Closer to the flames
SANDWICHED like a fat slice of clove-infused, honey-glazed leg ham between the tinsel and songs of Christmas and the bubbly and fireworks of New Year’s Eve, today is a day to reflect.
Nearly every year since I was a boy I have used the final days of a year to look in the mirror and to climb a nearby rise to survey the world around me.
When I was younger this annual urge consumed me — so much so that the New Year countdown would leave me in a mellow, strangely contented, kind of melancholic haze. It still does to a degree. Years ago, when on staff at the Mercury, I recall suggesting to an editor that we fill the pages at this time of year with poignant reflections from the community and from experts in their chosen fields.
He snapped back: “Never look back, son. We are a newspaper. We look forward.”
It was the platitude to end all platitudes. The perfect thought-terminating cliche.
On a personal level, the conclusion to my reflections this year is that I have to stop waiting for things to settle down before I act.
The past few years I have realised that I am forever waiting for things to settle before embarking on whatever it is I want or need to do, but the clear lesson from the passing years is that things rarely do. Life is inherently unsettled. It can appear settled in the rear-vision mirror but in the moments between the beat of the heart and the draw of breath it flickers nervously, tentatively like the flame of a candle.
On the rare occasion life does appear settled we have a duty to try to be conscious of the serenity and savour each and every instant for what it is, a precious moment of grace.
The rest of the time, if we want to achieve anything, we have to act amid the restless, shifting sands: to flourish and thrive in the flux.
I know this, but doing it is another thing entirely.
Looking out to the world around me, I cannot recall a more volatile and imminently explosive time.
The sabre rattling by North Korea and the US is terrifying.
The totalitarian regime of Kim Jong-un is a monstrous reality where 25 million people are indoctrinated with propaganda and denied the liberty to think for themselves.
Kim this year demonstrated that his regime has the technology and know-how to launch a missile to any city in the world and arm it with nukes or, as latest fears suggest, with chemicals or germs.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump’s rise to power has destabilised the notion of truth in the US with his frequent peddling of conspiracy theories that are demonstrably false.
Trump’s ideology divides the world into winners and losers, failing to recognise his headlong collision with Kim could leave all of us losers.
President Xi Jinping, while undeniably appearing more reliable and stately, and less volatile and dangerous than either Kim or Trump, is busy ramping up his own military reach.
Xi’s communist regime, which also denies its people free access to information, is transforming rocky reefs in the South China Sea into militarised islands in flagrant violation of its oft-stated peaceful intent.
The Asia-Pacific is becoming militarised, with fortunes being spent on warplanes, weapons and submarines by nations such as Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and even Bangladesh.
Australia has spent more than $10 billion on weapons and military equipment from the US in the past four years, including more than $1 billion on GBU-53/B small diameter bombs and about $500 million on a contract to upgrade the nation’s MH-60R multimission helicopters.
Don’t forget the $50 billion earmarked by the Australian Government for a fleet of 12 new subs.
Oh, and the $17 billion it is preparing to spend on 72 of the F-35 warplanes as part of the US-led Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter program.
Regional war looms so large that climate change, overfishing, pollution, overpopulation and the massive global exodus of refugees appear somehow secondary, but they are not.
They are all real global threats.
Many years ago, on New Year’s Eve, I stood and watched as the home I was living in burned to the ground. By the time the fire brigade arrived at the inferno it was too late to do anything but watch it burn and reflect on all that was lost, everything I owned and more.
Watching the flames surge from the windows and licking the eaves is burned in my memory. I know what it looks like to watch home burn.
When I look around me at the world today that is exactly what I see.
Whether it is too late to extinguish the fires that sweep our planetary home is unknown. We won’t know until we try.
But I do know there is no use waiting for things to settle. We must act in the flux.
The world is burning.