Home again
Saturday, October 13, 2012 at 02:50AM We’re home again, to a city shivering in the coldest October week for many years, a Brunswick still reeling from Jill Meagher’s murder in our streets, a work place that has been extra busy while I’ve been away, a daughter whose friend was killed in a motor bike accident in Vietnam the day after we flew in and the tenth anniversary of the Bali bombings. Reality bites.
Or not. Or, at least, it has always bitten. Life has always been full of injustice and heartache. Maybe the surprise should be when it isn’t.
I’m loving being back. I’m so grateful to be here for our girl who is experiencing the confrontation of death of a peer. I’m enjoying being busy at work. My local church is exactly where I want to be in the aftermath of any trauma, local or otherwise.
I love shoving my passport back in the filing cabinet, not having to check where it is on a daily basis. I like being back in our spacious, familiar house, our comfortable bed and, at last, my own pillow.
Much as I shamelessly indulged in massive doses of cheese and chocolate and (not so massive) doses of beer, cider and wine on our travels (and I don’t regret one crumb or drop) my body is rejoicing in being back to its normal, predictable, healthy diet.
If you’re lucky, it’s always good to get home, no matter how wonderful the holiday was. And you do carry the holiday with you for a while. I feel energetic and focussed in a way I haven’t for years. I am thoroughly rested, and extra close to my 24/7 travelling companion.
As for the tough things I have come home to, I feel shocked but not surprised, if that makes sense, by random violence and disaster. What else can we expect in a world full of flawed human beings?
People talk about good old days, but the fact is that more people in the world are safer and healthier than they have ever been. No one who reads any history can fail to realise that if life is brutal for many in the world today, in the past it was brutal for all but the very wealthy. I always admired the late Pamela Bone, who in her life as a journalist covered such horrors as the genocide in Rwanda, and consistently maintained that life was better now than it has ever been.
In the aftermath of the 11 September attack on the Twin Towers and, dare I say it, the Bali bombings, it quickly became apparent that wealthy westerners were incensed mainly because these things had happened to people like us. We know, that appalling violence and deprivation (often caused by humans) happens to South American, Indigenous Australian, Afghanistan, Sudanese and multiple other communities. Most of us are outraged and galvanised to action only when these things affect us, or people very like us.
The world is full of bad stuff; one of the many things I brought back from my holiday was the reminder that it is also full of beauty, creativity, hospitality and wonder. All of which happens here in my own city, every day.
Reader Comments (1)
Welcome home! And what a welcome you have received! Thank you so much for your reflection and for reminding us of the places that continually do it tough but who are also so often forgotten.