© Picasso, seeing it all at one glance

Things are very bleak for a vast proportion of the planet.

Students unable to be taught, jobs flying from windows, hope scattered: all in atrophy.

But something rosey seemed to push its head up ~ like that impossible appearance of snowdrops in winter ~ defying all logic given the circumstances.

If this pestilencial epoch has given us anything cheerful, it is the opportunity to look afresh at how perception has altered. In virtue that only a teeny proportion of people are economically unaffected, all the rest of us have a legitimate claim to reframe the picture we have of ourselves and our achievements.

It would be entirely understandable to survey the debris of our lives currently and find it failing. It seems so last century, though, to frame a picture of success as fortune slopping over the cup’s rim. Is it not more relevant, interesting and useful to ponder all that we come to understand as a result of each experience this turgid turbulence washes upon our shores?

Surely it is those riches-of-epiphany which ought be prized and matter far beyond … stuff? How we apply the sum total of our understanding seems more meaningful to swelling compassion and empathy. [If the medieval appetite for alchemy teaches us anything, is it not that each of us is born base metal and Life is the chance to transform ourselves into gold? Or, as was written with greater melody a while back, Love over Gold.]