(I just have to put in these pieces from Leunig. Absolutely brilliant! My soul aches like his. Read the whole article and have your life 'changed'!
The glass is half full of what?
MICHAEL LEUNIG
July 30, 2010
... All too quickly another election approaches, and instead of feeling gratitude or elation about the blessings of democracy, there are a great many who feel a pronounced spiritual slump. As a friend wrote to me recently: "I'm picking up a worn-out sadness about the election . . . like when one gets the Santa Claus costume out all over again: more ho, ho, ho but the same old sham, and everybody knows it." ...
... Like the modern Christmas, elections have become disgusting. Intelligent meaning has been much discarded in favour of gimmicks, entertainments and irritating confections: a travesty indeed, yet also a failure and a tragedy. For instead of it being a time of vitality — an intelligent illuminating moment when a nation might focus and reflect intently upon its situation — the election has become yet another distraction from what might matter most deeply and seriously....
... Election? politics has mutated and, in unprecedented measure, ? become both anal and manic; an unholy double neurosis that has created its own unique form of self-harm and stupidity. A situation ?otherwise commonly described by the phrase? "we seem to have lost our way". There is something forlorn about these everyday words....
... a population that is so disgusted and baffled by the situation, so weary of being spoken to like idiots, so bored and disenchanted with politics that even a ridiculous television cooking show is ?preferred viewing to the leaders' national debate....
... And why must all of this loom so large? Why all the fuss? Couldn't they do it more nimbly? Are there not more interesting and pressing matters at hand to exercise our attentions — like what are we doing here and where lies peace and truth?...
... When in despair at? such a loud, egotistical system, we may fall back upon the likes of the ancient poet-sage Lao Tzu, who offered an excellent idea about political leaders.
"A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done and his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."...
... There may come a time ?when the soul has had quite enough of politics. Perhaps I have reached that time. Yet there is grief in it somewhere. ...
... It's like when you find out the truth about Santa Claus. There is grief in it, yet there is moving forward also....
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