When I was growing up, I would, from time to time, feel that life had dealt me some injustice or other. Not that it often did, you understand, and I am prepared to concede that some of what I perceived as injustices might, objectively, have actually been ‘justices’, as it were. Be that as it may, in my eyes injustices they were. On such occasions, I would usually turn to my mother, complaining to her that ”It’s not fair!”. To which she would inevitably reply: “No, it’s dark.” When you’re eight, or ten, or twelve, there’s no response to that. I ended up feeling that one further example of the world’s unfairness was that my mother was clearly on the side of injustice. Sadly, my mother died 20 years ago, and so I can no longer apologise to her for the injustice that I did to her in my childhood and, in all honesty, for many years afterwards, in resenting the unwavering nature of her reply to us. I hope that this week’s post can serve as an apology to her memory, for the fact is that “No, it’s dark” is one of the best of the many lessons that she strove to teach us. This childhood memory has come back to me this week as I have been reflecting on, and attempting to digest, a story from the British press. Come with me, if you will, into the fantasy world that is woke Britain in the 2020s. In 2021, Carl Borg-Neal, a manager in Lloyds Bank, was attending an internal race education training session, held remotely, because of COVID. At the time, Borg-Neal was a mentor to three workers from varying backgrounds. At the beginning of the session, participants were encouraged to “speak freely” and to “learn and be clumsy”. During a discussion of “intent vs effect”, Borg-Neal “asked how he should handle a situation where he heard someone from an ethnic minority use a word that might be considered offensive if used by someone not within that minority. He was thinking partly about rap music.” The trainer did not immediately respond, and so Borg-Neal, seeking to clarify his question, added that the most common example was black people using the n-word. (For the benefit of anyone who has spent the last 50 years in Antarctica, the n-word rhymes with the name of Christopher Robin’s young big cat friend.) However, the problem wasn’t that Borg-Neal said “the n-word”; it was that he actually said the n-word. (And there are those who say punctuation isn’t really important.) At this point, the story becomes unreal. The trainer immediately attacked Borg-Neal verbally. A witness stated: “After saying at the beginning this would be a safe environment and it is acknowledged we may make mistakes, she launched into a vitriolic attack.”. Borg-Neal then immediately apologised for using the term. At this point, the story becomes surreal. Lloyds Bank conducted a racism investigation and ultimately dismissed Borg-Neal, who had been with the bank for 26 years, for gross misconduct. Borg-Neal sued Lloyds for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. (He suffers from dyslexia, which, he claimed at the subsequent tribunal hearing, meant that he sometimes blurted things out without being able to monitor them beforehand.) Last week, the tribunal hearing ruled that the bank’s bosses unfairly sacked Borg-Neal, as while his use of the word had been “ill-judged”, there had been “no intention to cause hurt”. In its ruling, the tribunal also noted that the bank manager’s comment had involved a “well-intentioned relevant question”. At this point, you might be observing that, with the tribunal hearing’s ruling, good sense has prevailed. However, I have one more fact to add to this account: the fact that leaves the unreal and the surreal gasping in its wake. Come with me into the world of the mind-bogglingly can’t possibly be real. The trainer conducting the session was so distressed after Borg-Neal said the n-word that she went on five days’ leave to recover. Let me say that again, lest you think you misheard: The trainer conducting the session was so distressed after Borg-Neal said the n-word that she went on five days’ leave to recover. I know! I had to read it twice, as well. I’m really not sure where to start. The trainer was, presumably, deemed qualified to give this training, which, you will remember, encouraged participants to “speak freely and to “learn and be clumsy”, an environment in which it was accepted that participants might “make mistakes”. What are we to make of the fact that such a qualified trainer was so affected by the use, in a theoretical, illustrative, abstract, academic, unthreatening context and in a virtual medium, of the n-word, that it was five full days before she was sufficiently recovered to return to work? What kind of an upbringing and education has someone had if, as an adult professional, they take five days to recover from hearing a word spoken online? Any word? The answer to that question, I would suggest, is an upbringing in which nobody ever pointed out that the world isn’t (always) fair; it’s (at least sometimes) dark. There is no guarantee never to be surprised, disappointed, made to feel uneasy. Life, unavoidably, means risking exposure to ideas that you may not agree with, situations you may not be comfortable with. The world does not revolve around you, nor should it. Any upbringing that seeks to ‘protect’ you from exposure to the challenges that life poses ends up ensuring that, when you are eventually exposed to them, as you inevitably will be, you will be unable to cope. You will, rather, need to take five days off work to recover from hearing the n-word spoken online. (No: it doesn’t matter how many times I write that; it still makes no sense.) Of course, there is a balance to be struck here between leaving a newborn child to survive the elements unaided and smothering a child in cotton wool. It is possible to argue about the appropriate age for a child to start learning the meaning of the word “No”; it is not, I would suggest, possible to argue about whether it is a parent’s responsibility to ensure that a child does learn the meaning of the word. These days one hears very little about the ‘school of hard knocks’. It is hard to imagine a modern popular song recommending that you ‘pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and start all over again.’ Things were different when I was a boy, and things were very, very different for my parents’ generation. I have, for the last couple of years, been transcribing and annotating my father’s many letters to my mother during the Second World War. They met and became friends immediately before the War. After my father was called up in October 1939, and until several months after his evacuation from France as part of the British Expeditionary Force, there was, it seems, no contact between them. (In fairness, he had other things occupying his time and his mind.) As soon as my father, now stationed in the UK, did renew contact with my mother in July 1940, their relationship grew closer, fed over the next 18 months by very regular correspondence, occasional phone calls, and even more occasional leaves spent by my father in London. In December 1941 they decided to become engaged. However, they did not announce their engagement then and, in early January 1942, Dad was shipped with his regiment to India. It was exactly a year before they ‘went public’ with their engagement. The next time Dad saw Mum was a few days before their wedding, after he had disembarked in Britain after the voyage back from India, in August 1945. During the war years, Mum had been living through the blitz in London and then serving in the ATS (the Auxilliary Territorial Service, a branch of the armed forces for women) as a secretary. At the start of the war, Mum was 19 and Dad was a few months short of 21. By the time they were able to marry, Mum was 25 and Dad was a few months short of 27. The phrase ‘the best years of their lives’ comes to mind. Those years were basically stolen by the war. I am not making any special pleading for my parents; their experience was, I suspect, stereotypical of their entire generation. My point is that, having lived through those years, they were wonderfully well equipped both to embrace the opportunities, even relatively modest ones, that later life gave them; they cherished the opportunity they were given to share over 50 years of married life together; and they were well able to deal uncomplainingly with both the grind of daily routine and the challenges and hardships that life from time to time threw at them. Bernice and I recognised long ago that that entire generation in Britain acquired, through their wartime experiences, a resilience and inner strength that equipped them to face whatever life threw at them later. Judged objectively, Bernice’s mother had a very tough life, but nobody ever saw her without a smile on her face and a concern for everybody else. And now, almost 70 years later, people need five days off work to recover from hearing the n-word in an unthreatening environment, online. In Israel, I am happy to say, this lunacy has, as yet, not taken hold as it seems to have done in the UK and the US. I suspect that the very real threat of the existential and internal challenges facing the country helps us all to keep a better sense of perspective. Yet another good reason to live here. Meanwhile, here are three young men  who seem to be coping well with life’s challenges. Raphael is settling in to his new life in gan. Tao thoroughly enjoyed the puppet theatre at his summer activity, and he and Ollie are learning all about brothers sharing. (Of course, it’s not difficult if you’re the one whose big brother agrees to share his sunglasses with you!)