Perceptions.. our Craggy Island on a stormy sea ..

Perceptions..
What an interesting day today.. in world events and in my own head. My thoughts focus on the comparitive ease that humans are able to recalibrate their own minds to new circumstances, and how our judgements can only be made relative to what experiences we have had or in fact not had. Perception is truly a very faulty way of any kind of comparison or relative importance of things. At the moment we are suffering from a "Green Drought". Its winter hear in Tasmania, and real rainfalls are way way below normal, the green that we can see is only from the dew and scattered showers we have had. After a large number of well below normal rainfall years certain locals have recalibrated themselves to not realise that it is in fact extra ordinary. Climatic change or natural variability comes in time scales usually well beyond any human comprehension in decades or centurys or even millenia.

Today was a black day indeed in the Middle East with the Israelis bombing quite heavily Lebanon and the very complex web of balances that involves. This has ramifications well beyond these two countries.. its about Palestine, Syria, Iran, the West... Islam, Zionism...and the Christian west. When you take into account the extreme violence that is going on in this region on a daily basis, and compare it to the recent race riots in Cronulla Sydney, and our differening reactions it shows how selective the mind can be. So many of our problems in Australia compared to 95% of the world seem like such a storm in a teacup. These riots that rocked Australia are a minor if not daily event for so much of the world its business as usual for us its a sign of something truly serious.

On a very local level, but thinking globally, listening to locals on Flinders Island here talking about "great problems, or the "chaotic way" people behave in this peaceful paradise seems truly incongrous when you compare in any shape or form to the daily problems of the vast majority of the world. The lesson to be gleaned from this surely then is to keep a global perspective in whatever seems to trouble our minds and lives and find a more accurate yard stick to see if our reactions and reactions are justifiable. In doing so we can maintain a much more balanced harmonious state of mind. Its such a tragedy using this yardstickm, to see the typically human trait of not knowing when we are really very well off. The more we have the more we want. Here in paradise it is exceedingly sad to see how many can be so unhappy so depressed so down troden when there is such an abundance of tools at our disposal for true happiness and to enjoy what we truly have. Like I believe about my own life.. the glass is not indeed half full... the cup runneath over .... Rhuari