Closing Pandora's Box

Because all our lives are variations on just a few themes, and all our questions, our hopes and fears and joys and sorrows, so similar, I can enter imaginatively into your world and your vulnerability as you can enter into mine. And we can exercise, compassion, a compassion born of empathy. Both words are synonyms for love, by which I don’t mean a romantic feeling but the readiness to give proper attention to whoever or whatever is before our eyes. – Michael Mayne.

A month or so ago, I posted an article from BBC news about the cost of love. It was looking at the ‘not so great’ aspects of love, such as blindness leading to being used, drifting apart and forgetting. You can read that article here. While reading the news this morning I came across the article above (click here) which cites research that has shown love can act like a painkiller and reduce the effects of pain. Seeing a picture of a loved one or thinking about them has a somewhat euphoric effect. Professor Paul Gilbert says, “It’s important to recognise that people who feel alone and depressed may have very low pain thresholds, whereas the reverse can be true for people who feel secure and cared for.” Nicely said prof.

Life’s fun with one, way better with two .

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Here’s another article I came across written by a clinical psychologist who actively believes in talking to her patients over the phone as a way of helping them deal with their problems. Though this article is written from a healthcare stance, I think it applies to everyone and talking to someone whether they be a doctor, psychologist, friend or family is something we could all benefit from.

“You matter because you are you & you matter to the last moment of your life.” – Dame Cicely Saunders.

When the NHS was founded on July 5^th 1948, it was a big step into the unknown. The government wanted to provide healthcare to each and every individual and would be responsible for funding. Not everyone was optimistic. The Editor of the British Medical Journal at the time agreed with the logic of spreading the cost of the treatment of illness over the whole community but feared many dangers in a state run medical service; dogma, timidity, lack of incentive, administrative hypertrophy, stereotyped procedure and lack of intellectual freedom. At that time, Aneurin Bevin, a key figure in the formation of the NHS, wrote to all the medical professionals and consoled them saying any problems would be dealt with. You can read his message here.

Death is something which the NHS wasn’t ready to deal with in it’s infancy. It’s main aim was to cure and or manage illness. It was at that time that Dame Cicely Saunders founded St Christopher’s Hospice in 1967 aiming to promote and provide skilled and compassionate palliative care of the highest quality. Every Thursday evening, I go to St Christopher’s, training to be a volunteer. It’s been 3 weeks now and already I have learnt a lot. I thought I’d share some of those things with you.

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Hope and it’s relationship with honesty.

Hope is one of the few things in life that can keep us living when there is nothing else left. It is the light that is nearly always on even when every other light may have turned off. Hope can make the dead walk, it can transform the weak into warriors and can give a broken man a reason to believe in tomorrow. However hope given falsely can cause irreversible damage. “People shouldn’t give false hope when there’s none around,” said one of the other volunteers. Hope is extremely potent, a small amount, the size of a grain of sand can shine up a person’s life. But it is highly important that when we share hope with someone bereft of it, we do so honestly. There’s no point telling a person who has just lost their legs in an accident to keep the hope of walking again. Such hope, based on falsehood and nothing, is more likely to have extremely detrimental effects than do anyone any good.

Pull yourself together, and just get over it…

When passing through an illness or the grieving period after the death of a loved one, there are some people who due to a lack of experience and understanding may tell you to pull yourself together, to strengthen up and to get over it. Truth of the matter is, every day you spend bedbound or every night you spend crying the tears of sorrow, you’re telling yourself exactly that. You don’t need others doing the same. After all, sorrow and a person’s way of dealing with it is personal, as is the time it takes for them to come to terms with their loss. The journey of acceptance after a traumatic event is like a daunting climb up a mountain; full of hardships and extremely tiring. If any one needs to make that journey of acceptance quickly, it is those people who tell you to hurry up. They need to accept the fact that you need your time and them constantly pushing, directly or indirectly, will probably make it a lot harder for you.

You talk, I’ll listen.

I’ve always been a strong believer in the power of talking about one problems and having someone who will listen. In one of the training sessions, our supervisor told us to find a partner and tell them something we had really wanted to do or achieve but were unable to do so because of whatever problem. It was the listener’s job to speak as little as they could but give their full attention to the speaker. Each person got approximately five minutes to talk. In a room surrounded by people, the majority of whom, like me, had lost a loved one made me feel comfortable. Most of us had felt the pain that follows after the death of someone dear and could see it in each other’s eyes. When I began talking to a complete stranger, the words flowed by their own accord. Normally for those of you who know me personally will know that I rarely talk about such things. But at that moment in time, the feeling of unity shared as a result of loss, helped me formulate words and sentences I had never spoken before. The other person, just nodded in understanding and that was enough. The calmness and the relief it brings is something which further strengthened my belief in talking and listening. Sometimes we don’t need happy pills or pills that will stop us from dying, but instead having someone who will listen properly and at least try to understand is one of the greatest things we can ever wish for.

The two small words ‘I’m sorry’ can sometimes be extremely difficult to say. Maybe because they are potentially so powerful and sometimes also require one to swallow a massive chunk of pride. Apologising honestly can save relationships, mend friendships, burn out the fire of anger and it also has various health benefits. Those people that find it difficult to apologise have a serious flaw in their characters. The best apology is one in which a person realises their mistake, takes responsibility and feels regret for their actions and subsequently tries to do something to remedy the situation. There are times for apologising and others when actually you shouldn’t. Agree?

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The following message is for The General. Please excuse my rather scruffy and somewhat illegible handwriting; it was written in a bit of a hurry.

