It’s 29 degrees outside and windy enough that the clouds are flying past, quick enough to give me a little shade as I sit outside enjoying my lunch. I won’t be able to stay long, because the UV is siting at 9 today, only ‘Very High’—it was at an ‘Extreme’ 13 yesterday. My skin is feeling the heat, but it’s a nice sort of sting, the kind that always means its summer in Australia. Well, Autumn now if we’re being technical, but in Queensland our seasons are ‘hot’ and ‘not so hot’, with varying levels of humidity.

I’m sitting just inside the patio at the back of the house eating my leftover roast from last night, and watching the enormous spider web that has been progressing over the last few weeks. I think its an orb-weaver, so it’s not very dangerous, but the web now stretches from ceiling to floor, held in place with the edge of our garden bench and a bunch of stems on the plants below.

The spider is huge too, bigger than my palm, but we don’t bother her and she doesn’t bother us so its cool. With the wind however, a big leaf has blown into the web, and after a minute, I realise that she’s moving towards it.

I watch in awe as she begins to unweave the web it’s caught in, spooling up the bits as she creates a hole big enough to remove the leaf. Barely a minute passes as she expertly extricates the offending leaf, letting it drop to the ground before making her way back to the centre of her web to resume her position. Back to business.

I can’t help laughing a little at the chore I just witnessed, the necessary housekeeping, and how familiar that gesture feels. How many times have we removed a stray leaf from that caught itself on our bodies, in our cars, or our houses? How many times have we tidied up a mess, big or small to restore our living space to its proper order?

Looking away from her, I turned to my pet birds, two cockatiels with personalities far bigger than their tiny bodies. They have a large cage, and one of their favourite forms of entertainment is destruction. So, every week or so when the cage is cleaned, we put in a couple of cardboard boxes from around the house. Tissue boxes are their favourite, but they’re also partial to cereal boxes. Then we get to watch the inevitable play out as they investigate the new boxes to hide in, sit on, tear apart, and move about.

Every morning we uncover them and find the boxes in all sorts of new positions, moved about to suit the latest whims of these two birds. Its hilarious, and always good fun to watch them drag these things about before hiding away inside.

The domesticity of these acts struck me, for how similar they are to my own life. I’m a self-proclaimed neat freak and minor germaphobe who likes things the way I like them. I clean my house with the same ruthless passion, and am always ready to discard things which I no longer need. I’ve been getting my room ready to paint the walls, because the last time I did, it was all patchy! Reserve your judgement please—I tried, and that is the main thing.

But it left me wondering how similar I am to this spider, and my pet birds in this way. How much we all like to make sure our living spaces are just right. How connected we are across species. Of course, it got me thinking big picture, about how all creatures really just want to live their lives in relative peace and safety. Everyone wants to eat well, sleep well, feel safe, and have their ‘home’—whatever that may be—how they like it. How simple it all could be if we were all able and allowed to do so.

I’m writing this amidst the fallout of the ridiculous Trump-Zelenskyy situation which occurred recently, as I almost pulled my hair out watching the US President act like a toddler in one of the most powerful offices of the world—’Don’t tell us how to feel.’ Vance too, with his incessant demands that Zelenskyy ‘thank us’ for deigning to help. He had the nerve to say that they were attempting to go the route of diplomacy as well, when that entire exchange was the most offensive diplomatic discussion I think anyone could have come up with.

As an International Relations student I feel that I am watching the collapse of everything I have learned about. Diplomatic relations are deteriorating on TV, alliances are breaking down, and the entire planet seems to be shifting dangerously closer to rising fascism and all-out war.

Like a car accident, one cannot look away. I often proclaim that ‘I can’t understand how it got like this!’ But the truth is I do understand. I understand how things happened like this, but I just struggle to grapple with why? Why do we choose this reality when there are so many better ones, so many options for peace, growth, and mutually beneficial outcomes?

Why is it that we understand more about the world than ever before, more about human history, more about psychology and behaviour, and yet we fall into the same stupid cycles? Why do so many humans spew such vitriol, hatred, and blatantly untrue opinions about others who they don’t really know? Why do so many people insist upon deciding exactly how people should live, forcing them into it when they would choose otherwise?

Why why why? Why not focus on the things which unite us, on the ways in which we are similar to fuel our most fundamental values? Why not value cooperation—true cooperation—to find a solution which provides the best outcome all stakeholders.

It’s a lot to handle, and difficult to navigate right now. I believe that we can and will find a way through whatever is to come, but I also think its important to admit when things kind of suck. Alas, I can only hope to return to enjoying this moment in the sun, wishing that everyone could find a similar sense of peace.