Closing Pandora's Box

Exams finished on Wednesday and I don’t think I would have been able to do them without the help of the General, Little Miss Sunshine and Dummer. It was Dummer who made me start revising for the ‘immunity and infection’ module by sending me a word document full of so many words underlined in red. Without Little Miss Sunshine’s emails I very much doubt I would have been able to do much of the ‘Therapeutics: Protein to Patient’ exam. The General was just the General, helping here, there and everywhere. Thank you to all 3 of you and to everyone for your support, well wishes and early morning texts.

Before exams started, apart from revision there was the dissertation to do. It was titled, ‘sphingosine-1-phosphate induced reactive oxygen species production in microglia’ and the final book, 46 pages long, looked rather nice if I may say so myself. It was bound with red leather (knowing me are you surprised I picked that colour?) and I was quite happy with it in the end. I couldn’t stop opening it and flicking through the pages every few minutes.

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Yesterday I spent most of the day gardening. It was a chance for me to de-stress and get my mind off things. While mowing the grass, taking out weeds from the flower beds and watching the bees and other insects fly and crawl, I was made to think about life and people. I’d like to share some photos I took on my phone and the thoughts that accompanied them.

Life is full of doors; some have behind them countless opportunities to excel and others are opened or closed depending on the decisions we make. Whenever life offers you a door take a peep through because you never know, you may be kings or queens of your very own Narnia on the other side. Be careful you look properly before you walk in though, because it may just be an empty drop into nothingness.

Every gardener knows just how much of a problem weeds can be. They deprive flowers and other plants that you want to grow of nutrients, sunlight and space. If you rip off the shoots above the ground they disappear, yes, but only temporarily. They’ll keep growing back, again and again and again, year after year. It’s the same with problems each one of us faces in our day to day lives. If we shove them under the carpet, away from the view of the world, yes they’ll not be visible, but they’ll always be there. And as long as they’re there, well they will cause problems. To deal effectively with weeds you have to find the roots, yank them out and dispose of them. In the same way, when faced with a problem it’s best to deal with them at the root level (for that is the cause) and not the shoot level (for that is just what the root is exhibited as).

While clearing out the flower beds I noticed bees flying onto the flowers dancing from one to the other. Some would also come to these blue flowers (above), land on them but quickly fly away. It reminded me of people who hide behind a pretty face. When you get to know them properly however, you realise deep down inside they’re nothing but prickly buggers and if you get too close things can get messy.

In our garden we have had a rose arch. The top of the arch broke yesterday and after moving some of the branches around (and desi engineering) I managed to make it stand by itself. It made me realise the importance of support in our lives without which we too would fall. But more importantly it made me realise that once we have been helped on to our feet, we all have the strength to stand on our own without support.

At the base of the rose arch I noticed that many weeds had grown. In the same way as these plants were stealing nutrients and minerals from the rose plant, with little care for the latter, people also do the same. Some people come to you pretending to be friends bringing nice gifts and happiness. But when faced with the choice of you or both of you, they wouldn’t hesitate in leaving you behind.

It is for this reason that roses protect their beauty with thorns. That doesn’t necessarily mean people and other animals will stop touching them or stop causing them harm, but it does make the person think of their own safety before they do so. In the same way a Muslim lady protects her beauty by wearing a veil.

All throughout the day I was desperately trying to take a picture of a busy bee, as they flew around me. By the time my phone’s camera turned on, the bee would already have already buzzed off. Just as I was about to give up and go inside for lunch, another opportunity presented itself. You can see the result of it above.

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I wish you all a very happy, relaxing and enjoyable weekend wherever in the world you are.

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Title: Mary Mary quite contrary – Nursery Rhyme
All photographs in this post are from my personal photography

“Gravity is a force,” I said. “Caused by attraction between things.”

“So how was it discovered?” my brother asked with the distinctive I’m in the mood of asking a lot of questions look etched all over his face.

“Ummm, some guy called Issac Newton was sitting under a tree one day and an apple fell and hit him on the head or something along those lines. He sat down and thought why it happened,” I replied trying to remember physics from a long time ago. I stopped liking physics after year 9, so the direction of this conversation was not good. But It was my fault really; I had promised him that I would help him with his studies.

