2010 seems to be the year of uncertainty. In a year when we experienced the uncertainty of an election campaign that took weeks to get to any kind of resolution, the AFL Grand Final, the bastion of certainty in an uncertain perfidious world is also uncertain, incomplete.
The game finished and players in both teams gave the universal symbol of sporting submission and despair, placing their hands on their heads and then collapsing to the ground in despair and confusion. The two team captains shared a brief word and then consoled their team mates. Spectators watching at the ground, on TV, on big screens, or at the pub were angry, upset, or both.
This was not how it was meant to be!
The Grand Final was a certainty in life. After four quarters there would emerge a victor, there would be some medals, some speeches, some streamers, some bad singing of the club song, heaps of male bonding and tears, some disturbing male-on-male bum pats, ecstatic supporters, dumbfounded and grief stricken supporters.
There would be a result rooted in the binary certainty of winner and loser that helps us all sleep better at night.
But life isn’t a safe binary journey. It is messy, chaotic, and uncertain. The only certainty is that the sun will rise at the beginning of the day and set at the end of the day. Everything else is up for grabs. And this is a wonderful thing worth celebrating. From this uncertainty and chaos great art, great inventions, and great empires can be created.
We should be grateful that that the mundane 24 hour media cycle can be interrupted by an uncertainty like a drawn Grand Final or a hung parliament. What is less worth celebrating is that it can also be interrupted by floods, earthquake, tidal waves and bush fires.
Life however uncertain is both precious and beautiful and is worth celebrating every day.
Go saints!!
Photo Credit: Jaxxon