Dear Bono....

Have you ever pretended an absolutely pointless errand you run needs actually be done in order to save the world? I’m sure professional athletes are excused for doing this all the time to get through the monotony of their so-called sports. Swimmers for instance or marathon runners, triathletes. Each time we put ourselves on a treadmill, we can pretend to be Bruce Willis in a movie where the fate of the planet rests in our hands. Sometimes we are less creative, telling ourselves that if we don’t make the ball into the basket then the world will be destroyed. Or that the planet is counting on us to go to the toilet, make a cup of tea and get back to the couch before the end of the commercial break or life as we know it will cease to exist. Every pretend face in every pretend crowd that has ever pretended to watch us has depended on us at some point in time to perform some sort of pointless task so that the world will continue to turn and civilization spawn.

Although we all do it, the most pathetic activity of all is computer solitaire. Here is a period in our lives where we haven’t even come off our chairs. In a game of computer solitaire there is no game without our imaginations. While it is not absolutely paramount we win, in order to make things interesting we make it absolutely paramount. The black under the red; the red under the black; the six under the seven. For anyone else it would be the same as any other game, however, unfortunately a psychopathic killer has escaped, locked us in a room with nothing but an old Pentium 3 and Windows 98 and will detonate a bomb located at the earth’s core if three games of computer solitaire are not won consecutively. And what follows is even more pathetic – a three-dimensional fountain of cards reigning on our satisfaction before reality pulls in like a Swedish train and all we’re left to do is swallow our own humiliation before the next deal.

There is no Bruce Willis and there are no bombs at the centre of the earth. There are no hobbits, no wizards and no speeding comets headed for the third rock in our solar system. The adventure of saving the world does not exist within the parameters of an imaginary world needing saving. The irony is however that our world does need saving. It is not an inevitable disaster waiting to happen or two zany world leaders about to turn the keys that will blow everything into smithereens. The disaster began long ago. Louis Armstrong and Roberto Benigni were both wrong, we do not live in a wonderful world and life certainly isn’t beautiful. Although it might have once been, both life and the world as we know it have turned to shit. But not because of tragedy. There is always going to be some beauty in a dying world. However, let’s keep things poetic for a time when there is only despair. Now there is not only despair, but neglect. And the horror remains in the fact that we are not even losing sleep or giving it a moment’s thought.

It has become common knowledge now that every time a celebrity clicks their fingers – a child dies. And they die in the same way a child might die in a hit-and-run that takes place outside our homes. They die through neglect not because we don’t care, but because we don’t know to care. If we were woken by a car slamming into a child and speeding off, part of the reason why we would get out of bed and help the kid is because it would be hard to live with ourselves if we merely utilized the broken sleep to empty our bladders before going back to bed. If we only knew the extent of our individual neglect then there would be no sleep. And we can measure our lack of understanding by our very actions. I mean, do we really believe we understand just how dire our world is when we can continue to complain about food in restaurants? We complain not because we’re paying for a service but because we are unaware of perspective. It’s a type of temporary insanity accepted only due to ‘everyone else doing it’. Savour the company we’re in before our entrees should have practically been a Commandment.

Unless one suffers from travel sickness, the child in us tends to covet the window seat. A place to look out. A window for the window to the soul to watch a part of our journey show us this world. Although we already have life, we crave it. We want more from it. To see its potential and feed our souls and feed an emptiness we struggle enduring. But like an episode of Lost we fail to be given any answers, only more questions. Put us out of our misery or give us answers; that’s what I say – that’s all anyone wants. But all we are left with is this devastating reality that everybody is merely killing time; entertaining ourselves until the day of our final breath. It’s as morbid as the depressing expression on Scarlet Johansson’s face in every scene in every movie she’s ever been in, carrying the burden of a bucket of farts under her nose like Robert De Niro’s burden in The Mission. But perhaps such an expression is warranted in such a miserable world. Perhaps Scarlet Johansson is privy to what it all means. And perhaps there is no hope. Perhaps there is only despair. But I don’t think that’s the case.

If we cannot help the poor, let the poor help us. Let them be our saviours, putting us out of our misery and out of our suffering. We need something, anything – something worth praying for. The Christians believe the ones with nothing are the ones with a first-class ticket to heaven. Blessed are the hungry; the meek; those who mourn; the poor in spirit; redheads. According to the Christians, those living in this world with a pre-paid penance are not only our brothers and sisters but our masters. And masters are people for us to serve. There is enough sin in our hearts these days to last us two lifetimes yet no matter how much religion does well at feeding our guilt, we still find the nerve to send back that overcooked steak. Why should we get our steaks how we want them and watch our masters go with nothing?

As our world passes us by in the comforts of our window seats, life provides us pieces to the world’s oldest puzzle. Never was there a time when God’s silence provided so little hope of his existence, than that of the world’s new millennium. We had balloons, we had streamers, we had dancing girls and music – and a Y2K scare, whatever that meant. This was a celebration of time – a man-made concept. Any intervention by God during the celebration of a man-made event would have been an acknowledgement of some sort. Any flood, tsunami or earthquake taking place during the 12-months of the year would merely indicate a case of bad luck. But to have had a natural disaster truly newsworthy on New Year’s Day would have been a reason to get up in the morning.

