Any Ordinary Day

Any Ordinary Day, Leigh Sales

How do people live when tragedy strikes? How do you go on when in the midst of one normal day, things change forever? This is the story Leigh Sales wanted to address in this book, and she has done an excellent, insightful job. She opens with her own story of one day drastically changed, when she had a uterine rupture with her second pregnancy putting both her and her baby’s life in danger. This springboards into a reflection and investigation into how people cope and change when they have faced a major event.

Sales is a long-standing experienced journalist and perhaps this is why she has been able to interview so many people. Included in her list are:

• Louisa Hope, survivor of the Lindt Cafe hostage crisis who also has multiple sclerosis.
• Michael Spence, Sydney University Vice-Chancellor whose wife died four weeks after a cancer diagnosis, leaving him with five young children.
• Walter Mikac, who wife and two daughters were killed at Port Arthur.
• James Scott, who survived 43 days lost in the Himalayas and then become the centre of a publicity storm.
• Stuart Diver, the only survivor of the Thredbo landslide, who has since also lost his second wife to cancer.
• There are others too whose names we might not recall as readily or know at all, but have suffered their own private griefs and shocks.

What is highly valuable is some of her analysis along the way. She interviews past Prime Minister John Howard, who over his 11 years in office was the voice that consoled a nation through Port Arthur, the Thredbo landslide, 9/11 and the Bali bombings. She talks to coroners, police officers and priests and gives helpful comments on the legal profession, police force and those who help others, how they can be helpful or harmful to those grieving and suffering trauma.

She also considers how journalists help or hinder these tragedies, all in the name of reporting what the public want to know about it. She acknowledges there’s always a tension between landing the scoop and treating people with dignity. She is strikingly honest about her own failings and shame in this area, noting that many were due to a lack of empathy:

“There is an unfortunate collision between two forces. Maximum public curiosity and therefore maximum media harassment coincide with the peak vulnerability of the people involved.”

What I found interesting was that three of the people she interviewed have a strong personal Christian faith. I appreciated Sales’ honesty about her struggle with this, almost a sigh when people told her, yet an openness to try to understand how personal faith affected people: “Michael Spence is an extremely intelligent, accomplished, insightful person. If he finds value in Christianity then surely there are lessons for me to draw from that.” Later she comments,

“Religion is an extraordinary helpful tool at times of grief and loss because it offers both an explanation for the inexplicable and a supportive community…For me it has been equally heartening to meet many people who’ve had the courage the face the worst that life can throw at them without faith.”

She makes astute observations along the way about how people are drawn to hear about other’s people tragic circumstances but do everything they can do avoid their own. How people think they could never survive what others have had to go through. How many people can’t stand being that close to people who have suffered as they have no idea what to do or say, and so avoid it altogether.

Most people’s reflections acknowledge that there has been growth through whatever they faced, whether personal change, or a greater sense of purpose or meaning, or seeing communities change for the better as a result. While she does refer to some people who have really struggled with tragedy, it is clear they are not the main focus of her research. In the end, many people reach similar conclusions:

“That in pain, there’s also joy. You can’t be in the presence of just one though, that life is good, or life is bad, or life is sad. There’s all these things. And there are so many good people in the world, actually, so much kindness,. It’s everywhere.” 

“‘Somehow we need to be aware that we’re mortal, that this time is finite,’ she says. “It’s knowing this is all going to end, so let’s make it matter.’” 

“The random distribution of misfortune is perhaps the only thing in life that is fair. No amount of money, fame, power or beauty can save you from tragedy, illness or death if they’re coming for your family. I have a heaping plate of things in life that aren’t fair – nice parents, a peaceful country, a good brain, sound health and caring friends. I didn’t do anything to deserve any of that.”

It’s an engrossing read. Sales has done an excellent job with confronting but also uplifting subject matter, providing analysis and research while keeping a very personal and caring touch over it all.