Here I am, back again and very glad to be so.

We all see the good and bad in people in our everyday lives, but usually to a more mundane extent than I have witnessed this last few weeks. I have already written about finding who your true friends really are, when it really counts and your back is against the wall.

Well, very sadly, a remarkably good, kind and much-loved person died last week and I attended their very moving funeral, a service full of love and support for the surviving family and friends. What was mentioned time and again was this persons love for life, right up to the end, their lack of bitterness at the cancer that was taking their life, way too early, and their loving thoughts for those they were leaving behind. What this individual and their wonderful family faced was awful, not deliberate or in any way avoidable, but completely life-changing for all concerned. Yet, despite the palpable sadness of loss, the overwhelming feeling in the chapel was of love for a life well-lived.

Now, I have always had an issue with that certain meanness of spirit I have found in some people throughout my life, the kind of people who take joy in the misery or misfortune of others, seemingly begrudging folk the air they breathe, but, standing in that chapel all I could think was of the total futility and waste of time it is to spend even one precious second of my life carrying anger or hurt in my heart at the actions of others.  It changes nothing and that burden weighs heavy, leaving no room there for love and affecting my ability to take joy in the rest of my life.

So I will take some of that positive energy from the way this good person both led his life and faced his death and use it to drive the fear and negativity from my mind and from my soul.

Thankfully, kind, loving and warm people still vastly out-number the shitty ones.