Thursday, January 13, 2011

Laughing in the face of Death



The Queensland floods: I am not making fun of this tragedy, let's get that straight. This natural disaster is a major concern for all Australians and any of us who are not directly effected by these floods should get down on our knees and thank the Lord above for such mercy as well as pray for those affected. Whether it is this terrible event in Queensland and Northern New South Wales or the Victorian Bush Fires or Cyclone Tracey or any one of the many, many ways that nature has shown us just how small we really are and remind us that we can not control the weather or prevent such fury from being unleashed on the land, we will prevail in the end.

After saying that and feeling most humble I am will now pump out my chest and state that in all of the above mentioned human disasters there has always been one thing that mother nature can not take from us, no matter how hard she tries and that is our spirit of human survival: That in-built human desire to overcome adversity and to help our fellow man and woman and child to find their feet again and get back to the job of living.

One way that Aussies do that very well is via their sense of humour. Be it war or acts of God, our ability to laugh in the face of a fight has always been a huge part of out human soul and the Australian psyche and that is what makes us different from all other living beings on this great planet.

We can ague until the cows come home about how many political leaders throughout our short history have neglected to look far enough into the future to prevent this regular event in Queensland from touching so many lives and we can hope that just maybe this time one of them will be motivated enough to put into place infrastructural designs that will protect human lives and property in the future? but until then we do what we do best, we survive and just get on with living.

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