I’m waiting for Tony Blair to tell me something useful about the situation in Iraq. After all it was his personal conviction (apparently) that took Britain into that very debatable invasion; part of what we were told was the War on Terror. Mr Blair now looks like somebody holed up in a bunker; he’s both overwhelmed and unable to think about what he’s done and so repeats the old mantras.
Being overwhelmed is not something that only happens to Tony Blair – it happens to us all from time to time – though he is particularly silver-tongued even at his most challenged, when I guess most of us would be reduced to silence – probably guilty silence.
Coming up against an overwhelming obstacle; something that I’m not prepared for; something that my mind cannot ‘face’, cannot comprehend – ‘this is just too big’ – I find my instinct is to swerve from the path – ‘oh, this path looks easier’ – but what happens if very real factors hold me to the original path?
Ordinary things, such as being a parent?
The mind bends this way and that, threatens to break, we don’t sleep, stop eating, take to drink, have an affair, talk to friends, talk to a therapist, and hopefully our thinking expands to take on whatever the problem was and we move on.
What if we don’t manage that?
And that brings me back to the sight of the bunkered Tony Blair; presumably his announcing that he would resign some time during this parliament was an attempt to take some of the pressure off.
And of course it didn’t work.
Like that 20 mile moment in the marathon; I’m finished but there’s another six miles to go.
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