Recounting their histories, people often sound like interested bystanders to their own lives.

I wish we didn't have to own up to a policy deliberately designed to inflict suffering on people who have already been traumatised in the countries from which they've fled.

One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.

Perhaps it's the people whose lives have taken sudden new twists - people who have learned to embrace the creative possibilities of change - who stand the best chance of penetrating life's mysteries.

But the rule seems to be that the bigger and more life-changing the decision, the less it will seem like a decision at all.

Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.