Voice of Real Australia: It's the end of the world as we know it ... and I feel fine

It's the little things that matter when times get tough.

A phone call from a friend, a quick message to check in, a song to remind you of the good times.

Amid all the COVID news that leaves us feeling flat and hopeless, and there's a lot of it, there's an equal amount of good news worth celebrating.

They are the stories of humanity. About people being kind. About connections.

The sublimely beautiful David Bowie once said: "The truth is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time."

Sure, we are born and we eventually die, but that trajectory through life is far from linear. The lives and experiences of others are woven into it and we experience life and death over and over until the inevitable end knocks on our door and says we're done.

The first of my friends is experiencing the most painful of realities dealt by the COVID card. Her elderly mother, in her 90s, in a Melbourne aged care home, has contracted the virus.

The shock of the diagnosis stopped us all, but it was soon replaced by the family's realisation that time now mattered more than anything. While they are physically distanced from their beloved matriarch, they remain connected through music and dance.

She watches her brood, spanning generations, on a Zoom screen quietly from the confines of her bed as they dance and and sing her favourite tunes and sway with their love for her. The nurses who care for her match that love with physical touch.

It's beautiful to watch - precious, private moments shared because they matter to us all.

So too are the smiles on the faces of parents in our town, proudly showing off their newborns. New life amid all the chaos - our babies of COVID.

One couple Kari and Ben have been blessed with baby Darcy. Isolated from her parents in the UK, Kari then tragically lost her father in April. She was unable to attend his funeral because of the late stage of her pregnancy, her mother's visa was rejected preventing her from coming to Australia and days before Darcy was born, their youngest daughter had a seizure that placed her in ICU.

The couple arrived home and a day later Darcy entered the world. He was, in that moment, the one calm constant in their world reminding them no matter how hard it gets, there's love.

It is undeniably tough right now, but it won't always be this way.

I hope on the other side we all come out more resilient, compassionate and look beyond our own faces and notice each other. There's a lot to embrace about what we can be as humans in a new world.

As REM warbled in 1987 - it's the end of the world as we know ... and I feel fine.

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