End is often closer than it seems

Although we don't consciously think it, we all open our eyes and greet a new dawn with hope. Because we are each in this revolving-door business of seeing each day through to the end, unscarred. At least that is what our subconscious attempt is all about.

We must survive Monday and be on hand, fresh and ready, when Tuesday comes along trotting closely on the heels of the departing night steeds. And after Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on. Likewise, we never ever awake and consciously think, 'At some stage today I'm going to encounter the full stop. I shall never say hello, or yallah, to Tuesday again.'

Despite death being such a 'given' in our lives - the symbolic defining terminus on the journey - we have, similarly, trained ourselves to aim at longevity. In being safe we are, therefore, exercising nothing else but a version of procrastination, deference.

As our young lives - and there are so many unseen minefields to negotiate through these formative years - move from youth to adulthood then employment, marriage and family life, we don't realise it but we're creating a little private system from which we cannot in any way permit ourselves to depart.

Fathers and mothers - breadwinners, providers of stability, control, love and bonding, in this private system called 'a family' can in no way allow themselves to become dispensable.

The burning need to stay alive - now not merely for ourselves - but for the children, glows with a white intensity. And so, in a way, the adventure goes out of our lives, or is dimmed considerably, as a subtle caution takes hold and controls our motives. Survival moves to a secondary level although, I am still convinced, we don't awake thinking, 'I must not die today.' Yet that is exactly what all our actions are about.

Only the very young, in whom cohesive, cogent thought processes are still not fully formed, awake and sail through the day gliding as it were on a river of bliss. They have no notion, as yet, about the dreaded 'full stop!'

No mischievous older sibling has told them terrifying tales of earthquakes, evil cannibalistic ogres, wars, bombs or famines. Peace is as pristine as it will ever be, in these years. This is the innocence of not knowing - the innocence of ignorance. There are no clearly demarcated days, months or years in such an existence, utopian in nature as it is.

There are no borders, boundaries. That is why - at this falsely idyllic stage - there is usually always at least one adult hovering in the background, sometimes in the guise of a babysitter when both parents are out working. What exactly was the babysitter doing, I wonder, when recently two absolute innocents strayed (not recognising their limits) into a neighbouring gateway and encountered not one but a whole pack of rottweilers, trained to kill?

Imagine if you will the odds in a conflict when meekness meets savagery. Imagine the outcome. It happened that way. Did the little girls wake up that morning wondering, 'Will I be around tomorrow when dad drives us to the beach?' Most certainly not, I would think. Animals, we know, lack the power of reason. And so the entire pack of wild dogs - in a bizarrely similar, innocent way - could never have known that this day, too, would be their last, put down just a short while after.

This is the second such incident in my brief tenure here and it horrifies me - this social permission of a distinctly unmatched, tragic juxtaposition. Ferocious, feral animals and - separated by a mere gateway - the innocence of babes. I use the word 'tragic' because, in such a cohabitation, neither has the ability to survive the 'full stop'. The end is always nearer than it seems.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.