It's All Happening

Mudslides, Earthquakes, Tsunami’s.  As Bill Lawry would say “It‘s all happening!”
For the first couple of decades of my life, I lived in Townsville. Specifically I lived in Stanley Street, which was the road up to Castle Hill.  A recurring thought of mine was, “what if a boulder was dislodged from the hill and plummeted down and took out our house?”  Fortunately, it never happened.
There was a street down the road and up from ours called Upper Stanley Street.  I have no idea what the people inside were doing, but a number of years back the earth really did move.  I saw pictures of earth that had moved up to these people’s house, including a large boulder.  Thankfully no one was hurt, but it really highlighted something for me.
We rightfully build things, fully expecting them to last our life time.  We do things on the basis of permanence.  It is too easy to forget that the earth is in a state of flux.  One only has to look at some places built right on the coast, to see that storms erode things.  Climate change is responsible for a lot, but I do not know that it is solely responsible.  Places become abandoned, because they are no longer safe to live in.  The same thing happened as a result of the earthquake in Christchurch.
I have been as blasé as the next person, in assuming that the way things are, is the way they will always be.  In world terms Brisbane seems a really safe place.  I had a doctor who said “if you were a bug, why wouldn’t you live here?”   We are not in an earthquake zone, there are no nearby volcanoes[PK1] , and the reef protects us.  Unfortunately we are not immune to floods and fire.
So often I think of mudslides and the like as a third world thing.  It happens there.  It could not happen here.  Yet there have been fires in Greece, floods in Europe and hurricanes and fires in the US.  All have had a devastating impact.  Lives have been lost and property destroyed.
To me, to think that something cannot happen, is an assumption.  It most likely will not, but it can.  The law of probability is on our side.  However, I did not see a stroke coming.  It did.  Just because I believe otherwise, does not make it so.
What I love though, is that the minute something happens, people emerge and clean up.  Life goes on.
For me, it just means I make the decisions I can now, rather than put it off to another day. I cannot undo the past, and I cannot guarantee the future.  I only have now.  I know what it is like to wish I had something over, and could tell someone I love them, but it is too late.  I could have done so, but that was then, and I need to live with the consequences.
It does not mean I live my life in fear, as I live it in hope.  What it does mean though, is that I do what I gotta do now, as it is all I’ve got and besides “it’s all happening!”

 [PK1]