Category: Being human

Some days I wake in Bullerbyn, some days I wake in Narnia. To lift the latter there is nothing better than a morning of what the Japanese call Shirin-yoku or forest bathing. Yesterday we had half a tank of fuel to use up before the car gets traded in today, so my wife said, “let’s…

“Compassion is the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence.” Dostoevsky. A friend asked me, “Who is your favourite character in literature?” “Oh, that’s a difficult one; it’s like deciding who your favourite child is,” I replied. “But, let me think… there’s Lucy Pevensie in Narnia, Boo Radley in Mockingbird, Hans Huberman in…

There are events through the march of time that dance and shimmer in our heads and hearts and rise at unexpected moments. Like the Northern Lights, they are awe-inspiring in their scope. They reach the deepest parts of our soul and emerge unexpectedly. They are left unfinished like the cadence of an A-minor hymn. Moments…

“Where is your favourite place on earth?” I asked my wife when we first met. Without the turning of a shadow, she said “My Grandparent’s farm” “Why?” I asked. It turned out that this is the place where she spent her early years; those years where the sense of innocence and new discovery filled the…

Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was the first book that made me angry, made me cry, and made me question racial injustices. Why would anyone write a book with such an unhappy ending? I asked myself. Life for the protagonist, Tom, was endurable. His master, Mr Shelby, was a kindly man, but a businessman who accumulated…