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I was recently talking to a friend of mine who told me that I had become distant and it seemed as if we were drifting apart. They weren’t too happy about it and that forced me to take a few minutes out from the daily grind and examine myself and what I have become. I wasn’t too happy about what I discovered.

In the final few paragraphs of ‘The Story’, I made the following promise, which I wish to reiterate, to all my friends:

With so many deaths close to home among family and friends recently, I realised just how much we take for granted; the friendships, the relationships and the other acquaintances. You can never know when such people may leave, go, or die. And when they do, you’re left wondering whether their last thoughts of you were full of happy memories or whether they left with no memories due to lack of contact or neglect on your behalf. Recently, I think I have been guilty of neglecting and that really scares me. I don't want to be remembered as the person that never remembered and so hereby promise to try even harder in that regard. If I ever fall short in that promise, forgive me and feel free to remind me. – From ‘For Your Story’.

I’d be the first to admit that I can be annoying, unpleasant, irritating and may even say some hurtful things unintentionally due to my short-sightedness at times. If I have ever said or done anything to you, that may have caused you distress, hurt; both physical and emotional and or sorrow, then I want to say I am truly sorry. 99.9% of the time, if I ever am guilty of doing such things it is totally unintentional. Intentional or unintentional, that doesn’t take away the hurt a person may have felt and for that reason I ask for your forgiveness. It may be that you cannot forgive me today, nor tomorrow, nor next year but that’s fine. I accept full responsibility for the flaws and dents in my character and I want you to know I really do regret many things.

The trick is in what one emphasizes (when thinking). We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. – Carlos Castaneda.

Thinking. What type of thinker are you? Click on the link below, download the PowerPoint and see for yourself. It puts forward a very important message for us all.

Click here to download

I’m not going to say much about this topic but just remember excessive amounts of anything are bad for you. Even the things that may be good. The same applies to thinking.

“Have you ever had that orange coloured fruit which is really juicy and sweet but after a few seconds it really dries up your mouth and makes it seem like there’s cobwebs growing in there?” I asked the two sitting next to me.

The thinking look came onto the General’s face, "Hmmm…”

“Are you talking about tangerines?” asked Dum.

“Noooo. Tangerines don’t give you oral cobwebs. I don’t know what it’s called.” I replied. “Wait let me google it.”

“I think I know what you might be talking about,” said Dum with his distinctive enlightened ‘oh’ look.

Googling ‘What fruit dries your mouth?’ came up with a yahoo answers page link. “According to this, it’s called a persimmon,” I informed the others.

“Suck this 12 inch baby dry!” shouted Dum randomly, pointing in between his legs. Oh dear, here comes the guy talk.

Which other thing is made to a 12 inch size? “Bloody hell man, that’s the size of a normal 30 cm ruler!” I exclaimed rolling my eyes.

“It would be okay if it was that size when standing up. Otherwise all that blood…” added the General.

“It’d make you faint. Imagine that, you see some one really hot  and just swoon because of all that blood being directed away from the brain.” I said.

“Haha! Gives a whole new meaning to how long can you last,” said Dum.

“But you know, it’s not like we’re 12 any more when it used to randomly just pop up. I think he’d have a bit of self control now… I hope,” General said giving Dum a scrutinising look.

“All you need now is that wooden stump thing that pirates have and you’ll officially have yourself a third leg!” I said laughing.

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“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” – Thoreau. (sent to me by bubblegum)

What is happiness? Why is that when we are happy things are easy to deal with and it all fits into place? But when sorrow is upon us, we can’t wait for it to end. I attempted to answer that question in one of the parts of ‘The Story’ and so would like to shift the focus somewhere else. What do you do when happiness seems to have left your life?

I’d like to present to you another quote which was said to me by a good friend of mine while we were discussing this issue of happiness a week or so ago:

“There are some things in life that don’t come running to you. You gorra get up off your stinkin’ sofa and go get ‘em” – RP.

At first glance it may seem that the two quotes above are contradictory in the message they give. The first tells us that we should wait patiently for happiness to come to us whereas the latter seems to imply that happiness is something that we have to go and actively find ourselves. I agree with both and think you can employ both methods without any conflict. They are, I believe, two different stages of the same process, one coming before the other.

If you want gold for example, you must first seek where gold is. There’s no point looking for it in the kitchen cupboards or in a chemist shop and if you were to do so, you’d never find it. It’s the same with happiness I think. If a person finds themselves bereft of happiness but does nothing but sit at home thinking about the injustices of life and the bad things that have happened to them, their negativity will lead to depression and or other psychological problems. The butterfly of happiness isn’t everywhere, especially in those places that are bound to bring back tear-jerking memories or feelings of anger and hate. First you have to find where happiness is, and then you can wait patiently for it to come to you.

Just before starting this post, I asked a friend of mine of their views on this topic and they said, “happiness is always there in the back of our mind, but we’re so caught up in our sorrow that we don’t pay attention to it.” It’s true isn’t it? When we’re overwhelmed by pain or sorrow we tend to forget the little stars that are shining for us day and night, sparkling around us like little butterflies bringing us laughter and smiles every day.

The gift of happiness is one that we all have the ability to give to someone. It’s cheap to give, but very weighty in it’s value. A simple joke, just giving someone a hand or sitting with a person and talking about random things can bring the light back into the eyes of someone who is looking for a reason to smile. Next time you see someone with a tear in their eye, remember they could be waiting for a butterfly to come to them and that butterfly could be you.