Who was here in the early days?

National AIDS Walk for Life, 14 September 2008

In the early days there was an urgency about AIDS - this disease that was decimating communities. On the island our "island mentality" led many to think it would never happen here.
Michael Yoder

But it did.

There was Roy and then Ray, Scott, Sean, Ken, Paul, Tommy, Wayne, Ron, Peter, Bob, Kevin and the list grew.

I say that I stopped counting after 10. But I didn't stop counting.

In the early days, we ranted and raved because nothing was being done. AIDS was about the cast offs of our society - gay men, prostitutes, drug users - governments didn't want to deal with us then.

So we marched and protested, we walked and spoke for those who could no longer walk or speak. Hundreds would appear in September to walk, to remember and to assist those groups who were providing services by pledging donations.

But that was then.

Now we have medications that prolong our lives. Some of us never stopped working and more of us are going back to work. We are not dying in droves and the hundreds of people who walk, became dozens and then handfuls.

Are we now complacent about AIDS?

I don't think so. I think that AIDS in Victoria has lost its urgency and without that sense of urgency the reasons to walk and to speak for those who cannot speak diminished.

But there is a danger in that, because we forget.

And when we forget, we lose those people who fought, who walked, who spoke out when no one else was.

It is our duty to those people that we never forget. We must reach into our souls and continue to walk - though the numbers are smaller and the crowds grow thin.

What we see now is the shadow of what was. But it is a shadow cast by the men and women who through their courage stood up and took the risks that were necessary to move us forward. They saw things and we continue to see things in a way that others do not.

In the Little Prince, Antoine de St. Exupery offers the clearest understanding of this:

Voici mon secret. Il est tres simple. On ne voit bien qu'avec le couer: l'essential est invisible pour les yeux.
(And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye)

I will tell you my secret. It is very simple. It only with the heart that one sees well: the essential is invisible to the eye.

See with your heart. Walk with all your soul. Carry the world with you.

Michael Yoder