Reality loses its bite

Over the past few weeks we have watched in horror as the people of Haiti suffer through a terrible natural disaster. The catastrophic earthquake that killed one hundred and seventy thousand people (and counting); buried them alive, crushed, suffocated and drowned them. Entire families lost forever beneath the rubble. Followed closely by pain, grief, chaos and hunger.

In 2001, we looked on from our loungerooms, jaws ajar, as one and then another fanatical hijacker, drove a 767 passenger jet filled with domestic travellers into the South and then the North of the twin towers. We watched as they erupted into flame and proceeded to collapse like proverbial houses of cards. Both buildings, filled with everyday people performing everyday jobs. People like you and me. People with brothers, wives, friends, and daughters.

The spectacle of death of and disaster has become an art form. News stations thrive. Vision and story come together in an effortless fashion. The distinction between man made and created by the almighty unknown is irrelevant and we stand, mesmerised by representation.

Reality is now the cheaper form of fiction. It's like going to a movie. We have seen the world end over and over, aliens have invaded. We have survived great battles and witnessed horrific crimes. Fiction became so blase, that we introduced TV to expose the lives and personalities of other 'ordinary' people. From Paris and Nicole, to Big Brother and Biggest Loser. And You Tube. Nothing is shocking, anymore.

We have covered every angle, and are so steeped in our pre-emptive quasi-experience that there is literally, nothing new to see. Yet to 'see' is only one aspect of the human experience. An experience that also involves taste, smell, touch, auditory stimulation. Still, we persist to seek out fantasy. To drown in it, to entertain ourselves. Is it avoidance or preference? Or is what we see simply so powerful, that we can no longer set reality and fiction apart?

Every contact we make now is channeled through a medium of sorts, starved of actual human interaction. The irony of our 24-7 connectivity is that we are physically distant. We converse behind 24-inch monitors, limit speech to staccato via text and no longer need a pen or a stamp to mail a letter. Why reach out when you can just stay in?

This superimposed reality is dangerous. By bringing things closer to us, we are driving them away. It helps us sleep soundly knowing that we've acknowledged the experience of others. It's part of the human consciousness to do so. But empathy means to walk in another's shoes, not simply sigh and hit the red button on the remote. We prefer to look on from a distance and then walk on. To live the dream that it can never happen to us.

It's about time to wake up, folks.

A Coming of Age

I had another birthday this week. I find birthdays to be a bit like a stalker. They seem to creep up behind you (although technically, they're in front of you) and you're never quite sure how you're going to feel when they inevitably make themselves known. Some seem harmless enough, but others are quite frightening indeed.

This one was more like your garden variety peeping tom. Our eyes met through the window and then it went away, acknowledged but left shrugging, achieving little bang for it's buck. It caught me with my pants well and truly up this year.

At this age, I know myself reasonably well. I'm not an old friend, but I'm familiar enough to anticipate my reactions, dislikes and sometime idiosyncrasies with highly attuned accuracy; to within a decimal point.

My flaws, which were once foe, are now more like friend, revealing an obstacle course for me to navigate around myself. Unlike Jennifer Hawkins' flaws, which even stark naked and sans photoshop you need a microscope to identify, mine are crystallising, the embryos of ice cubes.

Each year, I see myself more plainly than before. I'm empowered to surpass the boundaries of my character, many of them constructed by me, some with early foundations built by others. Now I choose to see the land clear, can deconstruct and re-construe. Or not.

As I stand at station thirty-three, watching my thirty-second year depart, I am grateful for the eleven thousand, six hundred and eighty-two days that have brought me to right here.

Me/I greet this new age with a raw and dewy calm.

New Year? Really?

OK, so apparently it's 2010.

A lot of things happened last night to evidence this. For a start, there were fireworks. Lot's of them; and they were loud. There were also drinks, friends, crowds and other seeming celebrations. It was even on the news. It is now 2010 in many countries or so they say. Yet today, I sit spinning and I can't shake the feeling that I've lost something.

Ah, that's it.
2009.

New Year's Eve always brings both trepidation and anticipation. To welcome something new we must let go of something old. But, is it really new? Or is it just a convenient way of convincing ourselves we have yet another chance to get it right. To change something or do it differently.

Time is, after all, the way we measure and collect units of what is essentially the same thing, over and over. If we viewed all time as a single unit, one continuous and monotone vacuum, would we ever reinvent ourselves or start anything new? Time can be a crutch of sorts and one I am willing to lean on as I reflect on another year passed with no real or ordered recollection of how I spent it.

The new year ushers in fresh commitments with a healthy dash of resolve and amongst mine is to update this blog and pester you - my family, friends, colleagues, clients and fellow free thinkers - to read it. To share the goings-on from inside my noggin on a regular basis, and to create a record of the year so that I am not sitting, beer in hand next New Year's, trying to jumble together random brain matter from the year that was 2010.

Opt in or opt out at your discretion, but I intend to spend 2010 as an online space invader, adding to the fast accumulating mindfield of web-based outpourings.

Welcome to my new year's resolution.