A whole new year

I spent some time before guests arrived on NYE reviewing the past 12 months, trawling through photos and trying to find a representative sample of what we’d been up to all year. As ever, there were ups and downs: we said tearful goodbyes to our beloved pup, gardened (a lot), renovated the kitchen, enjoyed some art/craft adventures (with debatable success), ate fresh eggs every week thanks to our resident chooks, travelled a bit – and even got snowed on in Shirakawa-go, a first for me and absolutely wonderful.

The process of unpacking the year was interesting, resulting in some smiles, some wry looks, some sads and a whole lot of pondering about life. In part, these contemplations were inspired by reading Travels with Epicurus. Although it’s only about 160 pages long, Daniel Klein effectively converses with his readers, sharing his thoughts, philosophical insights and the conclusions he has come to regarding ageing well and living mindfully, both of which are topics often on my mind these days.

I realise that my ruminations are also a response to the horror of the Hanukkah shootings at Bondi Beach in mid-December, which left me – along with so many others – reeling. Since then I’ve been trying to make sense of how a family-friendly public gathering and celebration could possibly have taken such a deadly turn. It’s Australia, for goodness sake! This is the place I’ve viewed as a safe haven ever since moving here over 30 years ago. My thoughts have cascaded over one another over the past few weeks as I’ve confronted my admittedly rose-tinted view of Australia, now so dramatically shredded. How can I see the shootings as anything other than a blatant and appalling culmination of ongoing and escalating antisemitism?

I’ve struggled with how to respond. What do I do with these feelings of loss and abandonment that come upon me unexpectedly, with the sense that it isn’t my place to feel this way – even though I do? I’m grieving for people I don’t know, for a horror I didn’t witness, for the illusion of comfort lost.

Is it possible, I wonder, to convert these feelings into small acts of kindness, to try to be part of a ripple that can become a wave of mindful action that can bring back some sense to an increasingly chaotic world? Can kindness make a difference?

I have no answers, only endless, complicated questions that leave me feeling exhausted. Even so, I choose to believe that if we all, as individuals and groups, go about our business every day with kindness at the forefront of our minds, we can make things just a bit better – and that’s my New Years wish for us all. Let’s try to be mindful of others in words and actions so the the glasses don’t need rose tints – they just see the world clearly and can rejoice in it.