There must be, somewhere in the mind, a cut-out switch to prevent over-load and burn-out, otherwise the pains and problems of life would soon drive us insane.

     This cushioning mechanism, however, is sometimes over-protective, and, while helping us overcome sorrow and hardship, and enable us to carry on, it also lets us forget too easily, and so learn little from it all.

     This causes us to treat life lightly, and expect it to be always there. Daily, we see on TV the road fatalities, the mass-death of people in earthquakes, mine-disasters, floods, industrial accidents, plane-crashes, ethnic rioting, bloody revolutions, wars and so on, and gradually, we become inured to it all; it loses its ability to shock or disturb us. It might be happening to others, but we don’t imagine it could happen to us; somehow, we feel exempt from all that.

      And so, we are often caught unawares.

Life,

day-by-day,

is a bonus,

not a right,

and should not

be taken for

granted.