On July 30th 2020, a new Mars rover Perseverance has left the Earth's orbit. As I watched this marvellous feat of human endeavour, I couldn't help but wonder if that was the last of it. If perseverance itself was leaving the Earth because there was no place for it anymore in a world where our collective hubris has not only caught up to us but was in fact devouring us from within.

Not so recent arrival of a collective threat made our impact on the world and those around us much more prescient. Faced with a vision of common fate, global society on the whole revealed deep reserves of self-restraint, unselfishness, and regard for a welfare of others despite varying degrees of personal cost. We showed unity and empathy hitherto unseen in the 21st century. But the cracks in a once hopeful visage are beginning to show.

I fear that in our race to get back to 'normal' and 'get economy back on track', we will rely on more rather than less. More consumption, more greed, more political restrictions, more barriers to personal liberty, yet greater inequality, a further push towards nationalism, and much more harm to our common humanity and our environment. We are governed by sloganeering quacks who are more interested in changing how we feel about our circumstances than improving them for the better. From Portland, to Hong Kong and Beirut, those protesting against racial injustice, oppression of liberty, and government corruption are being accused of destabilising their communities and forced into silence.

Despite everything that has happened and continues to happen in the world, I am still convinced that hope is the right response to the human condition. But I've been finding it hard to be hopeful of late. I have long been accused, not without reason, that my writing voice differs from day to day reality. It's a fair charge for a crime I do not regret committing. That voice does not speak for me, it speaks to me. It is more hopeful than I am, and more sincere than I can dare to be. Or rather it was. Dorothy Parker's poem Symptom Recital sets it down perfectly: 'I do not like my state of mind; I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.' If that is the symptom, what might be the cure?

More empathy perhaps. I was kindly invited along to L---'s mental health circle last Sunday; a past so remote, I already look at it with fondness. I wasn't sure where I'd fit in that circle but as I sat down to listen, a common narrative began to emerge. Of course we have all struggled to varying degrees, having been left alone with our demons. But forced to reckon with our experience, what emerged is a story of quiet personal triumph. Of having exceeded one's own expectations in the face of adversity. If we dare to step back from the onslaught of bad news and stories of personal inadequacies we tell ourselves about ourselves, we may discover less familiar facets of our nature - courage, hope, resourcefulness and, of course, perseverance.

Perseverance is the latest in the long line of Mars rovers to be named after a human quality - Spirit, Curiosity, Opportunity. But of all those, perseverance is perhaps the most endearing of human qualities. Say what you will about us, we just keep going.

Betteridge’s law of headlines states that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no, and it holds in this case. In the end, Perseverance is yet another proof of our ongoing desire to reach for the stars, of hope against hope. We are all children of Icarus in the end; foiled not by our ambition but by the adhesive that binds us.