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Good morning. Mummy, why are people so fragile? My daughter asked me this when she was only five, trying to make sense of her godmother’s ongoing health struggles. Her little five-year-old brain asked the question many of us try to avoid as grownups. We don’t like being fragile and spend much of our lives trying to minimise the risks of fragility. Managing risk became a daily part of our lives during the pandemic. And a quick look at the news reveals questions about preventing problems or even tragedies. Whether it’s the air traffic control issue last week or a rise in cancer rates. We want to know how we can be safe and stop bad things from happening to us. There‘s a place for those questions, for sensible planning and risk management. But it is impossible to anticipate every scenario. Some things are simply unimaginable, and others, out of our control. How do we balance the two? How do we live with risk, and avoid letting fear and risk stop us from truly living? The question isn’t new. Anxiety about the unknown has occupied thinkers and philosophers for centuries. The Bible explores the theme through the story of Job. Job was an anxious man – he spent much time worrying and trying to minimise risk to his family. Yet terrible things happen – more than anyone could bear. Job is traumatised, and rages against the unfairness of life. Friends gather around him, and try to make sense of it. They attempt to explain suffering – you must have done something! It must be your fault – or someone’s fault. The friends’ reasoning doesn’t help Job, unsurprisingly. But it isn’t surprising reasoning: it’s much easier to blame someone, even ourselves, because if we find a reason for something happening, then, logically, we should be able to stop it happening again. It’s much harder to accept that we can’t control every risk, and that we are small and fragile in a universe much bigger than us, where both nature and other people might take us to unimaginable places. The story doesn’t give intellectual answers, and simply invites readers to consider their own feelings about fragility, and recognise that the world is neither completely random, nor completely controllable. Job finds a home for his fragility in the end – in the company and comfort of friends and family. Community and care were the only answer I could give my five-year-old: yes, people are fragile, that’s why we need to look after one another. That, and I taught her the Sting song - ‘On and on the rain will fall like tears from a star, On and on the rain will say how fragile we are’