Think for a second about our place in time.

Billions and billions of lives were lived before we were born.

Billions and billions of opportunities to build on those who have come before us.

We learned how to crush herbs to heal illness, how to make drugs to stop deaths from infection, how to transplant organs.

We trained pigeons to deliver messages, invented the telegram and can now have face to face conversations with loved ones across the globe.

But we haven’t yet learned the single most important lesson of all.

How to be kind.

Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Amy Winehouse and now Caroline Flack. Every generation has been given an opportunity to do better. And yet still….

People who seem perfect make us uncomfortable. But people who seem imperfect also make us uncomfortable. In this day and age, with the epidemic of anxiety that we experience, we are given countless opportunities to offer bring a little light into each other’s lives. Positivity is just as infectious as negativity.

Forgiving someone for their mistakes doesn’t mean that we condone the behaviour. It is recognising that we are all works in progress, and knowing that one day, we too will need forgiveness.

Cancel culture kills. We build people up for their talent, then we judge their every move, holding them accountable for our feelings about their actions. When they suffer, we click even more furiously. We have a one-strike-and-you’re-out attitude, which can drag another human person into depths of stress and despair which we can never understand.

Today, check in on a friend, hug a friend, forgive a friend.

This time, we have to learn.

Its life or death.