If what I’m hearing from my daughter is anything to go by, a huge wave of talented and driven young people are now talking as though their main ambition, post-graduation, is to leave these shores to live and work elsewhere, should Brexit becomes a reality. Its the talk of her peers, she tells me. I’m hearing the same from other family members, and on the grapevine, more and more often, as a likely yet unwanted reality dawns upon so many young people in the UK. They talk about this so pragmatically, as an obvious “must”, a real and pressing call to them, should the doors slam shut…feeling they have to leave to keep their options and creativity, their very sense of involvement and of ongoing expansion, open and participating in a far bigger picture of the world than “Little Britain” would afford them. This place, to them, will be no more than a tired old seaside town where people come to wind down their lives; a place full of gulls pecking at empty fish and chip packets, petty ideals and sepia-tinted nostalgia.

Talking of bigger pictures, let’s look at this another way, as I always like to do. I’ve long had the sense that these British isles are like a seed pod that periodically bursts open, like one of those spore clouds of spring, shooting its cargo far and wide into worldwide distribution. If you are American, Canadian, Australian or quite a number more that I won’t bother to list, there’s a fair chance your forebears came from these shores which, for such a small island, is fairly impressive. Even when “done” by nefarious means, through empire, control and domination, or the burning desire for people (like now) to leave behind some sort of oppression, as the Pilgrim Fathers did, the means has led, most effectively, to this outcome and now…well…now we are fairly stagnant, inward looking, navel-gazing; the “pod” has gone quiet. Some say England is the Heart Chakra of the planet, the very pump or the bellows that keeps the whole teaming with energy and I’ve always felt something in that. Its a particular energy of place, to which many tribes have attracted, to mix with an indiginous quality, over and over again, in order to stir their flavours like the complex seasoning of an excellent stew, only to spew  forth, repeatedly, from the sides of this favourite pot…and when that pot shuts down, closes its lid to “invaders” and exotic ideas, the stew goes cold and uninteresting for a while.

So perhaps there’s design behind a “thing” that will distribute a generation of our particular brand of quirkiness and talent, vision and frankness, tenacity and humour, far and wide; the blood of our youth, those first jets of our ingenuity, unleashed on a far wider scale. Though it saddens and frustrates me at a human level, as I contemplate family members and offspring scattered so far away we will be lucky to see them even once a year in the flesh, and as one left behind here listening to the slowing grind of the barrel organ turned by monkeys, my curiosity is piqued…and, looked at as though I were them, I can’t say I blame them for going, either. Perhaps our loss is the world’s gain, in some sort of cosmic plan that we are only seeing at ground level and I remain curious at the broader scale, as I always am.

For more intriguing theories about distinct migration patterns at certain key points in history, I recommend Dr Carl Johan Calleman’s book “The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization: The Quantum Evolution of Consciousness” and “The Nine Waves of Creation: Quantum Physics, Hollograpic Evolution and the Destiny of Humanity”.