Most parents think of the birth of their children as an emotional high point in their lives.There is no adventure like it! But the majority will also say that turning themselves into relaxed, confident parents remains one of the greatest challenges of their adult lives.
Where I live in inner-city Sydney there’s been a rapid increase in the number of little children in recent years. Because I’ve so loved being a parent myself, I find this delightful. Yet as I watch newish parents, and listen to those I know personally, I see that a couple of critical cornerstones of parenting are becoming harder to apply.
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One of the most challenging roles that any of us can find ourselves in is that of carer. I am not thinking about professional carers now. They also do a fine job but can go home at the end of a shift. Nor, in this instance, do I mean parents of ordinarily robust children who will in time grow up, leave home and make lives of their own.
What I am thinking about are people who through illness, accident or fate find themselves in a situation in which their life is almost entirely focused on the needs of another person.
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Zero tolerance for bullying |
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When I started work (in the dark ages of the twentieth century), sexual harassment was thought of as an entirely private problem. There was rarely any point taking it to the boss. Even if the boss himself was not the problem, a victim would often find herself blamed, shamed and punished. That’s changed radically. And it’s one of the key factors in changing for the better how women and men deal with one another in the work place.
A zero tolerance for sexual harassment is still far from standard. The current David Jones debacle in Australia tells us that. But increasingly companies are aware that they can’t afford to turn a blind eye to the behaviours that used to be commonplace. If women are harassed or subjected to sleazy comments or advances, their concerns must be heard. And there is legislation in place if the matter needs to go further.
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It's July 2010. With the speed of a meteorite, the news of the recent suicide bombing at the Data Ganj-Bakhsh Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan came and went. More than forty people were killed, including children. Almost two hundred were injured. The loss of safety at Pakistan’s most important Sufi centre was incalculable. But within days of the tragedy it was absent from our media and our minds. It is understandable that with the regularity of these violent catastrophes it’s hard to maintain appropriate levels of outrage about Taliban activity in Pakistan or Afghanistan, never mind compassion for the victims. Yet there are cogent reasons why this event should be remembered and why we should continue to be concerned.
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If asked, I would have to own up to being a fairly opinionated person. And I am perfectly aware how fortunate I am that writing here and in my books about the patterns and oddities of human behaviour gives me a forum not just to express my opinions but, better still, to try them out and constantly review them.
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We will soon celebrate a wedding in our family and the happiness and optimism this is generating make it easy to think more generally about romance and its quite wonderful magic.
I have heard a couple of intensely romantic stories recently, beyond the one closest to home. The first has its genesis in a local supermarket where a gentle, open-hearted friend I have known for some years fell into small talk with an attractive man who was also waiting in the slow checkout queue. In best Rom/Com fashion, they exchanged jokes about being out food shopping on a Saturday night before walking out together. A few minutes outside the supermarket led to a coffee. A coffee led to a dinner. A dinner led within a year to their marriage.
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In recent weeks I have been conducting a mini-experiment. It’s turned out to be surprisingly interesting, not always for the most predictable reasons. It began when I was debating whether to get tickets for a special concert, then deciding that I could not afford it.
Even as I was making that decision, though, I was aware of how much I spend on books and that some people would sacrifice almost everything other than the absolute basics to go to concerts, ballet, opera or theatre on a regular basis. I personally know of people who would infinitely prefer to save for a painting than new clothes. Or would rather travel modestly with their children than send them to a coaching college or costly school.
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We all want good friends. That's a given.
No, we all need good friends. Whatever our difficulties or joys, it’s the interest of those who care about us that makes all the difference. From earliest childhood on, our social instincts make it essential that we engage with real interest and concern with other people. We may be shy or even reclusive, yet our happiness will depend to a great extent not on the number but on the quality of our friendships.
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After years working as a publisher and then as a writer, I am fairly
well attuned to the enthusiasms of my publishers. It was no surprise,
then, when the news that I had spent a good deal of the last four or
even five years on the life and work of a poet was met with a
respectful but muted response. A poet? Poetry? Few worries there with
how many the supermarkets may or may not take. |
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Today we celebrate Australia Day – or do we? For many it’s a last-ditch chance to revel in the lazier pace of the Christmas and New Year holiday period before school begins and work takes off again with a gallop. But can it or should it be something more? After all, this is the single public holiday that pushes us to consider how our collective national identity is evolving and – more crucially - what each of us is contributing to it.
Most of us love this country. Without falling into sentimental nationalism, we have countless reasons to be grateful that we live somewhere so starkly beautiful, richly resourced and socially optimistic. But it would be foolish to imagine that in 2010 there is anything like an homogeneous experience of being Australian. Between people of varying ages, social classes, cultures and religions, even between people living in comfort in global cities or struggling in inner-city poverty or ravished rural areas, the differences may be so great as to describe a different country and nationality.
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Parliament of World's Religions, 2009 |
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The major and some minor world’s religions were well represented at the
Parliament of the World’s Religions that ended this month (December
2009) in Melbourne - but perhaps not quite the “world” itself.
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