Imagine what one doesn’t see, or hear, or feel, or experience, through any one life on this blue-green globe. The choice we have is limitless, the path we choose to take, governed by a potent mix of genes and circumstantial fate.

Each and every example of human existence - a diversity of being, cooked up in a melting pot of nature and nurture - delivers a unique result: a remarkable blueprint which cannot be duplicated. From our first tottering steps to those last doddery stumbles, we carve a matchless track that outlines our actuality on this blue orb.

Depression sometimes overcame George, when he thought about his meanderings through life: one impulse to the next. Planning? … What was that? “Nowadays,” he mused, “Every young person I bump into seems to forward-plan their existence. Why for Christ’s sake didn’t I do the same?” Mild depression. Nothing up to considering rehab; nothing too serious. Contemplation of suicide out of the question. On occasions he teased himself with planning his exit, a term he had picked up from African funerals.