A lesson from my address book

Time at last to write to the air waves again. For weeks, now, blogging has been low on my list of priorities but when your internet address book is hijacked by some unscrupulous nogood somewhere, all you can do is clean everything out and start all over again. So, I have potentially lost touch with many of my friends and ex-students and I am sad about that. If you are one of them and you wish to keep in touch, do get typing and let me have your address again. I would value that so much. And, by the way, my two email addresses remain the same.

This whole affair has led me yet again to reflect on human nature and on how enormously selfish and silly we humans can be. We can rise to the heights and we can plumb the depths. We have such potential to do both good and bad and it is our egos which play such a part in this. The ego itself is only a problem when we allow it to be because, of course, we always have choices in the actions we take. In the same way as we mistakenly say 'money is the root of all evil' (when we should of course be saying 'the love of money is the root of all evil', which is rather different), so we blame the ego for all our ill-doings. Yet, it is not the ego per se, it is our use or misuse of our ego which determines our actions. Whoever hijacked my address book had the choice whether or not to do it and he or she made the wrong choice. The choice was, sadly, not just wrong for me but for him or her as well as the choice made will accumulate as bad karma and will rest in that person for the rest of their days in this lifetime. Pity. And, equally, it is incumbent on me to have compassion for that inconveniencing person. Oh dear, that's the choice I now have to make. And in fact I do feel sorry that someone feels they have to 'steal' someone's address book in order to promote their own business, which is what they were trying to do. I just hope, now, that they can find an honest way to market their goods in the future.

And, I hope, too, that I can receive back all your email addresses and build up my address book again. Good old human nature. It never ceases to shock and amaze.