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Yesterday, my 7 yr’s old fish died. All 4 of them. Gone in one day. He had unplugged the heat pump…to charge his iPad.

It was 1 degree yesterday.

I didn’t break it him that the fish potentially may need the heat to survive in winter. We just talked about the fish. How it was their time, how they had a good life, and how they might be in heaven now.

Through the many tears of his lost fish, which admittedly he could only recall one of their names, he asked me the big questions.

It wasn’t what you expect. It wasn’t is there a heaven, where do the fish go now and why do people and animals (some which we remember the name of) have to pass on.

He asked me this.

Why did we buy it in the first place? We knew the fish would die. Which means we knew one day we would be sad.

That’s life isn’t it.

Life is about risk. It’s about doing things, even if we know the answer on the other side.

I often ask myself, if I was to be given one billboard in the middle of Piccadilly Circus today, to put anything i could on it – what would my message be?

The billboard is obviously big. People will look at this billboard fleetingly. Therefore, the message must be interesting to capture the attention, but also powerful to last.

I’ve thought about this for a while. What my message would be. But mainly, what I would want my children to read and know that’s what their mum’s message was.

I think mine is – Do something that scares you.

Doing something that scares you and showing your children you are scared is important. It’s important to not know the answer and still try. It’s important to get things wrong, to learn for next time.

It’s important for our children to know they can try scary things, and not know what is going to happen.

As we enter the much-needed holiday break, I hope you find something to try that scares you. That excites you. That you don’t know how it is going to finish.

And that your children see the role model that you are – trying this. So, when the next opportunity for Athletics, Tournament of Minds, Basketball, or the school disco rolls around, they know they can try something that scares them.

So that’s my billboard. I hope you see it one day in black and white on some big city corner.

So my little 7 year old…we did the scary thing and bought the fish. If we never took the risk to the buy them, we never would have got the happiness they gave.

Sleepy the catfish, and unknown fish 2,3,4 – thank you. We did the scary thing and took the risk.  

Ps – the Ipad was on 100 percent.