It is Anzac day 2019, just a public holiday to some, but a lot more to others.
It is also my beautiful daughters 34th birthday, so it is a good day.
As we take the day off, some will just be thankful that the self-serving, fact free, fabricated drama, and partisan nonsense of this election season has also taken a break.
Anzac Day has re-emerged from a slumber in the late 60’s to mid-seventies, when it seemed that it had faded in our collective memory. In 1976 I massaged the itinerary of a European camping tour I was leading to take us down the Gallipoli peninsula to the Lone Pine memorial. I was surprised that we were so close, and the visit was not included, but much more surprised that so few of the 45 twenty something passengers, knew much about what had happened there.
Perhaps the re-emergence of awareness and pride in the role Australians have played in wars has less to do with the facts of the sacrifices made by our forebears, than it has to do with our collective search for something to believe in, as they did. Something to bind us together, trust the word of a stranger because they looked in our eyes and said it was so.
The tools of modern communication are extraordinary, but we are more alone, more fragmented, more focussed on ourselves, and more pessimistic than ever, while we live in a world of plenty.
It should be the opposite way around. We are highly social animals, the tools should have made ‘community’ easier, not harder, not more elusive.
I look at all this through the eyes of a cynical, but well informed, educated, and thoughtful 67 year old baby boomer. I am a recipient of the largess brought on by the post war boom, and general prosperity since. While there have been some set-backs, on balance it has been a good life. That good life is in good measure thanks to those who went before, and made it possible.
Lest we forget.
Happy birthday Jennifer, now let your cranky old dad go and tend the BBQ, as an excuse to soothe his parched throat.