“That’s a dumb thing to think about. He got hit because he was sitting in the wrong place! And he’s so weird too. Whenever I get hit on the head, I get a headache and can’t be bothered to work. But I still don’t know how to answer this question. What is gravity?”

“Everything that has mass has gravity. So basically that means everything attracts everything else. Those things that are big have lots of gravity and attract smaller things to them. Small things also have gravity but it’s so weak it isn’t really noticed. That’s why things fall to the earth and apples hit you on the head because the earth is just so huge.”

His brow crossed even further. “But then why does my fart smell go in all directions?”

“Why would anyone or thing want to be attracted your farts? They’re lethal man!” I replied, trying to supress my laughter at his logic.

“You know when I get married, does that mean my wife has to be really fat because I want someone that’s really attracted to me?” he asked in his 12 year old confused and innocent *cough* voice.

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Do you remember the days when you could run around naked or just in your pampers and everyone would smile at you and hug you (if your pampers were clean) and it was all perfectly normal. You could say and ask pretty much any thing and no-one would think of you as a complete dufus. Asking questions I think is extremely important. It helps us understand, pass exams, and sometimes lets us know we’re doing the right thing and brings us peace of mind.

When I was 16 or so, I came to a stage of my life where I began to question. Life hadn’t really been a joyride and I wanted answers. One of the things I began to doubt was God. Where was He when I called for Him? Why did it seem as if He wasn’t answering any of my prayers? It was a bit of a downwards spiral falling into an abyss of darkness.

GCSE exam time came. I hadn’t really prepared, due to the ‘baggage’ that was weighing me down but biology is a subject that I’ve always enjoyed and it was probably one of the few subjects I had put some work into. As I sat down in the big hall with bright lights above, the heat became noticeable. I needed some water but my bottle was ice and literally frozen because I had forgotten to take it out of the freezer in the morning. I licked my lips trying to stop them from drying too much. On the table in front of me I could see my shadow; hair pointing skywards with something moving in it. What the hell? After a few minutes I managed to remove a minute spider from my hair. At that time I used to be hysterically scared of spiders and a spider in the same room as me would be an excuse to get up and run like my younger brother (read here). It was small and I felt sorry for it having been lost in the gelled up jungle on top of my head. I put it on the the table and left it to do what it wanted climbing and crawling all over the place.

The biology exam begun. It was going okay; I’d done most of it and with 20 minutes left there were only a handful of questions I couldn’t answer. One of them was about mitosis, a process which results in the formation of 2 identical daughter cells from one parent cell. There were 6 diagrams on the page labelled A, B, C, D, E, and  and at the bottom of the page were 6 empty boxes into which we had to place the letters in order of what stage that picture represented of the cell division cycle. I had done the first 2 and the last 2, but the middle 2 were giving me problems. I know this. I had spent 3 hours the night before learning this exact cycle. Help me God, I know this. Please help me. I just sat there for a few minutes reciting all the prayers I had ever learnt, relevant and irrelevant, hoping that something would happen, hoping that He would plant the seed of knowledge which I was after in my mind. He did better than that.

I don’t really know how to describe this next bit because sitting there watching things unfold, I could not believe what was happening. The spider that had been walking all over my arm and enjoying the freedom of the table suddenly stopped and made its way to the centre of the exam paper. It was so small and helpless I decided to let it do what it wanted. Anyway I had much bigger problems to deal with. Subsequently, It walked onto one of the 2 pictures I was confused about, changed direction and faced the empty box on the right. I couldn’t believe what was happening. When the little insect walked into an empty box, I was too stunned to do anything. How could a spider so small answer the mitosis question I was stuck on for so long? The overwhelming warmth and awe of the moment left me momentarily stunned. It was then that I realised He was there, listening to me. It was then any doubt I had about His existence were removed and I once again became a true believer. It was also then that I stopped being scared of spiders.

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There’s some more things I have to add to this but I’ll save them for another post.

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