From solstice to equinox

Welcome to spring in the southern hemisphere! Where normally buds would be shooting, bees would be buzzing, and the energy of spring gardeners would be getting into stride, Australia is in the grip of an intense heat event. Historical maximum temperature averages of a pleasant 22°C (72°F) have exploded into mid 30s (95°F +)! Once again, parts of the nation are on fire much earlier than expected, raising fears of what the forthcoming summer portends.

And while all this bumbles along, this week also brings a variety of life experiences for the more than 305,000 educators who serve in Australian schools. Some are already unwinding and enjoying their term break; some are in their last week of term; some still have another week to go beyond this current one. It’s a confounding legacy of Federation…and train rail gauges – in days long past, if you got to the end of one jurisdiction’s train service you had to physically get out of one train and get onto another because the two gauges did not match! Sadly, education seems stuck in this mindset of jurisdictional difference decades after we solved some of these practical transport problems. But I digress…

The end of this week will witness the Spring equinox in the southern hemisphere. It’s that time of the year when night and day are approximately equal. It invites an opportunity to revisit #the40project’s last astronomical reflection, that of the winter solstice. In July, the winter solstice provided opportunity to reflect on a time of year that signifies both what “is passing and a longing for new growth and possibility”. Three months later, what difference has that time made to you?

The photo that accompanied the solstice reflection was of a dormant pomegranate tree. To look at, it seemed dead, as is the case for deciduous plants and trees across the globe during winter. This week’s photo shows the same tree, pruned of its unproductive limbs, bursting into life and possibility. Similarly, the mulberry tree that was brutally pruned in the winter is already heaving with ripening fruit (see below). There is much wonder to be had in noticing these seasons, and in witnessing what seems dead not only spring to life but provide nourishment as well as joy. Three months later, what has come alive for you? What is nourishing you?

Yet this is also a sombre, poignant week. The generosity of this wonderful world, manifest in fruiting trees, is savage and cruel, too. Thousands are dead in Morocco and Libya, from the shaking of the earth and the deluge of the skies respectively. It’s hard at times to comprehend scales of such disaster and human tragedy.

As I write, communities on the far south coast of New South Wales are also reliving the trauma of the devastating 2019 Black Summer fires. Schools are closed, fire units on high alert, evacuation plans dusted off and revised. Children, and families, and teachers, and principals, again face memories of devastation and destruction, too recent for such young lives.

What are we to make of it all?

Eighty years ago, French literary philosopher Albert Camus broached the same question in The Myth of Sisyphus. He was born and lived in (then) French Algeria, wedged between the now grieving lands of Morocco and Libya, before moving to France when World War II erupted. Contestable philosophies took devastating tolls on humanity spread across Europe and her dying empires – socialism, communism, fascism, anarchism – and The Myth of Sisyphus was Camus’ response to what he considered the absurdity of “getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give [people] a reason for living”.

Towards the end of the essay, he concludes that “happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable”. It’s a devastating response. While perhaps it makes philosophical sense that the positives and negatives of life have some sort of equivalence, it’s a hard truth to consider. The response, according to Camus, is not to capitulate, or to give in to despair, but is to find happiness in the struggle itself. Sisyphus, condemned forever to push a rock to the top of the hill, only to see it roll back down and return to start the quest again, sees the “struggle itself enough to fill [his] heart”, according to Camus.

It’s a question humanity has wrestled with across time, cultures, religions, philosophies, politics, literature, and the creative arts. How, amid disaster, does one find purpose and meaning? There are no simplistic answers, and we will continue to debate how, no doubt. The conversation itself seems part of the human condition. As with Camus, there is meaning in choosing to “revolt” against the absurdity. Unlike Camus, though, hope and love do seem starkly different answers – and thus perhaps all choices are not equivalent.

Like the story of Ahmed, a blind boy in war and famine devastated Yemen, whose response to such appalling circumstances is to do whatever he can to rebuild and teach in his destroyed school. The short video shows grit, determination, and commitment equal to that of Sisyphus, but Ahmed’s struggle seems to strike a quite different chord.