ANZAC day should remind us about how lucky we are. But we all lack perspective.
Hi Mike
So the April celebrations roll on. Straight out of Easter and into ANZAC day, and now the weekend is upon us.
Rock n Roll.
How are you flowing with it? Having some good times?
Let me throw something out there. If you’re not border-line ecstatic – like frothing-at-the-mouth giddy with joy, then you lack perspective.
Don’t feel bad. We all do. That’s one thing you can say about humans. We’re hopeless at holding perspective.
But you might be saying, “Come on Jon. I’ve got to mow the lawns, and then I’ve got to have a BBQ with the stupid in-laws, and then most of the weekend is going to be spent running between kids’ footy and netball. Not much to get frothy about there.”
And sure, I get why you’d say that. But I still reckon you lack perspective.
I mean, you could have been born 100-odd years ago, on the brink of World War One. You could have found yourself following your mates into the recruitment office. You could have found yourself on a troop ship bound for Egypt.
And then you could have found yourself landed on a beach, running for cover as Turkish bullets rained down on your head, watching shell shrapnel popping skulls around you.
And then you could have found yourself dug into a trench for 8 months, sleeping on dirt, eating cardboard flavoured beef jerky and hoping that you don’t catch whatever disease is doing the rounds this week.
And then finally you could have found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, just metres from where the grenade came down, knocked completely senseless.
And when you woke up on the hospital barge anchored in the harbour, watching sea-sick nurses throwing up into bed-pans as the boat pitched from side to side, you might have noticed that one of your legs was missing. And they would have told you were one of the lucky ones.
And you would have been.
But not lucky in the way that you are lucky. Not right now. Not as someone born into one of the most stable and peaceful eras in human history, where dying anything but a ‘natural’ death is considered remarkable, where the diseases that saw the ANZACs shitting blood have been practically wiped from the face of the Earth, and where, as the weekend approaches, you have the luxury of wondering how you are going to spend your ample leisure time and disposable income.
That’s lucky.
Roll the dice of human history, and things really could have been a lot, lot worse for you. You could have been an ANZAC, or a peasant during the Napoleonic wars, or one of the slaves building the pyramids.
But you got lucky. You were born you.
So tell me why you’re not frothy with joy, dizzy with gratitude or garbling like a mad man trying to count your blessings.
Why aren’t we all doing that?
It’s just about perspective.
That frothy joy is available to you right now. It’s available to all of us. We just have to change our perspective.
Pauline Wharton says
Jon – yes, we all lack perspective and it is good to bring this to our attention – thank you for doing that.
We could have been born in this time but in a much different location where the opportunity to survive until one is 20 or 30 is a roll of the dice, or the opportunity to actually grow to an adult before you, as a female, are forced to bear children, or any number of other scenarios which are very much a reality in our world today.
Yes, we are very lucky and I for one am grateful for the blessings I have had throughout my life.. They have not been financial, but a family who has loved and supported me, food on the table and a roof over my head. I also count the ability to work, think and live my life in a country where freedom is still available – for the time being. Bought and paid for by the likes of these young men and women who fought and in many cases died to enable us to retain this freedom..
Yes, I am luck and celebrate it.