When life hurts

 When life hurts, which it so often

does, how do we find meaning and

purpose to go on? Is there not some

thing twisted in believing or needing

to believe, that pain can be positive,

that hurting can heal, that suffering

can be not just necessary but good?

In this dance of reason, rage and 

grief, for all walk hand in hand

with pain, can we remember the

steps and remain faithful to their 

execution, telling ourselves that

it is all, in its own way, beautiful?

And is there anything else to do,

or which can be done, to soften 

the hard edges of life, to smooth

the jagged jaws of reality, so that

we can, just for a moment, breathe?

Fear

 What is this thing called fear?

Which complicates the world,

serves little purpose even when

a danger nearby lurks. Why do

we fear so much, instinctive

and inbred, when dangers will

be better done, where fear is

not at work? And yet we are

hard-wired, to viscerally react,

as if the lion was waiting, 

when nothing's truly there. 

No doubt in aeons past, it

saved us from ourselves, but

calmness held with courage

will best meet any threat. 

These demons of the mind

haunt every jungled thought,

and walk on padded feet

through days and nights 

distraught, refusing all the

pleas, ignoring all the calls,

to sleep in patient caution,

till danger truly forms. 

This is the way the world ends

 

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men.

 

The reaction to Covid has reminded me that the most dangerous human quality is fear, particularly irrational fear.  Covid-19, or fear of Covid, has turned many into hollow men and women, blown by the winds of fear, turning always on the same spot of psyche.

 

Humans have faced many threats throughout their long history and Covid-19 does not even rank amongst the worst of them. And yet, in an instant, people in the name of fear have given up hard-won freedoms. Our ancestors who fought across centuries for those freedoms and often died for them, must be turning in their graves.

 

One thing is certain, if the fear-donkeys and modelling-monkeys had worked their magic on the public, as they have with Covid, in the face of either the First or Second World War, those conflicts would have been well and truly lost.

 

Never before in human history, not even for truly deadly diseases, have the well been locked up to counter a possible disease threat. We have certainly broken new ground with the Covid madness.

 

We have not been 'bringing out our dead,' or for most of us, even tending them through long, deadly nights. Few of us know anyone who has been really sick, supposedly with Covid, and fewer still, anyone who died. But, the power-jockeys have been telling us - be afraid, be very afraid.

 

When you crunch the numbers it is pretty clear that Covid is not such a threat and indeed, its 'severity' differs depending upon country, which is certainly not the case with severe Flu epidemics or pandemics, which have respected no-one, of any age, in any situation.

The Covid mortality rate in Australia is .004% roughly, although the Covid 'season' has been twice as long as a Flu season, and, if faecal sewer studies are correct, possibly four times as long as a Flu season. The 2017 bad Flu season in Australia had a mortality rate of about .005%, although that was in half the time of the official Covid 'season.

The majority of those said to have died of Covid had such poor health that the common cold could have finished them off. And perhaps it did, given that Covid is a variation on the theme of the common cold.

 

We have those in power spreading fear and hysteria based on dodgy data. They have not been making comparisons of mortality with severity and infection identification, which pretty quickly reveals that Covid at worst is no more than a bad Flu season, which has not had us imprisoned in our homes, gasping behind ridiculous masks, refusing to kiss and hug those we love.

 

Perhaps the most astonishing thing is how many have gone along with this advice without even bothering to do some work researching health, disease, Influenza or Covid themselves, let alone applying common sense. What happened? Where did the sort of grit, guts, determination, courage, common sense and reason which founded this country go?

 

What turned so many into timid, fearful creatures so easily manipulated in the name of a possible danger?

 

George Orwell's 1984 should be a compulsory read for everyone and top of the list for kids in school, instead of meringue fantasies like Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu.

 

This is how easy it is to become enslaved by systems; to become tools of agendas; to become puppets of fear.  Thank the rebels for they are our greatest hope and power. The warning voices are often ignored if not actively silenced as we have seen with Covid. Many doctors and some scientists have spoken against the official 'story' as voices of reason and just as quickly disappeared. Fortunately there are always voices of dissent even if they die on literal or metaphorical pyres in the name of dogma.

 

Without them, the only sound is the slow, sad sigh of the air of life and hope, escaping from the balloon of humanity which once sought to rise high, brave and proud, and now softens in a pathetic dribble of gutless fear in the name of one, poorly identified, barely understood disease which is not a threat to 99% of people.

 

But life is cyclical, not linear, and we have been here before and made our way through. We will do it better and faster if we do not succumb to fear for that response is the worst basis for decision-making even when there really is something which threatens us, as opposed to the demons of our imagining and the monsters of the manipulators.

 

We teach our children not to fear the monsters of the dark and we would do well to remember the lesson ourselves. For we, as adults, should know better. We as adults should do better. There are many ways to die and as a favourite aunt of mine so frequently said: Many people die long before they are dead.

 

To paraphrase the poet Dylan Thomas-

 

'rage, rage against the dying of the light' of reason, common sense and courage, for life contains a myriad of threats and demons and how we deal with one dictates whether we grow in courage or in fear for all the rest in their eternal, cycling winging around this world.