Closing Pandora's Box

It’s bee a very long time since you last wrote. You write very inspirative post,” said the General.

A few days ago, I decided to step outside into the garden and go looking for bugs. I didn’t get very far as the grass was too long; hugging my shins and almost reaching up to my knees in other places. And so, I sat down a few steps away from the kitchen door and watched. I sat there for over an hour. I saw life, I saw order, I saw determination, and I saw hope. Seeing and looking are two different things, but that’s a discussion for a different day. I was looking at weed filled grass but seeing something else. I’d like to share with you two photographs I took on my phone and you can tell me whether after looking you too can see that which I did.

Next to my leg on the right side was a dandelion and on the left some tiny pink flowers, through which were crawling many little insects. I watched them as they moved about on legs thinner than a single strand of my hair, gracefully scuttling about, almost as if playing hide and seek with me and my phone. But luckily (for me) there was one insect, so engrossed in what it was doing, it didn’t care about what I was doing, and so I took a picture of it.

It is normal for us to be so dazzled by surrounding beauty like of the flower, that we do not even notice the real beauty; the beauty of the effort put in by the miniscule insect to conquer the flower and reach its destination. In the same way in our lives it is those things, those people, that we take for granted who become like the insect in the picture above (do you see it?), that get forgotten in the presence of something seemingly more beautiful regardless of how temporary it is. Yet they are always there, trying and trying again, not giving up on what they believe, not giving up on you because that’s who they are and what they do. (Thank you, my dear insects friends).

They say, blow the dandelion away, make a wish and it’ll come true. And they wish for you to do this and that, so you give and give from the kind depths of your mortal heart, till there seems to be nothing more to give. You are left hanging and it takes so much strength. Hang in there my dear, have faith, grit your teeth together and remember the insect, unfazed by anything around it. The thing about being strong is that no-one asks how you are, or how you feel. So let me ask you now, ‘how are you today?’

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Photograph of insect climbing flower taken from personal photography available here.
Photograph of blown away dandelion taken from person photography available here.

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.