The world can be divided into two sorts of people..[finish the sentence with your own favourite ending]. My father’s contribution to the numerous variations on this was: ‘The world can be divided into two sorts of people – diamonds and sponges’.

His idea was that there are sponge-people, who absorb energy and light from those around them (sometimes when old age pensioners seek the company of the young, it is in part because they can absorb some of their youthful energy – though this is of course not usually a conscious process). Have you ever spent the evening at a party and felt completely drained and exhausted by the end of the evening? You were probably in the company of one or more sponges.

In contrast, think of evenings when you set out feeling too tired to enjoy yourself but found, by the end, that you were stimulated and more energised than you were at the beginning, with your head spinning as you then tried to sleep. You must have been in the company of one or more diamond-people.

Of course, all diamonds have their sponge moments, if only from exhaustion, though true sponges rarely have diamond days. It is partly the difference between extravert and introvert, though not entirely. Diamonds are generous with themselves: their ‘radiance’ sustains them, but also spills over abudantly on to those around them, without in any way becoming less.

The Roman writer Martial said:

Extra fortunam est quidquid donatur amicis
Quas dederis, solas semper habebis opes.

A free English translation became our family motto:

What we gave we have;
What we spent, we kept;
What we kept, we lost.

I think diamond-people are naturally drawn to blogging, perhaps particularly in the field of religion and spirituality. I have been extremely lucky in the last few weeks to have come across several, who have helped me greatly through their (not) random acts of kindness, and I pay tribute to them all here (they know who they are). I have been warned that things get tough in the blogosphere, which I will be prepared for, but thanks to my new diamonds I have had a very welcoming start.

 Note: The photograph is actually of a cubic zirconia by Gregory Philips from Wikimedia under CCL