When our feelings for someone consume our lives - and that has certainly happened to me, albeit in a different situation - I believe it's about finding out what that person means to us, and what it is about them that we're not seeing in ourselves.

I've realised that no-one can complete me, as tempting as it is to find "home" in another; and it feels like reaching out to his widow is trying, again, to get that completion outside, rather than seeking it within. The latter is certainly harder to do, but it helps solidify boundaries when we don't expect anything from anyone else, nor feel like we have to fufil other people's expectations of us in return.

Real love wants nothing. It asks nothing of us; we need ask nothing in return. It simply is.

For the first time, when I saw Paris Hilton crying in the back of the police car, I felt compassion for her. Not because I believe she doesn't deserve her sentence - I think she does - but because I finally saw the naked emperor for who he is:

At the bottom of all the hype - the facade that Paris and her publicity machine have built up over the past few years - lies a naive girl who has no sense of herself outside the image she has had reflected back to her by her countless yes-men, the media, and the public.

She's built her identity on a foundation of sand, and when she invited real, gritty life into her experience by breaking the law, nothing that she had relied on in the past could help her.

I also realised that my own outrage about Paris's antics has been fuelled by that part of me that is also attention-seeking, frivolous, lacking responsibility, lacking a sense of self. I think for many of us, Paris has simply been a very effective mirror for all of our own shadow traits that we have conveniently projected on to her. In that way, she's done me a great service; and as a result, much of my anger has given way to something akin to a neutral sympathy for her. Perhaps this experience will help her rebuild her sense of self on more solid ground. Perhaps not.

Just a pointer: your [sic] comments are erroneous; I'm from the UK, and that's how we spell here.

I'm not a Paris apologist. I'm simply accepting responsibility for the fact that any emotional reaction at either end of the scale that I have for her is to do with me, not her. Now that I've reached a sense of neutrality it means the projection has been withdrawn.

- S

The Southern Africa Sustainable Seafood Initiative (established in 2004 to educate consumers and people in the fishing trade about conservation issues in fishing) has a cell number you can text that sends you a message back immediately telling you whether the fish you're about to order or buy is endangered or not, i.e. whether it's graded as "green" (fine to eat), "orange" (at threat), or "red" (illegal). I've made several different choices based on this service - especially when I've been contemplating something on the menu at a restaurant. What a great idea!

To all those people who suggest that the LW points her sister in the direction of self-help books and therapy ... well, therein lies the problem: it's "self"-help, and it's completely in the hands of the LW's sister as to whether she wants to get help or not. She knows it's there - she's been to Al Anon before, she's aware that there's such a thing as therapy. It just sounds like she's simply not ready to take responsibility for her life. And if she isn't, then no-one - and I mean no-one - can do that for her.

For those unfamiliar with the Al Anon model, the notion of detaching with love and doing nothing sounds callous. I used to think that too. Not anymore. Giving financial help here is tantamount to rescuing, and that's co-dependency at its worst and most destructive. The only innocent party here is the children, and that's slightly more complicated. When my sister was in rehab for addiction, I gave her a promise. She could stop drinking. She could carry on. But if she did carry on, I would do everything in my power to make sure her son was put in my care. She wasn't fit to be a mother. There was no abuse, just simple neglect. That's bad enough.

Given our very colourful international history, I don't believe that anyone can claim the moral high ground. Yes, there are many atrocities being committed in the name of Islam ... equally, there have been, and continue to be, many committed in the name of Christianity, in the name of Judaism, and in the name of atheism.

If God exists, and if God is perfection, all-powerful and omnipresent, as I think all these religions believe ... then why does God need defending?

Aren't we perhaps defending our own fears and denying our own shadows by projecting them on to a God who ultimately wants or needs nothing from us at all? In the name of God? Perhaps not. In the name of our disowned fears and shadows? Maybe.