There have been times in my life when I have “pushed my luck” and eventually suffered the consequences. Life has a way of giving you a painful “reality check”. A friend of mine used to call it the “cosmic NO”, when the universe tells you that you need to rethink your approach.

The thirty-year-old graduate student with no prospect of tenure; the thirty-year-old unmarried woman whose youth is starting to leave her; the worker whose career is a string of angry confrontations: there are plenty of people who will likely hit the wall one day. Or, as we used to say, they are “riding for a fall”.