31 December, 2008

It's that time of year again. The time we move 'forward'... though will we go forward?

2008 was an okay year... Not much changed this time around, as per usual, but there were some of the same progressive milestones.

Our Prime Minister, like last time, issued an official apology to the Indigenous peoples of this land. It's no treaty. It's no voice to parliament, like they asked for in Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017, but it's something.

Given that it was a year of more promise, I wonder... will we go forward again? And if we do... when will they take us to?

Only time will tell.

1 January, 2020

Of all years... 2020? Did they really think they could jump us from 2008 to 2020 and we'd be prepared to take this one on again?

I remember the first time of living this year vividly. The bushfires, Covid, presidential elections, locusts, explosions... Countless destruction. Countless deaths. Absolute mismanagement of state and country. Suppression again of minority voices.

It was a year of absolute disaster with one catastrophe on top of the other.

This was the year when they started pushing us backwards. The 'boss level' of all years that we just keep failing. The one that made them say 'if you can't get it right anymore, then go back through the past and learn from it'.

31 December, 2020

Not one thing changed.

Many died. Many cried. Many suffered.

We are going to go backwards tomorrow, I just know it.

No matter how many times they make us relive the past though, we never learn. We never progress. We're stuck in this endless loop where we make the same mistakes. Where we vote the same white men into power time and time again. Where we keep silencing those who need voices—the Indigenous peoples, people of colour, women, children, other minorities. Where we keep mistrusting the people who are experts—the healthcare professionals, the scientists.

Happy New Year we will say when they push us back. But it's not happy. How can it be when it's the same years lived over and over again? It may be a 'new' year... but it will be the same year too.