Life is a risky experience of survival and history teaches us it has always been that way.
My three score and 16 years tell me the future will be no less so and that the hazards will continue to take on new forms with each generation.
We are programmed to survive and enjoy the challenge.
As we harness tiny bits of natural power, it serves us well; but the combined capacity of the human race is totally inadequate to restrain the limitless, latent power of natural disasters such as the Asian tsunami.
No matter how mighty we think our kind are, we are subdued by what we are seeing now and it takes a catastrophe to make us aware of our vulnerability.
Don't we have enough on our plates facing the extremes of nature, which favour no particular race, sex, creed, commercial interest or ideology, without having to fight man-made perils across the world?
I have an impossible wish for this new year in this new millennium that the separate power bases of the whole of humanity could face the challenges, achievements, joys, pitfalls and sorrows of life together, without strife.
Our in-built greed, which tells us that the more you have the more you are able to dominate others and survive, is very strong, but maybe we can see some progress towards our common survival on earth, irrespective of who and what we are.
Basically, we are the same even if we are all individual.
Leighton Croft,
York.
Updated: 09:46 Tuesday, January 04, 2005
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