland novelist, whose literary canon went on to attain a universal appeal, once wrote about a life-defining moment that involved water, or, more specifically, the village Well Pool.

In Gunn’s 1937 novel Highland River he writes about the young Kenn, the central character who would later, as a grown man, embark on a sort of pilgrimage to find the source of the river and, along the way, a parallel journey to find the meaning of life itself.

Only, firstly, there was that moment at the Well Pool. He had gone there one morning as a young boy to fetch water (long before the days of household plumbing!). He threw the family pail into the pool, which was a deep spot in the river where water gathered close to the riverbank.

And in that moment in the corner of his eye he sights a flash of silver and without even thinking about it spontaneously throws himself into the pool and grapples with this huge salmon. And I mean huge!

Miraculously he somehow manages to land it and scrambles home with it. It was so long that its tail dragged along the road as he was was carrying it over his shoulder.

The family were initially mortified. To be caught ‘poaching’ like this would mean certain eviction. But a wondrous calm set in and then a discrete knock at the back door of the neighbouring shopkeeper who knew how to ‘share’ out the mighty catch. It meant a brand new pair of tackety boots for Kenn!

And then one day the story would be the stuff of family legend. The sort of thing the old folks never tire of remembering. Pure nostalgia. But along life’s way there was, for the growing Kenn, a Great War and the terrors of the trenches, his working life as a scientist, future relationships and his own family life.

But as he would later reflect of all that happened to him afterwards “of war and horror and love and scientific triumphs, nothing ever had quite the splendour and glory of that struggle by the Well Pool”.

It got me thinking. Maybe it gets you thinking, too. What was my moment – and yours?

I can think certainly of the birth of each of my three daughters and then the five grandkids in a life where nothing should be taken for granted.

We can all visualise family times, things at work, moments of intimacy, our adventures, the successes – and maybe some of those failures, too.

I wonder, as deBuys has suggested, whether they threw a light of understanding that ‘illuminated the rest of life’?

I’m not sure if any of mine were that profound. I don’t recall running around the place like a screaming dervish shouting “Eureka, Eureka”!

Maybe Gunn’s ‘splendour and glory’ has yet to come. Either that or a brand new pair of tackety boots!

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