A Winter Solstice Meditation

Do you ever feel that you might be enjoying life more and more liking the world less and less? That’s where I am right now.


The rate of change and what the changes are bringing at first feel exciting but then become disappointing, empty and eventually overwhelming. Many of them are based on saving money or streamlining a process, replacing a product or finding a new way of doing things. Very few, it seems to me, advance humanity, increase compassion or improve the way we communicate with each other at a personal level. Indeed many changes (I’m resisting calling them advances) are about distancing us from each other and isolating us more.

Every night there is news of more jobs lost as businesses close. I despair for those scores of people who have given many years to a company, shown loyalty through tough times who suddenly find they have no job to go to the next day, no pay packet to look forward to and debts up to the eyeballs because they have bought the latest ‘must have’ technology or mortgaged their McMansion, borrowed to pay the kids school fees let alone the mandatory second or third car.

Decisions are taken from us in benign ways. I suspect in a couple of years we may no longer have a daily newspaper in Melbourne; there will certainly be a news service from Fairfax or News Limited but only on line and users will pay for that by subscription or pay as you go. I have a weekend ritual with newspapers and now that is taken from me. I choose not to access news articles on line except for specialty newspapers or overseas publications. I like the battle with the broadsheet, doing the crossword or the nine letter puzzle and I like picking up the paper a day or so later when I remember there was ‘that article’ I meant to read – much more civilised than putting the name of the article (which I won’t remember)into the search box and retrieving it. By the time I do all that I could probably be half way through reading the paper copy.

Social network is just a mystery to me. How anyone can seriously believe they are having any sort of meaningful ‘conversation’ on Facebook, Twitter, Yammer or the various incarnations is beyond me. Yes you are exchanging words but there is no evident, obvious meaning or nuance to separate the rubbish from the quality. Everyone seems to be plugging something or showing their language shortfalls (the F Bomb is dropped with no regard for offence or context – very mature), exposing their emotional state or latest triumph. There’s a real sense of ‘look at me’ and yet there are cries of ‘I want to be alone’...have we all gone just a little bit mad? I just yearn for a good old chat, doesn’t even need to be deep and meaningful.

TV is full of dross, the quality stuff lasts a minute before it is dropped. We have to be judged or commented upon in some way to be a success – well it’s some kind of ‘reality’ I suppose. And for the love of heaven they’re bringing back Big Brother. How soon we forget why that show was cancelled just a few short years ago, perhaps the programmers know we will fall for it all over again and how sad does that make us?

Obama came to power in America on a promise of Hope and offering an open palm to ‘enemies’. In the four years he has continued to clench his fist...Israel and Palestine are no closer to co-existence, Iran is being lined up for the next ‘invasion’, Syria is a mess, Iraq is ready to fall apart, Afghanistan has progressed very little.

Meanwhile in Australia Parliament is a disgrace. All sides have demonstrated a lack of maturity or care for the parliamentary process and ignored the message from the last election – we want better. Labour is more intent on retaining power than improving the lot of the people, the opposition is hell bent on getting an election at any cost but offers no alternative policies. And they think we won’t deliver another hung parliament or minority government?

No-one seems to know what they are doing; it is hard to have confidence in our business leaders, our politicians, our educators, even other drivers. Young people seem lost and alone, being exposed to cruel and unjust things that my generation could not have coped with. They are undoubtedly smarter but I suspect softer and more sensitive and not in a good way. Is this because of the isolation and distance that our ‘advances’ have created?

So I’ll find a nice park to go to and have nature surround me, the bird song and the air to nourish me. I’ll take a book with me – a real paper and binding one – I’ll have a soothing beverage and maybe a sandwich I’ve made myself from fresh ingredients. I’ll sit quietly in my own thoughts for an hour or two. I’ll absorb the life around me and within me.

And I’ll take a moment...

To wish...

To hope...

And life will go on and the world will continue to turn.

It’s called taking a Risk – or that’s how life works!

 It has recently become clear that many of us are willingly putting our lives in danger or exposing ourselves to harm in ways we have disregarded, ignored or just plain been ignorant of.

As a consequence your Government has issued a number of legislative changes to take effect immediately with the affect thereof protecting our citizens. It is in the words of a certain school principal ‘A safety Issue’.

