A Reasonable Comparison.

I gather Mrs Thatcher was buried today with all due pomp, circumstance and media attention. The cashier in the supermarket told me so. As I said last week, her death meant nothing to me apart from stirring up a few grievances.

On Monday, an eight-year-old boy was waiting to see his father cross the finish line in the Boston Marathon, when his future was extinguished by a bomb. Which of the two do you think runs me through with a sharpened blade, turns my emotional state on its head, and has me questioning again what the hell life is all about? How easily can I be expected to switch off the agony I feel on behalf of his parents?

‘Ah,’ you might say, ‘but that’s an irrational and unrealistic comparison.’

No it isn’t, not if you go deep enough into the question of where the human spirit should be directing its attention.