I know I can overthink what I hear, but words matter. The difficulty (in all of us, to be fair), is that our words can give mixed meanings. They can also represent a shift in thinking. When we shift our thoughts, it is good to let people know our minds have changed (and thus our words). Keeping this internal shift to ourselves can leave us appearing hypocritical, confused, or both.

Why is my soul restless in trying to make sense of what I am hearing from our political elite class? It is because I am struggling to see how what is said makes sense, because so many of the words seem to represent a different world than the one that I think we live in.

I am old enough to know how America helped us out in the second world war, in which my dad fought. I was schooled long enough ago to know how it is our British heritage in government, law, education, and social virtues that have made this nation the relatively safe place that it is. I won a place to university when it was competitive and treasured walking through big libraries and seeing information and wisdom from across the ages right in front of me. Some of my fondest memories come from seeing a book and sitting down on the carpet to thumb my way through it.

My best friend and I married the respective treasured young women of our youth, worked hard, lived with full stomachs but without luxuries, saved and bought our houses just blocks apart from where we grew up (in Sydney). We worked every vacation while at uni, and took whatever jobs we could initially find straight after our graduation. And those houses, basic though they might now seem, were within our reach, as long as the local bank knew of your good character. Any short holiday at the beach was a treat for adults and children alike.

We managed the children and jobs through family support, with one parent not working full time. My wife started a group for other young mums and together they learnt the joys and foibles of watching babies become toddlers who became children of energy, laughter, and inquisitiveness (and yes, and who at times became artful in their wilfulness). There was no doubt the children were ours – to love, to discipline, train, and to nurture. Our local faith community were there on the same journey of making sense of life by knowing each other, without threat or compulsion, but instead, by deep reflection, and by the safe activities that involved people of all ages.

Hand on heart – we did not express demands of ‘what was rightfully ours’. We knew how to budget for insurance (for our belongings and our lives, including voluntary superannuation). We lived through interest rates in the high teens and adjusted accordingly. And we believed we were blessed, because even then the news revealed to us the strife, pain, and death that many suffered in other places around the world.

But now – even though we are still almost perversely so well off in Australia, things have changed. What is confusing for me is that I cannot make sense of the descriptions of so-called reality from our political leaders. It is as though the ‘guardrails of virtue and character’ have been removed, and we have become a coarser, more shallow, more sensuous, less intimate, crazily debt-addicted, and politically mesmerised bunch of dissimilar sub-groups of persons, each out to get more from the other from within a hierarchy of entitlement.

What do I hear from our leaders who try to explain that all this is okay? Here is a sample:

‘We are okay with our USA alliance’ – even though what we see is what Sir Cliff Richard sang: ‘We don’t talk anymore.’ That does not make sense, because good relationships require good face-to-face communication.

‘We are becoming an energy superpower’ – even though our energy is becoming less reliable, more expensive, and horribly subsidised.

‘We are successful as a nation of immigrants (bar the original inhabitants of course)’ – but I see and hear words of such public hate, wishing death on others, in the most vulgar language that would have attracted social scorn and police action in my teen years.

‘Everyone just needs to tone it down – let’s de-escalate’ – even though, as Douglas Murray pointed out, horror is always a part of war and conflict. But if we do not recognise the evil amongst us that celebrates such horror, that evil will be made manifest in our midst.

‘We are here to improve your children’ by free day care and other handouts, and with the government controlling what is taught – but too many of our instructional results are going backwards, and we have forgotten how to invite and train children and young people into good character (this has become an impossible task when your truth does not have to having anything in common with my truth).

‘You are getting better wages’ – even though the cost of everything else is rising.

‘We know what we need in defence’ – even though we ignore an imperialist nation rehearsing their capabilities around our country, and we can’t find enough people to defend us, let along the bullets, drones, missiles, and planes for them to use.

So, should my soul be restless? Yes, because I know not the real heart of our leaders. Their words are either deceptive, ignorant or naïve – or a combination of all. Why? Because ‘their truth’ is not real in my world.