The Curdled and Uncurdled Latte

The sky which was clear blue an hour ago is now milky. The last couple of days here in London we’ve had bright sun with even a hint of warmth in it, after the long although not very wintry winter, and that lovely fresh smell I associate with early spring, my birthtime. I’m in a cafe with my latte (I refuse to call it a flat white), pondering. I’m pondering especially the remark by my reader Joan-Eric Torrent questioning whether it’s right to enjoy these pleasures of ease and relative affluence while so many are suffering. “That thought curdles my latte,” he wrote. My reply to him was that we have to begin though not end with ourselves and we will not be able to radiate or communicate much well-being or joy if we are too immersed in our own suffering. That was what I learned, with greater or lesser success, from…