What happens around us is often something we cannot alter.
Some events we can change, some actions we can even create, but mostly we are witnesses to what happens.
The sense of wanting agency and feeling powerless haunt our days - with feelings of frustration and wasted energy - and also our nights - with unwanted sleeplessness or restless dreams.
If we cannot change many things in life, what we can change is what and how we think about the events in our lives.
Since opinion plays such a huge part in our thinking, both in how we think about events and in the diversity of how everyone else thinks, often about the same events, then what we think about the world becomes very important.
Our viewpoint and opinion is different to what happens. This involves our attitude towards what happens, which soon becomes the focus of our thinking, rather than the events themselves, once they have passed.
Our anxieties, joys, prejudices, hopes, desires - along with our feelings of love or anger, desire or repulsion, are all based on opinion, on what we think, rather than on what is.
Some feelings are basic - fear, pain, hunger - but some are more personal - love, anxiety, pleasure, envy. These feelings relate to our perception of life and our relationship with others, our connection with the world around us.
We often tend to imagine the human world is something like our own thinking, that it reflects our world view - with some notable differences.
This is not really the case - what seems obvious to us is often almost invisible to many other people.
Some people see the world as their servant, with their life as an exercise in mastery. Some people see the world as their master, with their life being a permanent experience of servitude.
Devious people often see the world as a conniving place. Generous people often see the good in their fellows. Those who seek power often distrust most other people. Those who love get loved in return - and they get hurt too. The most human of experiences.
Alcoholics imagine many people have a drink problem. Paranoid people imagine everyone is thinking about them. As the saying goes, to the man with a hammer, every problem is a nail.
The question we have to answer is what kind of a world do we want to make and what kind of a world do we want to live in?
The answer will come down to our opinion about what the human world should be like, and what we should be like, living in it, rather than our ability to change the way the world is, directly.
Being kind in a cruel world can be devastating to the individual, yet being unkind in a world that we simply pass through - with our arrival and departure a mystery - seems immensely ungrateful. Given the wonder of being alive and the unimaginably lucky chance we have to be gifted with life at all, behaving badly throughout the time we have seems unthinkable.
What we think, what others think and what we do with these personal views makes up the human world we live in.
Since we humans act on intuition, rather than instinct, we would be well advised to keep our intuition sharp, and away from pre-formed prejudice, cultural assumptions and organised belief systems that exclude all but those who believe in that particular dogma, and only that dogma alone.
What we can see is that people’s belief systems form the thinking by which they live. Their opinions, which then become solidified so as to make them into a structure, then go on to create the reference points which people adhere to in their lives.
Opinions, formed into beliefs, are much like the steel columns and beams that create the structure upon which the façade of a modern building is attached. What we see are the plate glass windows and the cladding, while what actually holds the building in place are the hidden pillars and girders.
Beliefs become allied to behaviour, so one justifies the other. Powerful belief systems, particularly those rooted in the main culture of a nation, become the high-ground from which those who share such beliefs look down in judgement on all others who do not share their thinking.
From this vantage point, the administration of punishment is not only seen as justified but it can be seen as being a good thing, where the self-righteous feel it is fair and just to punish others who do not agree with them, simply because they do not agree with them.
The fact that belief systems and behaviour become one and the same means that opinion rules our behaviour, while we tend to think of our actions as being more objectively based than they truly are.
Carnivores feel no regrets about eating domesticated animals which they regard as being reared for their consumption, while vegans have many good reasons to avoid eating any animal products. Both live in the same world, it is simply opinion, solidified into belief, that divides their behaviour.
In the case of the carnivore, both physical and metaphorical, they do not stop to inquire about the feelings of the animals they eat or the people they trample on. This behaviour can translate into behaviour from human to human, too, where the self-righteous can cause suffering to other people without consultation on conscience
When it comes to politics, our worldviews often split along very rigid lines.
There are those who think the world should generally be made in an image of their own personal vision and identity and there are those who accept a more plural view, one in which others have a place, even if they are not of a similar disposition.
Belief in order, hierarchy, independence from the state, conservative social values and the capitalist work ethic go hand in hand with the former group.
Belief in difference, egalitarianism, state responsibility for social care, progressive social views and a fair work ethic often denote the latter group.
With the General Election coming up, we are given to understand that we have a choice about what sort of country we want to live in.
The problem is the choices we are looking at, on offer from the two main parties, are not fundamentally very different.
The issues are not so much about overall direction, rather about simply keeping the NHS alive, the teachers teaching, the lights on, the roads mended, the trains running and stopping sewage filling the waterways. All this, along with a cost of living problem, rising numbers of food bank users, house prices at unsustainably high levels, low economic growth, a huge budget deficit and promises to keep taxes broadly at their present level.
The political outliers are offering more radical alternatives - with the far right talking about the usual stuff, i.e. everyone should look and think like ‘me’ and anyone who disagrees should be silenced. For them, everyone whose great-great-grandparents were born here deserve to live under our flag, while anyone not born here should stay where they are, currently, and keep away from our shores.
The opposing alternative is no longer red, but has now become green, with a strong environmental, rather than socio-political, agenda running.
What we get are political parties apparently changing direction, so no one has a clear view of what is happening next, when in reality the two main parties are broadly more similar than they are different, policy wise. The fact that one is tired and obviously long past its sell-by date, while the other is eagerly waiting in the wings to potentially take power provides the most obvious difference between them.
Politically, it seems, we are more victims of circumstance than architects of our own destiny.
A planned national direction and a grand vision have fallen back to simply keeping the country on its feet. Considering we are the 6th largest economy in the world, things really have slipped out of control over the last few years.
