As it will be for all of us, a winning streak ends

Future Christmases for many extended family members will not be seasons of joy.

A niece’s husband, whom I did not know too well, died just two days before the annual celebration after failing to recover from a heart attack.
The father of two, only in his mid-forties, had collapsed while making deliveries and by the time he had been found, attempts, made to resuscitate him and then taken to hospital, his brain had suffered lasting damage.
His family knew he had wanted to donate his organs and so after it was determined that his brain was irreparably damaged and recipients were organized, his life support equipment was turned off.
Brian lived in another part of Victoria and so I had little to do with him and strangely knew more about his kids as my wife kept me abreast of their movements through Facebook.
And so although he was somewhat of a stranger to me, his final scene was unexpected and sudden, he was family and his death was a shock.
I can’t imagine how traumatic it will be for immediate family next Christmas, the Christmas after and I can only guess at how difficult it will be in following festive seasons.
There is a strange finality about death that seems to escape our understanding and every time we encounter such a moment involving family or friend, promises of living a better life erupt, but in the maelstrom that is life, rarely, interestingly, are those promises ever kept.
Life, no matter our approach, is a vibrant affair and that, alone, outside whatever affiliations we might have or superstitions or addictions we have, warrants care and respect for it is a fragile thing and our time here is limited.
Poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen (above) discussed the vibrancy and fragility of our lives in his poem, “A Thousand Kisses Deep” when he wrote:


The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win for a while, and then it’s done –
Your little winning streak.
And summoned how to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real,
A thousand kisses deep.

From a muted sunsent to the outbreak of good sense

The muted sunset of 2010 gathers in the west and then we turn to look east in the hope of seeing a spectacular sunrise marking the beginning of an equally breath-taking 2011.

Hope will be insufficient if 2011 is to be something better than the year about to end, as more than that along with good intentions is needed.
The latter, it has been said, pave the road to hell and so if the year ahead is to be pivotal for humanity we will need to abandon our expansive way of living; the seeming dislike we have of the other; our misplaced distrust in science; our love for addictions that are blatantly fallacious, along with disturbing superstitions many abide by that contribute nought to humanity’s wellbeing; and the perverse belief that force will resolve any disputation.
We simply cannot allow 2011 to be a year of more of the same – the time for chat, research, reports, talk-fests and the seemingly never-ending referral of matters to committees is gone.
The year ahead needs to be one of commitment; we need to commit to limiting our greenhouse gas pollution; we need to commit to a more restrained way of living with our governments leading the way to help us to build self-reliant communities; we need to commit to learning about, understanding and introducing a steady-state economy in which we abandon the growth ideology and embrace a paradigm that is about quality as opposed to quantity; we need to commit to thoughtful reasoning about humanity’s place in the universe accepting that we are here by chance and that in itself being such a beautifully wondrous thing that we should celebrate life and stop the perplexing passion we have for slaughtering each other.
Other things I’d like to see here in 2011 – an understanding and embrace of true equality; a serious move toward republicanism; the erosion of misogynistic religions, in fact the complete shift away from religions allowing for a genuinely secular state; and the outbreak of good sense to see alcohol, our most socially damaging legitimately available drug, take the same route as smoking.