I hope your year is off to a good start. For folks in Brisbane and Northern New South Wales, Australia, things have started off badly, with major floods, people missing and lives lost. Seeing what folks are going through there, seems to make the effects of our earthquakes far less significant. Things seem very out of kilter in the planet these days, but that's another story...

It's times like this that people (or humanity, actually) come to the fore - again, as happened here in Christchurch, in the midst of our earthquakes. People dropping whatever they were doing, to help complete strangers in need.  Here, I heard of several examples of people whose own homes had been decimated,  yet they were off helping other people.

Although no-one would wish any of this strife on anyone else, it is in the aftermath, in the responses that follow, that true humanity shines, that it even has a curative effect. That the shared experience somehow binds us and connects us with others who have had a similar experience.  And out of this chaos, a way forward occurs (yikes- I'm starting to sound like a tele-evangelist right now).

I believe that this empathy, this ability to connect, this inherent ability to know what others need, all of these qualities are so often overlooked, are not seen as being important, are not even seen as being present, in ourselves, or in others. Because for a whole bunch of reasons we have instead become attuned to the idea that we actually share our place on the planet with a whole bunch of crooks and self-absorbed types, and there is hardly a morsel of good left in anyone anywhere.. 

Yet in times of crisis, we again hear about these core qualities that are present in all of us, and at all times. We don't need to reserve them or save them for times of emergency. It makes me wonder what our world be like if we all did this stuff at all times, starting with the people that are closest to us.

Wow- I'm getting very deep for so early in the year- I better cease before I get a headache. But maybe it's important stuff to think about. Hope your new year is kicking off well. Talk soon...