We’re a curious lot – people that is. We’re all so very different in how we live our lives; in how we view and react to the multitude of things that make up the everyday experience of life. And yet we coalesce according to cultures and beliefs and ultimately as a whole to dominate a world that is filled with so much diversity. Collectively we emerge as a powerful force in nature, a unique specimen that has converged its potential into unrivalled actuality: intelligence.

But it’s a wonder sometimes that there is any coalescence; any union of thought or collective drive for greater understanding and the advancement of mankind. It’s a wonder because at the ground level – just your average ordinary everyday experience of interaction with others – there seems to be endless evidence of discord. Often trivial, sometimes significant, but disunity nonetheless and yet the discord is mostly masked or hidden from public display.

How many of us go through our day thinking that we have so little in common with those with whom we interact. I mean on a deep and personal level, not the superficial nonsense that bonds us all necessarily as a community. I’m talking about conversations with others where you realise, through their reactions, that you are so different to them: different in your viewpoint on a particular issue; in your perspective on life and in your experience of it.

We go through life taking different paths which of course colours our personal understanding and experience of it. We see life according to what we know. Our pasts mould and shape us and effect how we live in the present. We naturally are attracted to and share greater affinity with those who have followed a similar path to our own. We seem to resonate with these people.

But even under normal circumstances where most of us are bonded by common communities, and therefore moving largely together therein, we still sense the subtle differences between each other, that which threatens to upset the harmony, and allow it to sway our opinion. Isolating the subtleties, we judge. We divide and separate according to the differences. Under ordinary conditions we still struggle with our fixation on what separates us and not what bonds us. It is the human way and it attracts conflict. But under the umbrella of this ‘normality’, we still move effectively as a herd and live with, or overlook, the minor differences.

But outside normal circumstances – in the extraordinary – such as when tragedy hits you, the jolt is monumental and instantly sets you aside – outside – of the coterie. When this happens your experience is no longer in tune with those around you. It is so difficult to find your place within the harmonic melody that plays around you. You represent a ‘bum’ note. You are no longer familiar with the tune. You find that people around you are uncomfortable with the truth of your life and that you too feel alienated from theirs. There is no resonance anymore. And every reaction is different. Some people say the right thing. Some people say terrible things. Some people are indifferent, cold, and yet others say nothing at all.

I have been with groups of people and have endured such mixed reaction to my personal tragedy. I have felt comforted, listened to, angry and infuriated and can now see more clearly than ever how different we all are as people. I'm just amazed at how casually cruel, thoughtless and hurtful some people can be, while others are just so warm and understanding. How can there be such dichotomy in such a small number.

I suppose sometimes I just despair at people . . . and it makes me wonder.