Is this a modern phenomenon or has it always existed? We live in troubled times: wars, famine, natural and manmade disasters abound and boy, is it depressing or what?
Yet, when my dad passed away recently at the robust and ripe old age of 91, I started sorting out his papers and effects (pitifully few). As I read old newspaper cuttings, letters he had retained from 1940 and, believe it or not, a photo of Mussolini hanging upside down from a gallows at the road side in Italy after he was executed… A photo taken by my dad and his comrades as they stood around contemplating the spectacle before them! Anyway, as I worked through all this, I was amazed anew at how utterly savage and unpredictable the times in which my dad's generation had lived.
At our training workshops, stress is always a hot topic and we particularly address it in a number of our courses; it's real and it exists and negatively affects so many of us. But my walk through the past with my dad's mementos really humbled me, it really, really humbled me……….