T

he superbly crafted Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia'€™s Founding, a broiled and fractious tome penned by Australian expatriate, the late Robert Hughes, despite his erudition and deft anecdotal style, fails to win us over: it is a book steeped in blood and full of the grit of torture and survival at '€œthe end of the world'€, Van Diemen'€™s Land.

But one incident holds our attention, showing the break with the rigid Georgian fabric of rank and power between convicts and their wardens.

It is the friendship between Lt. Gov. Collins and the forger James Grove: they become the closest of buddies.

When Collins passes away, Grove is so heart-broken that, a mere five weeks later, he too goes the way of all flesh. What exults this episode is the imperishable bond that ensues between Grove and the man who had returned him to respectability.

If we, too, want to have some of that peace and the joy of discovering friendship in strange places, it might well be worth it to sample some of the ingredients.

What is the stuff of countries? At the governmental level, it is all about magnified gestures and homilies about supposed virtues to uphold, but it is actually a panopticon of the gruff and ever unsatisfied demands of the ego, here magnified to scurrility.

For Australia and Indonesia, the official level is always about '€œbusiness as usual'€ and narrow positions of political self-interest: it is never about inclusiveness and love of the other.

So with the scenario over the imminent execution of two Australian citizens, the daggers that were always barely hidden beneath the tunic of diplomatic doublespeak and innuendo are drawn.

To magnify the presence of the blade, it is thrust skyward. As the contestants in this hippodrome of illusions mount their forbidding mares, each foaming at the bit, those who populate the spectacle on the outer rings now see only through the narrow slits of color and number, and the lane their contestant enters.

All place bets by mere association with stable: what'€™s that? It'€™s the smell of the hay, the forelock, the color of the bunting slung around the neck, or the style of gaskin and hock; now the steady eye of the mares begin to roil under the spur that pricks flesh: all our emotion is an investment in such entirely meaningless things!

What draws us, the people, in? Who is the spell-master of such disheveled ideas and senseless tourneys? For one, the politicians and diplomats are accoutered and styled to represent our best interests, or thus it always goes.

Concepts such as '€œfreedom'€ are suddenly in everyone'€™s mouth, but a concept not understood does not suddenly grip in the echo chambers of our heart because it is bellowed out by everyone.

Freedom is never a freedom I do not share with others: how, with clods of earth churned up by the frantic gallop and hocks tensing and tendons flaying, can I possibly discover that my freedom is never '€œwon'€ '€” thus never to be wrested from anyone in combat or by forceful means, even if these be merely astringent and adversarial thoughts.

If freedom cannot be '€œwon'€, it might stand to reason that it is already present. If so, what about the '€œchallenges'€ to such freedom, some interjections waft in, off-stage.

Once again, what is truly free is still: it does not fight nor resist nor prove itself.  Its stillness is the proof of its existence, its continuance, its perpetual ease.

When I discover that I have nothing to defend, all attack thoughts  suddenly dissolve and what was never a race at all is really over now; the turbid clouds in the eyes of the mares dissolve in moonlit translucence and the stillness deepens even more.

Peace, and the freedom that it brings, is inalienable and cannot be tendered in the marketplace of vanities. Yet few want peace: our own unease and cantankerousness draw us toward spectacles and revel in sounding the bugle of war toward anyone who enters our path.

So our time is in urgent need for authentic freedom and thus we bid our contestants to dismount and to return to their stables to prepare the fodder for the mares and run their calloused hands across their manes: this is the role of politicians and their hirelings, the legal eagles, who only inspect the stables for horsehair wigs.

This is the ground for you and me: the moment for little gestures, but defined by kindness and love of our neighbors, thus gestures that expand, not contract like the agued heart of fear.

Here tell the countless stories of kindness we have all experienced, every day, when strolling down a small alley in Bali'€™s Canggu somewhere on a late evening, with the whispers of the gamelan accompanying our brief sojourn onward in this dream.

And what of the Indonesian student in Victoria, rising on a crisp winter'€™s morning and joining a sapling-planting event in the local gardens? Even if not all the faces were smiles, you felt that spring of kindness beneath the robust exterior, and eventually you came to love this land and saw your sapling grow into a healthy tree, and its branches are still extending everywhere.

The hippodrome is empty, the horses have gone to the pastures to graze: it is time for peace and restorative dreams, and a time for dialogues of love and inclusion.

I let go of my ego-bloated defenses; I no longer have to be '€œright'€ and prove anything, for I have gone to look for the love in my brother, and he is waiting for me, having overcome his listlessness and ready, in turn, to surrender all the meaningless things he had clung to before.
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The writer is a senior research fellow at the School of Commerce, University of South Australia and a Jakarta-based writer.