Together

This morning I was taken back to the year 1997, when I sat glued to the television, hoping with all of my everything that a man named Stuart Diver would be rescued from beneath a mountain of rubble — the devastating result of a landslide at Thredbo: an Alpine Village in New South Wales, Australia.

The landslide at Thredbo broke the heart of just about every human in Australia, I’d go so far to say. Stuart was the sole survivor of the landslide that killed 18 people, including Stuart’s wife, Sally, who drowned in the rising icy waters beside him.

This post has no direct link to Stuart Diver and his shining human spirit, but it does have a few indirect links to (and hopefully a few reminders of) the magnificence of the human spirit. So I’m writing these words in honour of Stuart, and also in honour of every human who knows how beautiful it feels to shine through our dark times together.

Right now, twenty three years after Australia came together so beautifully for the good of one man, humanity finds ourselves in the united states of everyone hates each other. Just when we need each other the most.

What happened all those years ago, however tragic, was the most magical shining human thing I’d ever experienced. Aching life had brought us together. All of us. Every Australian, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, personality type: we all became one as we anxiously waited to see if our mate Stuart would pull through.

We cried real tears as we witnessed the beautiful bond between rescued and rescuer. We winced at the thought of Stuart’s journey beyond the rubble (which, tragically, only got worse before it got better when Stuart lost his second wife to breast cancer.) My point is: we ached. And we ached together.

We’re not those united humans, anymore. We’re about a gazillion aspects of our oneness, bursting into about a gazillion fragments of hate and pain and judgement. What might happen if we take a moment to remember just how beautiful we are, together? What might happen if we sat in our quiet for a few moments and just loved each other fully?

Currently, humanity is healing from about a billion years of collective shadow trauma, so the mature part of me wants to be kind to us as we vomit up all the nonsense we’ve shoved down for so long.

But there is another aspect of me who wants to shout at us for being dicks, and say: ‘Guys. We’re not getting it. We need to just stop and see the bigger picture.’

Meep.

Sorry for the cranky pants.

I suppose I might post a soft and fluffy poem on here tomorrow.