Beauty, death and the inexpicable

Beauty is everywhere, just as is death.

The rose is for many a
 symbol of beauty, but equally
linked to death.

Interestingly, and paradoxically, I’m midway through reading a book about beauty and a rash of deaths have impacted on my life.

Death has a perverse beauty, but that is conditional, the caveat being that the exit must be timely; death should be the culmination of a life well-lived, or at least on that allowed for the realization of the person’s hopes and dreams.

Anything sooner than that leaves us with a hollowness, an uncertainty and the nagging question of why?

Of course the technicalities of why can easily be answered, but there are grander implications that arouse confusion and mystery when the death appears untimely.

Humanity broadly understands, and so generally accepts, that death awaits us all, rather patiently, at the end of a well-lived life.

We become confused and the mystery of why only deepens when the imagined scythe-wielding reaper appears early in someone’s life, gives a somewhat sickly smile as our friends depart with a rush we are unable to understand.

This recent rash of deaths began with the expected, but early, death of friend in her 60s – expected as it was, she had time to hand paint her own coffin.

Next it was Jill Meagher, someone I obviously didn’t know, but like many others, the television images of her final moments were etched in my mind making the connection with that young woman strangely real.

Recently, the “reaper” swooped by, much closer.

Lunch with a friend a few weeks back on a Friday was followed the next morning by a relatively innocuous accident that was to take his life a few days later.

He wasn’t ready to go as he had much to do and it was only at that Friday lunch he had talked about statistically having another twenty healthy years to live. He was alive with enthusiasm.

Even more difficult to understand was the death last week of a 28-year-old workmate who had undergone an operation to further repair damage to a leg injured in a road accident nearly two decades ago.

She was young, married and along with her husband was building a life together, but on Friday all the hopes and dreams fell into ruin.

This seemingly nonsensical conclusion to well-lived lives causes us to again wonder why bad things happen to good people.

Searching for answers, I quizzed a Christian friend, whose beliefs are the antithesis of mine, but he provided little comfort, adding only that it was an age-old question.

Struggling with the vacuum that is death we can do little, it seems, but fill the bizarre and confusing nothingness with reassuring and comforting images and memories of that person’s innate beauty, the warmth of their engaging smile and their generousity.

 

Defining, understanding and identifying courage eludes most

Courage is as difficult to define as beauty.

It is something that has been on the minds of many following the tragic deaths recently of five Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Courage - as difficult to define as beauty.

Notwithstanding this, danger awaits anyone who questions the popular idea of courage and dare suggest they were not courageous rather, just doing their job, a job they the knowingly and willingly signed up for.

What is courage? Where and why does it emerge? Why is a soldier, whose prime task, when all the finery is stripped away is about killing other people, more courageous than the soul down the street who wrestles with life’s daily dilemmas?

The institution that is our armed forces removes many of life’s risks and so in essence the only thing a soldier is gambling with is his or her life.

Our symbolic soul “down the street” gambles not only with their life, but also, particularly if they question the status quo, their broader wellbeing, and that of their family, without having the vast and resourceful infrastructure of our armed forces to support them.

Enlistment is a clear indication of person’s values and beliefs and as they equate with most in the country, rarely, if ever do they have to put their head above the parapet to contest popular opinion.

In fact, as demonstrated repeatedly those most at risk in our society, certainly psychologically and if at times not physically, question the status quo and wonder publically if life would not be better if we were more conciliatory rather than militant.

Life’s truly courageous souls are those who ask the questions most would prefer to avoid and have us listen to answers we would rather not hear.

Socrates, an habitual questioner, had a passion to “know” and because of that interrogation was considered socially disruptive and so put to death.

Socrates had the opportunity to escape his persecutors, but being a believer in the rule of law, stayed, drank the hemlock and died. That was courage remote from the battlefield.

Soldiers fight for the values of the society to which they belong and that act demands a certain type of courage, but our true unsung heroes demonstrate an unrecognised courage using little more than words, and art in all its forms, to protect human rights, be it at the primary school through to those who seek asylum in Australia.

Humanity’s golden years appear to the crumbling as a burgeoning population strains earth’s resources and with our market driven economy in disarray, a few courageous souls talk of alternatives, risking reputation as they confront entrenched ideologies; ideologies that have brought the good life, but which are now unravelling.

It takes courage to discuss new ideas, it take even more courage to adopt them.