A natural disaster on January 1, 2000 or even January 1, 2001, would have been a reason to keep doing good; a reason to feel special again. But there was nothing. No burning bush or plague of locusts; there was no wrath, no nothing. You’d think we’ve treated the poor terrible enough to warrant a wrath, surely. A swarm of bees at least. There wasn’t even a voice from the clouds telling Arnie to stick to movies or The Catholic Church to stay away from the kids. Things would have made much more sense if the world had just packed up. All we have now to make us feel special is the continual discovery that the universe is even bigger than we thought it was, with the incessant failure to find little green men, smarter and wittier than we are and without the need to use a tea-towel to open a bottle of salsa. Despite not even coming across that swarm of bees, the day we find aliens is the day I give up on God and start worshipping Stephen Hawking and Galileo instead. But until that day comes, let the Lord be my shepherd.

We’re moody creatures, people. Sometimes we feel like turning our cars around and hugging the stranger in the car who turned off their high-beams just in time to save us from blindness. Other times we yearn stabbing someone in the eyeball merely for emphasizing that their email address is all in lower case. Our ups and downs illustrate just how much we lack in perspective as well as how much we take for granted. I’ve found the most content people I’ve ever interviewed are those who admit they look forward to very little, or rather trivial moments; walking their dogs; cups of tea with their favourite television program. A lot of carers or parents of sick children find happiness in their routine. In my experience, many parents of sick children or children with disabilities can be sometimes sad but generally remain content because of their constant busyness. Or the time spent with their kids gives them a sense of fulfilment. But how much is happiness based on the way we play our hand? The problem is, weariness can easily be confused for wisdom.

When fatigue can bear the same characteristics as wisdom, how then do we know who to turn to for answers? Even if we come to terms with the idea that we will never know what it all means or what we’re supposed to be doing, it doesn’t mean happiness through acceptance will bring any meaning. Happiness might be overrated. If we live to be 100 ─ 100 years is nothing compared to an eternity. And while there is nothing more annoying than an existentialist questioning meaning, the subject should be warranted when discussing our world’s lack of perspective.

An old Chinese proverb states that:

If you want happiness for an hour ─ take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day ─ go fishing.
If you want happiness for a month ─ get married.
If you want happiness for a year ─ inherit a fortune.
But if you want happiness for a lifetime ─ help others.

The ancient Chinese have a reputation for being wise and these rather wise-sounding doctrines encapsulate just how simple it should be for happiness to be achieved. Today in the information age we are spoilt by technology but also by the addiction of speed. Faster access; swifter response-times; quicker travel ─ more and more bright and shiny objects whizzing past us avert our attention elsewhere, making ‘naps’ not so exciting anymore and ‘inheriting a fortune’ certainly not something to be joking about. An introduction to the world in the middle of a technological revolution is not the best time to enter this universe, especially if you had intentions of being happy. The highs and lows connected with possession and loss can be too much to take and in this generation, we’re expected to go through a number of partners and heartache before we find that special someone we marry, who we will statistically end up divorcing anyway. What a poignant moment it is finally finding the ‘one’ who happens to also be numbers six or seven. This is not to say things are more cynical ─ just more complicated.

If fishing and afternoon naps and relishing a beautiful sunset were what we really appreciated in our lives, then I believe we would think about children differently. Our grounds for bringing children into this world vary from that of the sub-Saharan African. In a continent ravished by famine, disease, hunger and AIDS, African women still believe this world is worth bringing children in to see. They still believe life a worthy gift to give. The desire to bear a surviving son can be so fervent by the poor that they factor in the probability that most of their children will most likely die before the age of five. The sub-Saharan’s mentality might be similar to that of God’s or Lemaitre’s design of procreation with the sperm and the egg. The reflection being ─ the more children, the more chance one of them is going to make it.

In the developed world, we factor in every mitigating circumstance when deciding when to start a family. Incomes must be budgeted, careers timed, commitments put on hold. The abortion rate is higher because the option is available. In the developed world we have the opportunity to show a new baby a world with jumbo jet air-travel, fireworks on New Year’s Eve and iPods that will hold more than 50,000 songs, yet we worry in advance if life holds enough opportunity for them to be able to make it. While in the third world fertility rates skyrocket with women bearing children to see a world with nothing but the enjoyment found in sunsets and nature’s raw beauty. The point is not that either is right or wrong, but more so that the latter is not wrong.

