What a week.

Sometimes it can be a struggle to understand the choices people make. The past few days, I’ve been reading a lot around the U.S. election result and trying to comprehend why both that and the Brexit vote happened.

The thing that really gets me about these is the impact they’ll have on young people. My nephews, one who’s three, the other not even a year old, are growing up in a world where people are so polarised. There’s so little listening and so much hatred and judgement. It’s exhausting and sad.

I wondered how to explain current events to them. There’s a lot been written by others about the value of listening, of appreciating kindness and of celebrating difference. Here’s what I have to add.

1. Beware of people offering magic beans.

So let’s start with big problems. Big problems are, by their nature, complex and interlinked – that’s why we haven’t solved them yet, right?

But there are people who claim that they can solve them “just like that”. Because, they say, there’s a quick fix that, incredibly, all the talented and hard-working people who’ve tried to solve these problems before simply haven’t spotted, or have chosen to ignore due to self-interest.

I call these claims “magic beans”.

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