I have a friend who is the sweetest, loveliest person I know. She moved house about six months ago and I miss her terribly. Yet despite all the great qualities I see in her - honesty, kindness, intelligence and funniness - to name but a few, her life is almost continually in chaos. Relationships go to pot, her work choices turn sour and she is left wondering what calamity will strike next. It is both sad and perplexing for me. But the truth is that in her, I often see myself. By which I mean, we are very similar in nature.

I have had my fair share of chaos too. When I think about it, many of the calamities visited upon my friend have also been a part of my life too. I see common threads of shared experience. For me though, some of these have been self-inflicted. Others have come out of what appears to be thin air. Everybody has the need to be loved. Everybody craves a security of sorts. Uncertainty is difficult to live with. How we deal with uncertainty and our overarching need for acceptance is a dominating theme in most human scenarios.

It's funny how we can look at the person in the car next to us, or in the shopping centre, or even in our mind's eye, and think with such conviction that they have better, less complicated lives. The truth is, with few exceptions, that hurt and pain and insecurity and the sense that "I am not good enough" is everywhere. The outward appearance of things is one of the great deceits of our time. Of this and any time.