Tragedy

I have been thinking recently about tragedy, how pervasive it seems to be. Scratch the surface of any life and you will find it, perhaps in a corner not causing much mischief or perhaps all the more present, dominating the life and space of it's host.

The tragedy might have been a random event, like a child being fatally ill, the shocking waste of a soldier being killed by so called friendly fire or the downfall of an otherwise normal middle class family man through hubris or alcohol or gambling or a mixture of them all.

Not all tragedy can be measured on the same scale perhaps, but they are all tragic. All a waste of human potential that starts with the same first hopeful gaze of a mother into an infants eyes in the moments after birth.

The question then is not how can we avoid tragedy, because it will not be denied. It cannot be avoided. We can only prepare ourselves with hope and love and beliefs in things larger than ourselves to sustain us in difficult times.

No the real question is how to we remain so optimistic? It's not a bad thing, this optimism. It gets us out of bed in the morning. It allows us to dream into the future in our minds eye.

It gives us a place to return to that is familiar once the emotions around our tragedy have been normalised. It is how we know we are better - when we return to dreaming and planning our future again.

I don't know how we remain optimistic. I don't know why it is so. I just know it is and thank God for that.

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