Shared Experience

In previous years, I’ve never been a big fan of getting out to the dawn service. But ANZAC Day this year was different. Like many streets, ours handed around a note saying we should all get out to the end of the driveway at 6.00am. Most of the street turned out – if coronavirus has done one thing, it’s elevated the sense of community.

As dawn broke it was still and warmish and the birds in the huge gum a few doors up were making quite a racket. There was something quite uplifting about hearing the birds, knowing that regardless of the economic situation or virus lockdowns, this would continue.

Neighbours a few doors up had an outdoor Bluetooth speaker to play the service, and with so little other background noise the ceremony carried from one end of the street to the other. Perhaps the real sense of standing alone but within sight of others created a real sense of the tension between isolation and communion.

But the real moment of revelation came during the playing of the Last Post. Ours is a slightly hilly suburb, and the time delay as the sound of the bugle echoed across the valley meant that after “our” Last Post had finished, the Last Post from other streets was still reaching us – evidence that others were there too, and it made me think of all the other streets up and down the country I couldn’t hear but knew had families standing at the end of their driveways.

ANZAC Day this year has so many more resonances – not just a remembrance of Gallipoli 1915 or other combat, but of the reality that although, today, we all stand alone, we do it beside close others, within sight of more distant others, within hearing of unseen others and within the awareness of unknown others.

This is a time when we face mass unemployment, a pandemic of uncertain dimensions, loss of wealth and retirement certainty, as well as a host of concerns which afflict so many families in the normal course of life. I’ve taken part in the IMAP virtual conference this week with many advisers, and they’ve almost all said that what their clients want to talk about is not “why am I down x%”, but what this all means for their family and community.

Clients’ questions are a reminder that we appear to be experiencing an elevated sense of the importance of community – whether in our street, JobKeeper and other programs, or the global cooperation in the search for a vaccine. ANZAC Day this year might be representative of that broader sense of care for others.

Have a good week.

Toby Potter