I was born in 1948, grew up in a democratic country where the accent was on social mobility, and was educated to a level that allowed me to become erudite, cosmopolitan, well-travelled and handsomely rewarded.

I’ve never felt any guilt about that: such privileges as I enjoy today have been earned….and while – since around 2004 – I’ve been trying to put back some important lessons about how to behave for the Greater Good, this has hardly been an onerous task. Far from it: I love to write, it’s what I was born to do, and I freely admit to getting a charge every time a follower gets inspiration from my scribblings.

But there will always be an emotional side to existence. This is the primarily Right Brain engagement with life whereby each one of us with a strong attraction to normality seeks out the Twin Flame that might variously heal, reveal or steel us for the task ahead. I was a big fan of the 1980s band Simply Red – especially of their signature track A New Flame:

I was sold out, I was sold down the river

But her warm smile has cured me forever

And she’s turned me round

And nothing she could do could do me wrong

oh no, no no

All too often, however, the Right Brain plays us false. And the more one travels in search of true feelings, the more the memory of heartless betrayal places certain locations off limits….simply too painful to contemplate even after many years of healing.

I will never go back to Venice, because my first marriage was cynically exploited there.

I will never go back to the Mani in Greece, because that’s where belief in shared values was crushed by money.

I could never live again in Paris, because I will always associate the City with casual dismissal of everything I stand for.

And I shall never return to Crete, because it has scarred me with a knife wound far too deep to ever heal in what’s left of my lifetime.

We are an odd species: we show our pets more compassion than we do to those we so easily call our lovers. We lie to our partners in a manner we wouldn’t dream of palming off on the cat. And in so doing, we put forward rationalised excuses that don’t bear even the most superficial examination.

This is as true of the greedy bureaucrat at the Covid19 macro level as that of the manipulative individual at the micro level….and it’s every bit as insulting.

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