Before I grew into a wanna-be-hippie teen who clashed with his conservative values, I remember my father and me as “pals”. We have similar tastes and temperament and everyone said I looked the most like him of his four children. He doted on me and over the years we shared a secret or two: teenage transgressions with boys and drinking on my side, the same, with middle-aged women on his.

The Tibetans have a similar way of dealing with anything we might view as uncomfortable, such as death or fear, or other unsettling emotions: make friends with them, invite them in, accept them as they are.