AT THE time of publishing, Australia is facing an uncertain time and by the time this article is published the situation may not have changed much.
As the dreaded coronavirus takes hold across the nation, we have become almost observers of our own misfortune.
The fear of the unknown and the feeling of powerlessness can be debilitating sometime. The unseen enemy is sneaking into our communities and snatching away the health of our friends, neighbours and even family.
For many of us the threat is a remote one; isolated on farms and rural properties the vision on the television seems to be happening in a foreign country, a place that surely cannot be home.
Surely, if we step away from the crowds, shun the supermarkets and close the door, the threat cannot be real.
“Social distancing,” one farmer remarked. “I’ve been doing that for 20 years, out here on my own!”
But the tentacles do reach out and no-one is guaranteed safety.
Threats such as these tend to strip away the trivia in life.
When the distractions are seen for what they are, we tend to see with a little more clarity.
The iron on the shed flapping in the wind, the peeling paint on the cowshed, even the irritating neighbour who calls by and boasts about his new tractor or the out-block that he has snapped up.
For our city cousins the phenomenon of hoarding, stockpiling and ensuing shortages has been a profoundly stirring experience; something almost primitive in the bid to secure the basics of life, in cities filled with distractions.
The images of empty supermarket shelves poured through social media streams as we discovered the things that we took for granted may not always be so.
In a curiously savage way, the population is being reminded that our food is not something that we can take for granted.
While our farm leaders have been reassuring the population that we have more than enough, deep down many people have been fretting to see random shortages of meat, milk and rice.
It’s a stark reminder that we should not take for granted the things we enjoy.
“Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.” Arthur Golden