Wake up and smell the cosmos

The first part of the lines from the oft-repeated early 20th-century poem, Desiderata, by American writer Max Ehrmann, do seem uncannily applicable to present-day South Africa.

“With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams” this country of ours seems, on most days, to be a lost cause.

Our government – when its members are not looting on an industrial scale – seems to be trying to tear itself apart into angry factions; our economy would be in the toilet were that toilet not already broken; the races are now further apart than at any time since Nelson Mandela took office in 1994 and the world was awed by our “rainbow nation”.

Oh yes, and our national football team sucks.

Yet, it is not all doom and gloom.

We need to wake up and enjoy the cosmos flowers, nature’s introduction to autumn and which are now in bloom all over Gauteng.

Our pictures today – of the cosmos and of the down duvet of clouds below the Northcliff Hill in Joburg – show not only the beauty, but the hope nature can bring.

The rest of Ehrmann’s line is worth repeating: “It is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

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