Last year, I wrote a piece for The Spectator, the British current affairs weekly, explaining why I had decided to relocate my family to England after 20 years in Lebanon. The main, but not the only, reason for folding my tent and stealing into the British night was my disgust at the way in which the Lebanese government had allowed the economy and security to collapse as a result of the Syrian civil war.
It was, and we will stay with the oriental clichés, the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
Ever since I returned to Lebanon in 1992, we had been waiting for the country to turn the corner, for the political class to fall into some harmonious shape and decide that building a vibrant and prosperous country was far more challenging than their corrosive brand of partisan politics.
I thought we might have finally got there in 2005, but what we called the Cedar Revolution turned out to be nothing more than a sleight of hand, a reshuffle that actually involved even more of the usual suspects - the exiled Michel Aoun and the imprisoned Samir Geagea - returning to the political fold. On reflection, it is amazing how naive we were to think that the Syria occupation was the only thing standing between us and a bright new dawn.
Indeed it could be argued, and it pains me to say this given the misery of Syria's Al Assad regime - father and son - visited, and continues to visit, upon us, that their 29-year "presence" in Lebanon actually created an atmosphere of stability that we have been unable to replicate since the last Syrian army truck trundled over the border.
That the West is lining up off the coast of Lebanon to teach Al Assad Jr a lesson for apparently using chemical weapons on his own people, says a lot about our maturity as a nation when you consider it took the iron grip of a such a despot to keep us in check.
The Syrian regime, despite its lengthy rap sheet, understood us better than we did. The patronising message by Ghazi Kanaan, Syria's then head of security, in 1991 in which he served notice that there was a new sheriff in town and that if we wanted an easy life we should stick to what we know best - trade, finance and innovation - and leave the politics to them, was on reflection, and if we are being honest, sound advice.
Ever since 2005 despite a brief honeymoon period between 2008 and 2010, in which Arabian Gulf investors, flush with extra liquidity from bullish oil prices included Lebanon in their portfolios, our appalling political behaviour has snuffed out any economic growth.
In short, left to our own devices we Lebanese are a basket case.
That was my assessment last year and nothing has changed. Indeed, more and more people have told me that I am making the right move "at least for the family" and some have even, sotto voce, told me that many Christians in particular are selling up and moving abroad.
It makes sense in a way. In 1975, the Christians had a stake in the conflict; today they see the Middle East polarised along Sunni-Shia lines with Lebanon offering the purest distillate of this destructive phenomenon.
And yet even as I write, Lebanon continues to believe in itself and work for the promised land just around the never-ending bend.
The hospitality industry has been decimated; the country groans under the burden of more than a million Syrian refugees and the leading private sector association prepares for a nationwide general strike this week. But new malls still open and developers bombard us with images of what could be our dream mountain villas in secure gated communities.
At lunch last week, you couldn't find a table at Beirut's Mandaloun, where three tables of diners celebrated birthdays complete with pyrotechnic candles and applause from other patrons.
No one looking at the scene would have imagined we were on the brink of the regional abyss.
Michael Karam is a freelance writer based in Beirut