TIGHTROPE WALKING

As I get older, I sometimes think of the newly qualified female French teacher I had when I was 17/18. There was a history of eye-cancer in her family and she seemed to me ( as a callow youth) to be totally obsessed by doom & gloom! I remember her saying to us, " You all see life as a long road, who's end is not even in sight. I see it as a tightrope, from which I could fall to my death at any time " Happily, so far as I know, she had no serious eye problems . . . she had a long and successful teaching career . . . and is now happily retired. For our own peace of mind, we all choose to forget that life IS a 'tightrope' and that any one of us might lose our footing, at any moment. As we get older we may sometimes experience this, first hand, when we are challenged by unexpected health problems. I'm confident and hopeful that - like my teacher - most of us will 'live long & prosper '. When we're ill, it's not a time to 'give-up' . . . but just to take a breather & regain our strength. Our interests, passions and beliefs, our partners, friends and contacts will, I'm sure, give us the focus we all need to quickly regain our 'balance' if we should occasionally lose our footing.