The Wisdom of the Panda.
I was walking along the beach the other day when I came upon this mass of wobbling foam. It seemed to me to be quite a good metaphor for the current state of international politics. All froth and no substance, some distance from the real waves and the deeper water.
I went on to think about the new breed of unstatesmanlike leaders that have been popping up recently in many parts of the world and that led me on to think about which were the most important qualities us human beings should aspire to.
When I arrived home from my walk I switched on the television and received wisdom and an answer from a most unlikely source. I had tuned in to a short Kung Fu Panda cartoon. He was giving a lesson to a large group of young novice rabbit would-be Kung Fu Fighters, who wanted to punch and kick and scream.
Kung Fu Panda explained to them to become truly great at the art of Kung Fu it was necessary to possess the following qualities: patience, courage, confidence, self discipline and compassion. It occurred to me that any human being exhibiting all these traits would make a very good leader, politician, parent.
Maybe if we all aspired to developing these important characteristics then the world would become a less wobbly place!
(The alternative surely is to put Kung Fu Panda in charge of the world...)