The changes are:

• All beaches to be fenced off immediately. This will lessen likelihood of sunburn, sand rashes and allergic reactions to sea salt.
• Mobile phones banned. For many legitimate reasons such as zoning out can cause collisions, dropping of a mobile can result in the shattering causing a shard to fly up and make a one in 65 billion chance of lodging in someone else’s eye
• Tattslotto to be ceased. Winning first division could lead to coronary arrest from the elevated excitement level leaving the Tattersalls corporation and its agents liable to prosecution or action related to health outcomes
• Removal of concrete or asphalt from all schools. A shock finding shows that it is actually the connection sudden or otherwise with such surfaces which causes sprains, strains or broken bones.
• Abolition of the health industry. It is well known that illness thrives in a doctor’s surgery, hospital casualty ward and chemists. They are a huge risk to the health of all citizens
• Dissolution of parliament. The creation of laws, introduction of ‘levys’, and the mindless theatrics of all members of parliament can lead to frequent head spinning and loss of reason by their constituents.
• Supermarkets and stores selling food or any consumable item can only be accessed with prescriptions. Foodstuffs and beverages are known to be carcinogenic no matter what they contain, cause obesity even when 97% fat free (especially when that still means the 3% fat in that product is equivalent to five buckets of lard), rot your teeth, clog your arteries, dissolve your kidneys (whilst cleaning your coins) or empty your wallet inexplicably. Self serve checkouts which do not recognise your bag will be removed because...well they are just plain annoying.
• The cotton wool industry will become a protected industry under the ‘Mt Martha Act 2012’ administered by Gina Reinhart, Twiggy Forrester and Clive Palmer (because they can). This will ensure our young folk particularly but most others in general never have to take another risk, think for themselves, accept responsibility for their actions, consider the consequence of their choices, show courtesy or form a sentence in writing with any semblance of correct grammar or traditional spelling.
• The Privacy Act will be rescinded. This is widely understood as the ‘Facebook Amendment’ because clearly no one minds sharing all their personal information with the world, including people they would never cross the street to say hello to but will willingly call a ‘friend’ if it means outdoing someone else in the number of followers they have on the FBook page.

Anyone failing to follow any of the above will be sent by rickety boat to Utopia...a place Australia was once able to say it was...happy days 

The Affable Anachronism

 

Being in the same job for 60 years is an achievement in anyone’s books. The Queen justly deserves the praise and kudos she is receiving this weekend for being on the throne and doing what she would see as her duty for over half a century. No-one reading this in.2012 is likely to see another monarch repeat her feat in their lifetime. If she lives a few more years Prince Charles will be in his 70’s at least when he takes over and William is likely to be at least 50 when (if) he becomes King. It’s not beyond reason to imagine that in 30 years the UK will have moved away from needing a Monarchy as a part of its governing class and might use them merely as trade or diplomatic representatives if at all.

The Queen has always been in my life and memory. I remember mum had a scrapbook with pages from Women’s Weekly tracing those early years of the very beautiful Princess Elizabeth as she became Queen. I remember standing for the anthem and singing ‘God Save the Queen’, certainly at primary school at least, going to the ‘pictures’ we’d get a brief film of Her Majesty on a horse looking, well Regal as the anthem blasted through the tinny speakers – and EVERYONE stood up for it. I’d say I was a monarchist, because I had no reason to think otherwise.

Then one day…

I just stopped and thought ‘why this family’? A simple question, history on their side sure but that’s more luck than anything else in the last couple of centuries. Many other people and many other families could just as easily be chosen and I’m sure could do a great job. I don’t know why we need a monarchy or a Royal Family in the first place but they are conversations for another day.

For me the Queen has done an outstanding job. It can’t be easy, having to meet and have something to say to hundreds of people in a year, to be ever mindful of the eyes constantly on you, to be the ultimate in a decision making process – sure you follow advice but in the end the buck stops with you.  That could be a bit lonely. You might be surrounded by wealth and glitter, pomp and circumstance but so what? You don’t get to spend the wealth, someone else moves in when you die and someone else slots in the occasions for you. You’re left to be the one to ‘end’ a conversation, to get to as many people in a crowd as you can, you have to listen to awful singers, fawning speeches and ghastly politicians or other members  of other Royal Families. No Long Service Leave and for this ‘sovereign’ not much sick leave. I like the woman. I can forgive her not paying taxes until pressure was applied, I have a big problem knowing there were no blacks employed at Buckingham Palace until the 80s and I think she could give up some of her property but overall she is highly tolerable.

God Bless her and a big thank you for just being there Your Majesty. I have no time for the position you hold but you are deserving of respect for the way you do it. I think you have done such a wonderful job that maybe it should end with you…why risk the reputation by possibly letting someone make a hash of it?

Today also is the 20^th Anniversary of the Mabo decision. Eddie Mabo was a wonderful human being and a great Australian. It is sad he did not live to see the decision handed down but he always had faith it would be. He showed us all how to be better.

So one person who presides over an outdated and irrelevant hegemony and another who found a way and demanded the recognition of a logical and reasonable fundamental right. Thankfully only one of the former but I’d take a lot more of the latter…they would actually make it a better world.