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my little blonde locks in his fingers to drag me back to the shallow water. He swooped me up into his arms and took me high and dry on the beach.

"Twice is too much. Three times means you're in the wrong place! Stay out of the water." He commanded in that tone only oldest brothers can muster.

In the Karate Kid movie Mr Miaghi tells Daniel the first rule of self defence. He says. "When punch land, don't be there!" It is the most simplistic advice and yet often it is the most effective. It is all too easy to get so involved in what is going on in a difficult situation we forget that we can simply not be there. In many instances we can remove ourselves.

In my early twenties I became entangled in a game of 'piggy in the middle' with two friends. They had a falling out and each kept trying to drag me into the problem. I struggled with the pros and cons of this friend and then with that one until one day I was speaking to someone else about it and they simply asked. "Why do you have to be involved at all. You could just make other friends." Months of trying to resolve the problems of these two friends ended with that one bit of advice. I did not need friends who wanted to use me as ammunition for their arguments I could go and spend time with other people and leave these two combatants to their own private war. I did not have to be there.

There are of course times when life throws a big curved ball our way and we can neither catch nor duck it and we can't get out of the way. It is these times that we need to remind ourselves that life is not always fair and the fairness or lack of it has absolutely nothing to do with our value as a person. Here are some facts of life to remember:

1) Sometimes bad things happen to good people for no apparent reason.
2) Sometimes good things happen to bad people for no apparent reason.
3) Facts number 1 & 2 happen at about the same frequency and intensity.
4) The things that happen to you do not determine your value as a person.

There are times when things happen to you that are so out of your control and outside your general experience in life that you your first reaction is shock. You find yourself standing there staring into space thinking. "What happened" Then your thinking moves at varying paces through these questions. "Why me?" "Who is responsible?" "Where did that come from?" "How do I deal with it?" "When will it be finished?"

Shock and the questions that follow are stages of grief. Grief is not only associated with death, it is also

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