A long business relationship will come to a sudden end.

A contract won't be renewed.

A lover will call it a day.

People will suddenly be weird with you.

They'll keep you out of lovely things and you won't know why.

You'll read about yourself on social media, and every worst fear will be confirmed.

Quite a lot of things go wrong over a lifetime, and you'll want to die and throw it all in and quit this painful world.

When you look at a child, this is what's coming to them.

That's what makes it moving to look at a baby sleeping.

You're looking at innocence through the lens of painful experience.

Oh, my, they're going to suffer, and there's simply nothing you can do to help them.

Apart from one thing.

Teach them that the suffering is normal.

It isn't a sign that life has gone wrong.

It's an ordinary part of everyone's biography.

The only way is to learn to fight.

The temptation will be to withdraw under a rock, to pull up the drawbridge, to go into a shell.

But the challenges are like a fire, a bed of coals you'll have to walk across.

The fight is to be expected; the difficulties are a sign that things are on track.

That you're being rejected, that there are haters isn't evidence that your life is a ruin.

It's proof that you've found something worth living for.