Who knows how it all started, this thing that we are gathered here today to get through, this thing called life (to paraphrase a great man). Did life emerge from primal slime, slowly developing consciousness over billions and billions of years, or did it drift here on cosmic winds from galaxies far, far away? Is it all a chaotic, fractal unfurling of organic processes fused with some a-priori intelligence, or the divine plan of a mad architect who fell into its own creation, and if so, was that fall by choice or by some compulsion? Questions, questions... so many questions, about the future and the past, yet nothing is more compelling, engaging, challenging and mysterious than the present that we live and breathe. There is an old saying in England that goes "there are two things you can be sure of in life... death and taxes." Well, I don't think taxes are going to be around forever considering the way things are going, death however, reigns supreme, but what of struggle? Whether you perceive your personal life as a struggle or not will to some degree be approximate to the success, or lack of, that you have so far attained in manifesting your plans and desires. Certain conditions encountered in life will give rise to choices, the decisions taken will further shape a persons understanding and picture of the world around them. Even though some of us like to imagine that there are plenty of other people in the world who wake up each day, get out of bed and never have a moment of real struggle in their lives from one blissful day of leisure to the next, I suspect that this is never really the case. From the moment we are born we struggle to feed, to crawl and walk, and things get easier, becoming second nature and we're onto the next challenge. Often if we are handed opportunities on a plate, we may discover that they come with responsibilities we did not expect and which challenge us to the point of struggle, until we overcome, or retreat in failure. And even those who can honestly say that life is no struggle for them will be apt to appreciate the struggle of our ancestors and forebears which gave rise to all the joys of life which they are now fortuitous enough to enjoy.