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In an era where victories are celebrated and mistakes are concealed, the power of the simple phrase 'I am sorry' seems to be vanishing. From personal slights to public gaffes, our society seems increasingly averse to accepting responsibility and offering genuine apologies. But why has this sentiment become so rare, and what does its absence say about the values we hold?
Once again we’re forced to think about the ones who’ve kept us going, doctors, nurses, nurses’ aides, swallowing their fear and knowing masks, however good, can never be sufficient, those who check each other’s PPE, all suited-up as if they planned a landing on the moon.
Of the inaudible seamless glass the reflections mirror, pellucid and far — they refract the stillness of the rocks whose silhouettes darken among the chiaroscuro of faces onshore. The mirrored reflections reflect the silence of sky, accompanying the sliding clouds that skate across the absolute clarity.
You say you are not in a war zone, but look at all these deaths mounting up around you, this friend and that one suddenly gone, the news coming unexpectedly and from unexpected sources, and with each passing, other deaths: the death of friendships, of anticipation, of familiar voices ...
Whether Carr or Greer participates at Brisbane Writers Festival has no real impact on their ability to speak out and be heard. The real threat to freedom of expression for most people comes not from programming decisions at literary festivals but rather to the public through their employers.
The last male northern white rhinoceros was euthanased in March. With two females still alive, there is hope the subspecies might be saved. The impending loss of an animal that evolved over six million years, and once grazed in hundreds of thousands, is worth noting. There can be room in our hearts to lament.
My astute mother was the first to suspect Maggie of taking and selling my clothes to fund her addiction. After that, my friendship with Maggie fell apart. I began to hate her and wanted nothing to do with her. This year, that all suddenly changed.
The world's poor are bearing the brunt of global warming yet they have done the least to cause it. African countries have some of the lowest carbon emissions rates in the world, but their fields are drying up and their pastureland is vanishing. Still, all is not lost. If we want to find the answers to climate change, many of them exist within the communities already being impacted. These people understand the urgent threat posed by global warming and they are banding together to find solutions.
Repeat your name over and over and it doesn't make sense. Being able to hear your name across a noisy crowded room. Being able to see things in the dark by not looking at them directly. Walking down an old path brings back a conversation you had in exactly the same location years ago. Your handwriting looks exactly like your father's. Revisiting a childhood park destroys the memory and paves over it with the newer, boring adult memory. When you chase something you can't have it.
Now, the forces of annihilation once again cohere, as if this were a valve in history's cardiac arrhythmia that faltered and unleashed a haemorrhage of horror, trauma, fear. The damask roses bloom unharvested in devastated fields. Their perfume cannot mask the stench that permeates the air, the atmosphere of dread, of mute despair. But when the juggernaut of war is redeployed elsewhere, the fragrant fields will come into their own, if there are hands to care.
Just as the 'wealth management' industry is based on the lie that anyone can be wealthy if they are prepared to take enough individual risk, the modern lie about work is that your place depends on vicious competition with those around you. This sort of sociopathic individualism denies the collective project, where even the team resembles more a gangster faction than a collective. Success is said to be a function of your own efforts, rendering solidarity not just foreign but inimical to your interests.
Australia woke on 26 January to the news that David Morrison had been named Australian of the Year. One of the most striking features he displays is empathy. It is a quality in vanishingly short supply in public discourse, yet is fundamental. Unless we can put the individual on a broader canvass, our world view is incomplete. I am important, but unless you are recognised as being just as important as I, then you are just a plaything for me. My rights are bounded by your rights, your value as a person.