Some things we do not know how to accept. We may be familiar with our self-inflicted woes, and cherish these simply out of that familiarity. The moment we are handed joy, how do we respond? With disbelief, incomprehension, at best a kind of clumsiness if perhaps we are accustomed to seeing it elsewhere, almost independent of us; but when it approaches, hand reaching out -- it is there we falter; we think: 'You must have the wrong number.'