Some people have real problems

Am online and listening to the news coverage of the Cyclone Yasi. Thinking of people waiting for the destruction, taking shelter, hoping they will survive it. Being warned that they will spend several hours listening to the sounds of 300 km/hour winds, and there will be no electricity, communication or ability to contact emergency services if they are in danger. 

 It reminds me of the blitz, or stories of people in the holocaust, knowing they are completely on their own, and the biggest fear, of waiting for the unexpected. Everyone is waiting to see just how bad it will be. Again, it's a feeling of dodging a bullet, how hard you try to live in the moment, and appreciate the blessings in your life, without letting your relief turn into fear that it will be all too fragile. Australia has had floods, bushfires and now a cyclone. My state is lucky enough to be unaffected by a major disaster. 

Getting back to minor concerns-I got myself into a new mothers group. My child nurse completely understood my concerns, didn't even bother trying to talk me out of it, and reassigned me to a group in my immediate neighbourhood.  The group is led by my pre-natal yoga teacher, who is very grounded and very good at group dynamics and getting women to dig a bit deeper and find what they have in common, rather than compete with each other (like Tina Fey's character does in Mean Girls!) I am glad and I know I am being sensible, not precious. My life is too short to share with people who are privileged complainers. My sister described them as uneducated-not illiterate, but uneducated in the classical sense, of having broader knowledge of society instead of middle class fears. 

 It was a lesson-I have limited resources, and I need to give energy to people that need me (like my 90 year old grandfather, who is so precious to me, who is such a legendary survivor) and spare it from me people that tax me (privileged complainers, people like my father who won't listen and learn and avoid doing the hard emotional work to move on from their issues). I also need to spend time just having fun, being lighthearted. Helen Garner's fiction is like a self help manual for me at the moment. It is incredibly concerned with family life, emotional lives, how women pass through their 20s and 30s and 40s and what they learn from their romantic relationships, their self destructive tendencies. She has a lot of wit, and makes many wry and acute observations. Her comments about feminism are great, she too calls it like it is on middle class women who utilise big guns to resolve trivial complaints against individuals and their identity issues, compared to being activists for social and generational change.