Our behavioural fingerprint
Fingerprints have long been associated with our identity, but more than a bit of skin at the tip of a finger, it is our behaviour that is characteristic of who we are
There is a song that, when I first heard it, really struck home. Not, I hasten to say, that I have ever been engaging in a strange drinking game with a bunch of Belgian businessmen; I don’t even have a son, let alone one that played football. But the sentiment it expresses resonated with me — and still does today.
The song — Come Home, Billy Bird by The Divine Comedy — relates the predicament of an international business traveller who the night before drank too much, missed his wakeup call, and now — in the company of a phenomenal hangover — must overcome various obstacles in order to catch his flight home and be there in time to see his son play an important match. It finely sketches the unwise choices one may make, especially when away from home and under peer pressure, to just have another drink, paying scant attention to the potential consequences in a few hours’ time. Then, the emotional rollercoaster of — through no one’s fault but one’s own — being late for a flight, having to grovel, and giving up one’s cultivated, polite and reserved image to become a red, sweaty, ill-mannered guy…