While it is certainly arguable, on a global scale as well as in an individual sense, we never taken pride in our world. No one ever says out loud they are proud to be from this place called Earth. Although there is much fuss of late to take care of our planet, it is through selfish and practical motivations rather than anything poignant or any type of comradeship. And the reason there is no pride in our world is because there is no competition and there is no notion of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ conception. We are proud of our hometowns; patriotic towards our nations; and fanatical about our football teams ─ all because we have a yearning to be better than others as well as maintain a hold on our identities. But because we have no one to show-off this world to, there is nothing to take pride in. Seventy per cent of the planet is water and the other 30 per cent is 7 billion people living on a bunch of islands killing time matching paint with kitchen tiles. And all of them do so to show-off these kitchen tiles to their fellow human beings who, rather anti-climactically, have seen it all before.

When we speak about climate change we are determined on reaching the objective of sustaining a healthy planet for our future generations to live in, however, we are failing to tend to our current generation perishing in parts of this inhabited 30 per cent land-base. This is the same mentality as a bride getting into shape for a wedding two years away or a job around the house that ‘one day I’ll get around to’. If we were to step back and Google Earth planet Earth for just a second and see the bigger picture, our isolation as a planet is something out of Lord of the Flies. In clans or countries we can function pretty much okay with rules and governments and co-operation between one country and another as far as trade and economic interests lie. But in a global capacity we have no need and no invested interests in caring for the weak. The discipline of psychology is perhaps the only positive force for the third world helping anyone living in extreme poverty earn themselves a grain of rice from Lawrence Kohlberg’s belief that having morals helps us sleep; sleeping helps us sustain energy; energy helps us go to work and make money; and money helps us be attractive and buy massive television sets. Both this and the urban legend of the Jew carpenter dying on the cross because the rest of us had started acting like jerks.

In a bid to host an Olympic Games, a city does everything in its power to look good for its IOC selectors. And once the city has secured the role, it then must go even further to have things stay looking good before the games takes place. Homeless people need to be dispersed, drug addicts swept out of gutters and hookers sent to stay with their mothers’ for a couple of weeks. Hitler was a little less subtle, opting to murder a thousand pesky gypsies before the Berlin Games. But, we’ve come along way in the art of ‘Hiding Unsavoury Characters for an Olympic Games’ since then. Of course, soup kitchens were closed down and capsicum spray used on the poor prior to the 1996 Atlanta Games but you know what they say – don’t hate the player hate the game.

At the Sydney Olympic Games 10,000 police, 30,000 security guards and 4,000 armed forces were implemented to make sure Australia looked good for the world to see. Therefore, the country needed to set an example; she needed to be prosperous; she needed to be secure; and she needed to be fair. And there was only reason for it to be all these things when there was competition. When there is competition a nation needs to be the best. The world; or planet Earth; or that thing God has got with mum and dad in his hands; or whatever you want to call it doesn’t need to be perfect if there is no competition. Unless we held a separate Olympic Games where we collectively raced as a planet against Martians from Mars, Orkans from Ork and Kryptonians from Krypton, would we ever need to tend to the disgraceful issues that take place in our world such as extreme poverty, depression and suicide, violence against women, equality amongst women in the workplace, nations still using methods of torture or the never-ending conflict in the Middle East. Like Lord of the Flies we are a bunch of children living in a society with rules amongst our clans we have agreed upon. And whilst there is no need for a perfect planet then there is no need to tend to the third world or any of these important issues.

While the most probable explanation is that Jesus Christ isn’t really God at all, I still like to think we are most like him when we are on our treadmills or playing computer solitaire. For us, the way we get through a pain barrier or a stressful situation is to pretend to have purpose. Pretend we are doing good or helping others. Christ was poor; a blue-collar tradie. He was a man tortured by being whipped and being made to perform the pointless task of carrying a big-arse wooden cross up a hill. And I’m sure the fact that he believed he was doing it to save a few million lives helped him get through that pain barrier. But this pointless cross just so happens to now be the symbol of every terrible thing every single person and their ancestors has ever done. It symbolises the affair people have had, the sons and daughters that have been ignored and the people we have hurt. Today the cross symbolises the global neglect that is killing millions and millions of helpless children every year. But what is the expiration date on a Jewish Messiah saving us from our sins?

But in our last breath it could all make sense. The meaning we’ve been looking for; the reason for the sorrow and the suffering. In one dying breath, like a family secret aching to make its way out, the meaning could infiltrate us; penetrate us; fulfil us. It could give us everything we ever wanted but couldn’t find in a lover, a child or a sacred text. All our questions could be answered in one dying breath. Voyeurs of the journey, sailors of the splendour, whatever you want to call us, we see this thing called life and demand it must have grounds for its sorrow. It must. If our interference of sorrow is the end of us all, then let kindness be responsible for the world’s demise.

Whether we are meddling with someone’s penance or our actions are more hindering than a help; there must be purpose. And in one dying breath it could all make sense. In a dying breath, length, width and breadth mightn’t be the only ways of seeing things but its mystery the force that allowed the world to keep turning. If sheer misery did not always have that touch of beauty, that poignancy and painful delicacy – then finding mercy to extinguish such sorrow would be a much easier task. But after all this time we need to find the kindness we have inherited, give our whispers weight and begin for the first time taking care of one another.