Often to the point of stinging paradox – and mockingly with an outcome as foreseeable as it is unpredictable – I am reminded of the mercurial nature of living. In spite of our efforts to the contrary, life’s aporia prove impossible to escape. We float from one sphere to another, up and down. We’re like a pinball precipitously and variously descending from top to bottom, bouncing back and forth, at times with, at times without advantage, but always on the move, unshielded from fortune, good or bad. We humans are no different from life’s other creatures. Would that we had the capacity of the tiny squirrel to avoid the vulnerability of fate with apparent equanimity.

When the brutal consequences of living dismantle our experience there are two ways out of the mix. Either we step aside or go down deep and dirty into the muck. Removing oneself from the immediacy of the conflict is the preferred step. Like it or not there are times better outfitted for the discussion of fault or failure. Our internal mechanism is persuaded more by the amplitude of removal than endurance. This engenders a temporary evaporation of the refined cerebral strengths which overall are less assured of success in the initial controversy between “fight or flight”. Unlike the scurrying squirrel however we often mistakenly fashion the cerebral animation as more credible; and, in doing so, we pay the price.  Learning and adopting moral fortitude are not for the pusillanimous. Nor is old age a guaranteed stimulus.

The animal kingdom has a collective history of dominance, a world where arguments are brief and sometimes fatal.  Always however there is a record of victory and defeat, ability and strength, youth and age. It is an uncompromising domaine, having the benefit of safety and protection. Whether mankind has usefully adopted a similar régime is questionable. Meanwhile – as we deliberate upon the utility of leadership and survival – there may be room for subordinate debate. Manners – so I have knowingly heard it said by Housemaster James Carmen Mainprize – are only required when you reckon the need to use them. Until then life drifts along unfettered by the occasional ripple or swirl. Certainly, when one is hot tempered, even politeness can issue a poison; but better that than to remove doubt entirely. In the end there are few if any battles that sustain legitimacy. To go to extremes for illustration purposes – the only certainty of war is that it is repeated. I suspect therefore that the goal of war is absolute dominance, not compromise of any scale. It is that animal universality that frightens me in the human mind.