Get priorities right

WE HAVE just survived a horrendous event that has been devastating to many of our residents but has also given us a unique opportunity to show our fellow Australians where ever they may be and, indeed the world, in this modern times of instant communications just how important family is.

As I have grown older I believe the really important things in life can never be purchased but found in the arms of the one you love or in the company of your children as they grow up, seemingly overnight before your eyes.

We as a community, who has lost almost everything in many cases have found the most precious thing that we can. That is the willingness to help not only family and friends but total strangers.

Let us share that message with the world. We need to invest more in the emotional needs of our loved ones.

This, in turn, has a flow on effect back into coummunity.

Is that not the most important lesson of all?

Townsville through media coverage has received many glowing comments on our community spirit all over our country and in many other lands. Let us be an example to those looking on that we are not the crime-ridden city the media sometimes paint us.

Townsville, in fact, also has the most generous, loving and family-orientated people to be found anywhere.

Indeed, let us see through the fake news or glossy advertising and spend less on material things and invest more in our families.

Shower them with love and understanding not gifts.

Spend less money but more time with your children.

Be parents who teach and guide, not “friends” as fake as those on social media who barely communicate or talk of trivial subjects of no real importance.

For instance, we saw a woman constantly on her phone in North Shore Mcdonald’s a few days ago.

She sat next to us for 20 to 30 minutes while we were having coffee. Despite having a young daughter (she did call her “Mum”) in her care she never spoke or looked up to see what the child was up to.

I trust this woman gives her child more attention at home and I wondered what was of such importance that had her engrossed her for so long.

That was 30 minutes of her life that she never get back.

It was 30 minutes her daughter was lost to her mother’s addiction to useless social media or possibly incoming emails. It would seem this woman choose that instead of talking with her child.

Gee, I hope she doesn’t take her phone into the bedroom of a night. Her husband’s/partner’s batting average sex-wise would be about as sincere and lucrative as Clive Palmer’s election promises.

DENIS MAY,

Annandale.