Of all the luck

I react in two different ways to the horrors and miseries of the world. Sometimes I feel sad that so many people are struggling and floundering and unable to better themselves. At other times I feel happy that I'm lucky enough to have a comfortable, peaceful life while others don't.

The sadness tends to win out, but why should it? Why shouldn't the happiness win out? Why shouldn't I fully appreciate my good fortune, even if I'm very aware it's not shared by everyone? Why be sunk in gloom just because others are?

I think I have a problem with the idea of luck. I can't accept its randomness, its capriciousness. I can't accept that if you're lucky you should just be happy and celebrate it.

I find that hard. I dwell on the fact that others are less lucky, others are stumbling around while I'm not. I feel uncomfortable about it. I feel I've had it too easy. I feel I don't deserve it. I feel a sort of survivor's guilt.

But all I'm doing is taking the edge off my happiness. Spoiling it with pointless doubts and misgivings that make me feel bad instead of just enjoying my luck. I won't simply accept luck for what it is, a sort of burst of sunlight that happened to fall my way and brighten my life.

Why look a gift horse in the mouth? I've been lucky. My life has worked out exceptionally well. Why question it? Why pick it to pieces?

A tide of horror

I find the constant tide of violence and brutality and callousness pouring out of the world's media quite over-whelming at times.

I can only cope with it by siphoning off my emotions into some dark part of myself where they gradually dribble away and disappear.

If I allowed my feelings free rein, if I allowed the full weight of sadness and despair and sorrow to wash through me, I would soon be an emotional wreck.

I'm beyond shocked at the depraved and deranged things that human beings do to each other, apparently without a shred of remorse or guilt or self-loathing.

I'm endlessly amazed at those dogged individuals who still get up each day with a sense of optimism and self-belief despite years of harsh and degrading treatment. The Nelson Mandelas and Natascha Kampusches* of this world. And all those we've never heard of at all.

I can't share the cynicism and indifference of those people who shrug their shoulders, tell you it's just the way of the world and carry on with their daily activities as if it wasn't rape and slaughter they were responding to but a minor kitchen spillage.

And I cringe at all those governments that throw their hands up in horror but so often are unable to halt the barbarities going on in their country day in and day out.

We are not born violent and cruel. We are not born wanting to spill blood and spread terror. How does a child's tenderness get so casually crushed and replaced by something so malevolent?

* Natascha Kampusch was held in a secret cellar in Vienna by her kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil for more than eight years