Heroes Not Zombies

This is Part 2 in a series. You’ll find Part 1 here.

One of the major ways of creating a sense of self is through group identity. We see this especially strongly in small towns and villages where there are very real, very active communities. What I mean by that is not just people who live in the same street or same town but people who work together, play together, live together. Communities of people who share values and traditions which bond them together. I gave an example of such a community in the Part 1 of this series where I showed a clip about Hobbits. Well, hobbits are, of course, imaginary creatures, and some people find it hard to identify with fantasy so here are two clips from a movie entitled “Brassed Off”. This is an at times funny, at times tragic tale of a mining community in the north of England. It’s set in the Thatcher years when the coal mines were being closed down and these communities were being destroyed. A characteristic of these northern towns was the brass band. It was just one of the ways the community bonded. Mining towns would regularly have brass band contests – like this –

You can feel the spirit of these people and how the music, the beer and the comraderie created a cohesive, group identity.

The band leader is called Danny and in one scene he has a heart attack and as he lies, seemingly dying, in his hospital bed his band gather outside and pay their respects, by playing “Danny Boy”

Oops! I should’ve warned you to have your tissues ready! Moving, isn’t it? It’s probably the only time a brass band has moved me to tears!

Think back to the character we saw at the start of About a Boy. Can you imagine that he would have the same needs, the same desires and the same experience as these characters in this tale?

We are all different in so many ways and, in health care, to find the best treatment for someone, we have to discover who this person is who has this particular disease. Otherwise we’re probably going to fail to help them to recover.