The day starts off normally- everything is as it should be, your dress is ironed to perfection, your flat footwear (extremely important if the person in question is the kind who totters even at the mere mention of the word 'heels') fits comfortably. You breakfast with your ex-roommate, drink horrid coffee, read The Guardian blogs, meet some more friends. You are plentifully supplied with candy and literature.

So why should the day suddenly go awry?

Treat it as a rhetorical question- or try to answer it. I don't know myself what happens on those simple, bright, clear days when things are as ordinary as can be, and suddenly, an invisible cloud casts its shadow, a malevolent eye throws a furtive glance at the happy, at-peace-with-itself world and slinks away. There is no visible, practical reason, yet the future suddenly stretches out in front of you, endless and lacking promise. Hopes shrivel away, dreams laugh in your face as they flit by, their turn at deception done.

I live in anticipation of the future. I spend every moment working for a future that I do not know of; am I, in the process, forgetting to live the present? Whether my distant dreams of people unknown and shores unseen will ever come to fruition, I have no idea about; what really should matter to me now is to realise what lives and breathes around me, into me, and gives me the life that I have. To identify the presence that consecrates and beautifies every single day, to give it credence and take joy in the simple things that I come across. A little word of compliment, exaggerated though it might be, lifts my spirits- why should I doubt its sincerity, when it does the giver and the recipient no harm?

Simple is beautiful. I may not be able to keep the clouds at bay. They always loom low on the horizon, threatening to take your life over. Hope, though, is always round the corner.