I am continually fascinated whilst reading Letters of Note as to how people not of this time, people who lived 50, 100, or 200 years ago talk about the hardships and tribulations of modern life - in their own context - being hard and negative.

Martha Gellhorn in a letter to Raleigh Trevelyan on boxing day 1967 wrote “Do you think it’s at all sensible to wish anyone a Happy New Year? I think the best one can do nowadays is just to wish that we all survive, year by year.”

Or as the preacher spoke to their church a few hundred years before Christ, recorded in the book of Ecclesiastes, “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” and they continued, “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

All of humanity, forevermore, just trying to survive, year by year.