As the week drew to a close, we witnessed another decline of the more democratic actors on the world stage and the rise of the more strident, radical, players.
Depending on who you are and what you believe, this is either very bad news or very promising news.
For me, the demise of decency and the rise of fanaticism in politics is appalling, not to say frightening. Once one group gains control and suppresses all others we are always in trouble.
It is frightening how a small group of fanatics can become the leadership of a nation and force everyone else to adhere to their beliefs, like it or not.
Democracy, in any system with more than two candidates, generally means the group, whether a small committee or a whole nation, often ends up with a minority leader, one who simply has more votes than the others, as individuals, but less than their opponents, as a whole.
This is why it is important that the national infrastructure system is run well, regardless of the political leadership, rather than the leadership defining how well, and in what political shape, the national system runs.
This point alone, no matter what radical agenda they may have, lies at the centre of major concerns about any group who wishes to suppress all those who disagree with them and impose their views on everyone.
Whatever the agenda of the radical, it is often one that does not benefit the majority. It is much more likely to benefit the minority - those who have gained power, along with their loyal followers.
This goes for radical right-wing politicians, but it also goes for radical alternative politicians and activists, who want to see their minority views imposed on the majority, regardless of how the majority feel about it.
Those whose view is narrow, in terms of what is seen as acceptable, what constitutes allowable and what constitutes us, in their minds, are all people to be very wary of.
They will talk in ways that sound rational, in order to gain power - their primary objective - then they will behave like mad men once they take charge.
Those with more pluralistic ideas, which involve the good of the majority and promote inclusivity, are the leaders who have the best intentions. Those with singular ideas, which benefit the elite and preach exclusivity, are always the would-be leaders to be afraid of, because if you are not one of them, then you will be seen as undesirable.
You can try to become one of them, if they gain power, but if that fails you are liable to be ejected from the group and made to suffer, in some form or another. Promotion, at any level, will not be for you.
This week we have seen parts of the world starting to tilt in a negative direction - if you believe in plurality and progress. If you believe in singularity and regression, then you will be rejoicing.
This writer is feeling very uneasy about the direction the political world is taking.
Sunday evening saw the exit polls in France give Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) a lead in the first round of electoral voting.
With only 33% of the votes this puts the RN as potentially the largest single party, against a fragmented opposition.
This indicates, precisely, how a minority can overtake a majority, in the race for power. It also strengthens the momentum of the right-wing, in Europe, following Giorgia Meloni’s recent win in Italy.
This brings headaches for Ursula von der Leyen, the EU President, as le Pen is anti EU, while Macron is only anti von der Leyen.
The tropes of how short memories are, among the voting public, come back again and again. When it comes to opening the door to politicians with fascist tendencies, this week presages the feeling of shadows lengthening around the world as the right-wing politicians increasingly get their tails up, on all continents.
We have to decide if we want to retreat and regress, or embrace and progress. The lines are being drawn and, sadly, we have to decide on which side of the line we wish to stand.
The idea of governance, as opposed to government, is never more pertinent than now, while the reality is that raw power is beating natural humanity as the driving force in politics. Every time raw power has been the motivating force, things have not gone well for the majority, because they have been herded into pens and transported, while the minority built palaces and torture chambers.
This is the fundamental problem with democracy, in its present form. It can quickly impose a minority regime that implants its will on the nation, rather than looking to do its job, which is to run the country for all the citizens, not just the people it chooses to identify as loyal to its prejudices.
Another blow was seen for Democratic politics, in the US, as Joe Biden stumbled to respond to the bully tactics of Donald Trump, on live TV.
Debating with a narcissist is like fighting jelly. Nothing sticks because the basis of the conversation is fundamentally false, so the good guys end up trying to justify themselves against fallacies, which is always an unwinnable fight.
Anyone who has had the misfortune to argue with a narcissist will know the routine - a massive lie is levelled against you, you respond by pointing out the lie and the narcissist's response is that you are against their views and are therefore portrayed as a dangerous and disloyal person.
This tactic means the person with a moral code quickly gets lost in the forest, while the person with no moral boundaries simply multiplies the number of trees and the depth of shadows into which they can draw their victims.
The fact that the Democrats have had eight years - since Trump’s 2016 win - to come up with a strong strategy for the 2024 election says a lot about their inability to play the political game. The leadership of any country should not be a game, but in the face of an opponent who has no defined rules it is important to have a rigorously tested strategy, which the Democrats have not developed, sadly.
Finally, we have our General Election here in the UK next week.
After 14 years of a government that has undermined the organs of state, anyone who comes to power will have a huge job on their plate to get the country's institutions back on their feet, let alone make improvements.
No one can change Britain without spending money, so no party is telling the whole truth of their intention. Anyone who believes that change, without investment, can occur will find that they are in for a rough awakening.
The Tories keep on trying to scare us with the idea that Labour will increase taxes. Coming from a government that has tanked the economy and raised taxes to the highest level in 70 years, this accusation feels rather rich.
The Conservatives have had a long time to prove their conceit - that they are the natural party of government - and they have squandered that capital in the most spectacular way.
They deserve to spend some considerable time in the political wilderness, doing what failure asks of those who suffer its predation. This involves a period of deep self-reflection, followed by true humility and absolute honesty. The option is to retreat into fantasy land and imagine that you do not have a problem - the difficulty then is that the world knows you do, actually, and is not forgiving about letting you know it.
Every successful recovering alcoholic has done this. They have looked into the honesty mirror long enough to strip away the belief that they are wholly in charge of their behaviour.
The Tories sense of drunkenness over power, literally in Boris Johnson’s case, needs to be sobered up and seen for what it is - a gigantic exercise in self-deception, certainly not a way to run a country.