I’m still working this out. I’m full of the mixture of  dread and excitement we feel when we begin an adventure. O.K. blogging for the first time is unlikely to put life or limb at risk or to transform my life, but the prospect of learning something entirely new, of struggling with new concepts and skills, of not knowing where this journey will take me, or who I’ll meet on the way, is attractive. Once an activity is familiar and mastered it offers a different pleasure.

The image opposite is of a canal in Amsterdam with seven successive bridges. As you go through the first, you can see what is immediately ahead, but not what lies beyond the next bridge.

Life itself becomes familiar but is never mastered, and even its familiarity is an illusion easily dispelled by the next step, the next hour, the next person we meet. To live as if  journeying on this canal, or as blogging for the first time may be wise; to know that I’ll always be working it out, is a necessary humility.