Christmas is that time of year when we all look to festival, catching up with family and of course the giving and receiving of all manner of gifts, while we prepare for the coming joy. We are distracted from the pain and sadness that some members of our community have to deal with, every year, at this time of year. This totally understandable as most of us have our own stuff to deal with and we can’t always be thinking of those strangers that are doing it tough.
We may have members of our own family or members of our circle of friends that are doing it tough as well and we all try to think of them and do what we can to ease their burden or pain. After all, that is what Christmas is all about for most of us, giving, sharing, caring and loving.
As fund raising ambassador, this year, for Life Line Canberra I am acutely aware that leading up to the Christmas-New Year period is a very stressful time for some young and old. And sadly the pressure becomes too much to bear and suicide increases. This fact has become something that we all have to deal with. For most of us it is another thing we have become aware of through the news media, but sadly for some, a growing number each year, the experience will became all too real because it will became personal.
Suicide, it seems, has become another elephant in the room.
Christmas is over and we turn our attention to New Years Eve which, off course, heralds the coming of the New Year. The passing forever of the year just lived, that year is in its dying hours and the New Year, yet to be lived, is just moments away. The closing of one door and the opening of another.
None of us can possibly know what the future will bring and that in its self is exciting.
So how do we approach this New Year? How should we approach this New Year?
I believe we should approach each new experience with a sense of wonderment.
We should welcome the excitement, the unknowing. Yes, and even be stirred by that feeling of danger, the danger that comes from that fear of the unknown.
But we should strive not to be bowed by that sense of danger, not to cower as frightened children afraid of some imaginary bogey man. But we should allow ourselves to embrace the unknown for the bounty it may hold, the treasure waiting, for any brave soul that is willing to venture forth into the unknown, pushing fear aside and following their heart the rewards are great.
Those that live in fear live little if at all.
Life has a flavour for those that fight for it. That the sheltered will never know.
Recently I spoke at a primary school down the coast, I was asked to speak of the rewards of living a good and responsible life free from the burdens of the addictions that are around us every day – alcohol, cigarettes and the growing
number of exotic narcotics that are being readily made available to our young and defenceless.
The accent for that week throughout our schools was health in all its forms – physical, nutritional, mental, emotional but sadly spiritual was omitted. But I was happy that we covered all the others as I do believe that spirituality should be taught in the home by the parents as the best scenario of course knowing full well that too few parents teach their children about spirituality in their own homes.
I was talking to a few of the teachers before and after I spoke and we were touching on the growing awareness of stress and anxiety being displayed in our children. In past days we associated stress and anxiety wit adolescence but in recent days we have noticed more and more of our very young displaying these very symptoms.
Because symptoms they are!, in many cases they can be signals that not all is well at home. Domestic violence is on the rise, child abuse in every sinister form is on the rise and then there is the growing awareness via the electronic media that not all is well with the world. Children are growing into a world that they see as full of pain and sorrow, suffering on a massive scale surrounds them. They are in some cases being taught of these matters as part of their curriculum.
Imagine what must go on in a very young mind if they are told that the world as we know it will end in their life time and that all mankind and all in the animal kingdom will die out and became no more. No wonder they are stressed and anxious.
It is our responsibility to protect our young from danger, to feed them properly so they have the best chance in life, feed them on all things they will need to grow healthy and strong. We have the chance, while they are young, to invest in them, to instil in them, the belief that all is not bad or wrong, that life is full of goodness and joy if only we seek to see it. If we only see the ugly in our world our world will be ugly. If we allow ourselves to see the beauty our world can be beautiful.
You know that I believe the Divine makes no mistakes and in keeping with that, there is a positive to every negative, that in every sorrow there can be found inspiration, in every tear there is healing.
As the heart mourns for what it has lost, the soul rejoices in what it has found, Sufi saying.
Witness in recent times, of great sadness, the outpouring of human kindness and compassion.
These then are the truths we must hand down to our children so that they begin to see the true beauty that surrounds them, not only the ugly. We can’t protect them from the truth but we can teach them to see all that there is to see, that there is purpose and sanity and that all is worth the pain and sadness, that they way of it is and has always been that there is no growth without pain.
These are the truths I have taught my children because these are my truths. The truths that life has taught me, that I have learned, the hard way, from my own experience. They are living truths.
Seek your inner truth, your God,.. and your God will reveal itself.
Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all men, I remain your friend, Angry