THAT Week ...

It's difficult to be flippant after a week that's seen such numbing loss of life. It's a bit like that early Star Wars movie, when a whole planet is destroyed by the baddies, and Obi-Wan (or one of the characters) physically feels the sudden reduction in the Life Force of the Universe ... It affects us all.

There are three things that have struck me about this whole, dreadful time ...

The first is that the tsunami didn't take any notice of how much money its victims had or what religion they believed in or their age or their sex or their colour or whether they were good or bad. If they were in the wrong spot at the wrong time, then that was all it took.

The second thing that this catastrophe has illustrated is the way people rally around to help each other. Admittedly, some of the governments have been a tad slow to get organised, but the 'real' people everywhere have risen to the challenge, as they ... we ... always do. No-one stopped to ask who you'd voted for in the last election before they pulled you from the swirling waters ... the hand was just there for anyone who needed it.

It makes you proud to call yourself a carbon-based biped, and I think this willingness to drop everything and help out is one of our most endearing qualities, don't you?

As I watched all the news footage, lines from a poem kept floating through my mind, and I found it this morning, after a search on my mate google. Here's the part I kept remembering:

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

It's by a C17th poet, James Shirley, and it's called fittingly Death the Leveller. You can read the rest of the poem here: http://www.photoaspects.com/chesil/death/index.html#shirley

Not sure I entirely agree with the last stanza; it's a smidge too sentimental for little old cynical me ...

The third and final thing that the tsunami has left me with is a tendency to look over my shoulder whenever I'm walking along the water's edge. I can't help but put myself in the place of all those people who were going about their daily activities when their entire world was quite literally turned upside down ...

As I've walked and swum this past week, I've looked across at Moreton Island (quite high, but completely made of sand) and after seeing what happened in the Indian Ocean, my previous belief that it would dissipate any unwelcome waves no longer offers any comfort.

But you can't live your life looking over your shoulder, can you? So we look for the positive in such disasters and see people reaching out from every country to help when help is needed. And that, boys and girls, is what being a human is all about ...