Strange, isn't it, how the most seemingly banal of lyrics can strike a chord.  This from a song by Elena Ledda called Della Mia Vita: 'Of my life the sweetest moments / Are those I spend, my love, adoring you'.  Not so profound, less cerebral perhaps than the lines from the 'vain and narcissistic' German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (not my opinion, never having read more than just the occasional poem quoted elsewhere) that also caught my eye this week: 'To love is also good, for love is hard.  Love between one person and another: that is perhaps the hardest thing it is laid on us to do, the utmost, the ultimate trial and test, the work for which all other work is preparation'.  But both appeal to the sentimental side of my nature, the soft spot that allows me to cry when I hear 'sad music': mostly opera, mostly Puccini. For I do have a soft inner core, a lack of ruthlessness that allows me to resist the lure of seeking promotion in the workplace. And my experience has been that those who mostly occupy positions of middle and senior management possess a hard edge, a coldness that allows them to reprimand error and pretend to a professional superiority that is more shadow than substance.  Or is my lack of ambition an unwillingness  to 'put myself out there' and be judged wanting by my peers?  Perhaps. Certainly, ever since reading the Hornblower novels of C. S Forester, I have sided with his introverted hero and actively dislike the idea of telling people what to do.  Nagging my wife and family, now that's something else entirely.