The story begins

Dr Fahim Chand | Tuesday January 20, 2026 10:32

Its contents were unknown, mysterious, and in the extravagant logic of childhood, potentially life-altering. All right, that may be an exaggeration but only just enough to make the point. As children, we are irresistibly drawn to lucky packets because they offer something far rarer than their modest contents: uncertainty wrapped in promise.

The packet is sealed, anonymous, and gloriously indifferent to our wishes. It makes no guarantees, offers no hints. It simply waits. In a world where adults explain, schedule, and supervise everything, the lucky packet preserves a realm of the unknown.

Psychologically, it feeds a deep instinct for discovery. Our young minds are wired to seek patterns and rewards, and mystery sharpens that hunger. The unopened packet becomes a miniature universe of possibility.

It could contain something wonderful, something useless, or something wonderfully useless. Until opened, all outcomes coexist, and imagination does the heavy lifting. There is also a quiet lesson in chance.

The lucky packet introduces us, gently and even playfully, to randomness and fate. We learn that desire does not guarantee outcome, yet hope persists anyway. That tension, between expectation and reality, thrills rather than disappoints us.

But maybe and perhaps most importantly, lucky packets let children rehearse wonder. They remind us that joy is not always in possession, but in not yet knowing. As adults, we grow impatient with uncertainty. We crave gratification without delay. And yet, as the pages turn in the book of life, mystery never quite loosens its grip on us.

We remain instinctively drawn to the unknown, because it jump-starts our cognitive engine, fuelled by a restless need to know. Resolution soothes us.

When the fog lifts and every shadowed possibility is dragged into the light, we settle back, satisfied, convinced, briefly, that we have “won.”

That same insatiable urge has powered the great discoveries: fire coaxed from darkness, electrons persuaded to behave, entire worlds explained into existence.

Noble pursuits, certainly and lucrative ones too. But the impulse refuses to confine itself to laboratories and lecture halls. It follows us into our leisure.

We feel it in the cinema, neurons buzzing as we race the film to its own ending, desperate to unmask Keyser Söze before the credits roll in The Usual Suspects. (If you haven’t seen it, spend five minutes finding it on a streaming service.

You’ll thank me.) And even at home, parked in pyjamas on the couch, we lean forward as each twist unfolds in the latest Harlan Coben adaptation, still chasing the same old thrill: the pleasure of not knowing, until, suddenly, we do.

For me, as you all know by now, one of life’s great pleasures resides in the carefully created notes of music. From the expertly bent guitar strings of the late, great Jimi Hendrix to the latest eclectic offerings of Billie Eilish, music has an uncanny ability to soothe my soul.

Even here, between the primitive compositions of early earth dwellers whistling tunes into the wind and Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony with its thousand performers, mystery reigns supreme. Take The Eagles.

Their Greatest Hits album sits proudly as the second best-selling album of all time, politely nodding from behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

My favourite song from this talented band is Hotel California. When it plays, the opening guitar notes drift in like desert air at dusk. Measured, sun-warmed, laying down a horizon before the story begins.

The song then gathers itself, slowly and deliberately, drawing you down a road toward a place that feels inviting, familiar, and quietly inescapable. And yet, a close reading of the lyrics reveals... nothing concrete.

No love letter. No tidy moral. Just decades of wild theories, including, outrageously, a haunted hotel and ghostly inhabitants. In truth, the song was written to be a mystery. Don Henley later admitted it explored the excesses of American culture and the uneasy tension between art and commerce. So now you know.

Or perhaps, you don’t, and that’s the point. Music endures not because it explains itself, but because it makes us feel something. And when life hits a few bumps, it’s the one companion that doesn’t ask questions, only turns up the volume and smooths the ride.