September | 2008 | Heroes Not Zombies

Archive for September, 2008

Tokyo views

Posted in from the dark room, photography, tagged architecture, japan, tokyo on September 12, 2008| 4 Comments »

Do a search on this blog for “ben ledi” and you’ll see the kind of view I’m used to. Then you’ll realise what a culture shock it is to wake up and see this …….

When I first looked out of the hotel window here in Ikebukuro I could only see the vastness of it all. And the fact that as far as I could see there were only buildings. But then I zoomed my camera in on some of the detail.

This is something you see a lot in Tokyo – an old building surrounded on all sides by tall new ones – like a wee oasis!

Parking must be a nightmare in Tokyo – can you make out the multi-storey parking lot? Do you think they park the cars sideways to get more in?

Can you see the tennis courts?

This building is right opposite my hotel. The little rail track running around the rim fascinates me. But I haven’t spotted any trains yet!

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theWarofArt

Posted in books, creativity, from the reading room, writing, tagged inspiration on September 12, 2008| 3 Comments »

On the plane from Edinburgh to Tokyo I read theWarofArt by Steven Pressfield (ISBN 9 780446 691437). It’s subtitled “Break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles” and has a brilliant little Foreword by Robert McKee which really captures the essence and the scope of the book. It’s one of those books about creativity in general and writing in particular. There are no breakthrough insights here but it is a highly readable and very inspirational little book which is structured around three sections. The first is all about what stops us from actually creating – Resistance. This is a brilliant section. He describes Resistance as a force. A pretty malevolent force and one that can feel highly personal, but which, in fact, is an impersonal natural phenomenon. It’s what stops us from starting, what stops us from carrying on and what stops us from finishing. As he says right at the beginning –

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

Now there’s something you’ve heard before – that to write you need to turn up at the writing table, you need to sit down, stop sharpening the pencils, tidying the notebooks and post-its, stop browsing the web, and WRITE. It’s the getting started that’s hard.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Isn’t that so true? There’s the things we want to do, the things we feel we should do, the things we feel we were even born to do, and then there’s what we actually do. And as we all know……..it’s what we actually do that matters. The commonest form of Resistance, of course, is procrastination, and he nicely captures its power –

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.

He reminds of the common stories of people who have been told they have cancer or some other serious disease and who change their lives from that day on; change their priorities; channel their energies somewhere else. And he reminds us how often these very same people end up surprising the doctors and everyone else by seriously overshooting their death sentence. Why, he asks, do we need to wait till Resistance faces us with disease and death before we pay attention and start to live the life we were born to live?

He’s great about the passive aggressiveness of victimhood. By victimhood he means that use of exterior loci of control so clearly described by William Glasser.

Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don’t do it. If you’re doing it, stop.

There’s really a lot of refined gold in this tight publication. Let me finish telling you about the first section with a reference to his comments about criticism. I often think there are two common attitudes amongst people – the commonest one is to criticise and complain. On any train, in any cafe, in every work place, every day you’ll hear people expressing righteous indignation. It never makes life feel richer and it never seems to solve anything either. The less common attitude is DO, to be creative, to solve or to heal.

Individuals who are realised in their own lives almost never criticise others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.

The second section of the book is entitled “Combating Resistance. Turning pro”. This contains his advice for beating the phenomenon of Resistance and here’s the secret – it’s to “turn pro”. By this he means living your vocation.

The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time.

He cleverly takes everyday jobs as a model for becoming creatively professional. Here are ten characteristics or principles we can take from doing and everyday job and apply to the work of being creative –

Show up every day
Show up no matter what
Stay on the job all day
Commit over the long haul
The stakes are high and real (it’s about survival, feeding our families, educating our children)
Accept remuneration for your labour
Don’t overidentify with your job
Master the technique of your job
Have a sense of humour about your job
Receive praise or blame in the real world.

You’ll need to get the book to read the detail on those! But I’m sure you’ll agree they make sense.

The third and final section of the book is the one Robert McKee takes some issue with in the Foreword. It’s entitled “Beyond Resistance. Higher Realm” and in it Steven writes about Muses – the spiritual forces which bring us inspiration and which work with our genius. He describes them as Angelic forces but is very clear that you don’t have to believe in Angels to benefit from the work of the Muses. He makes the point that just as we can think of Resistance as an impersonal force, so can we think of the Muse as an opposite impersonal force and he describes how he begins every writing session with a prayer to the Muses. I liked this section at least as much as the rest of the book. However you want to conceive of the Muses, I think he is completely right about them.

Let me finish this little review with one of Goethe’s couplets which he quotes –

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.

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Two dollars a day

Posted in from the consulting room, health, life on September 10, 2008| 5 Comments »

I’ve been reading the WHO report on the social determinants of health recently. It’s a big document but written in crystal clear language and structured in a way which makes it easy to get the key messages.

THE key message is

Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale

And their positive response to that fact

The Commission calls for closing the health gap in a generation.

Quite a challenge!

The report is full of astonishing facts, but here are two connected ones which completely grabbed me –

40% of the population of the world exist on less than two dollars a day

OK, that’s enough to make you stop and think as you hand over the money for your daily latte!

Every cow in Europe is subsidised by European taxpayers to the tune of, yes you guessed it, TWO DOLLARS A DAY!

Now that makes you think about the choices we make! Doesn’t it?

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Music and recovery from stroke

Posted in from the consulting room, health on September 8, 2008| 4 Comments »

On the BBC site there is a fascinating story. Cyril Merle, aged 86, suffered a massive stroke just four days after his wife’s funeral. Now aged 91, he has not only recovered but he is able to do more than he could before his stroke. He credits his love of music as being the main reason for his remarkable recovery.

He didn’t just listen to music, but music became a motivator and a framework for his action. He took up “tea dancing” (this was a very popular tradition in England years ago where couples would enjoy afternoon tea and a dance to a live band) and playing the keyboards (having not played for 30 years). Despite his wife having described him in the past as a “rotten dancer” he says he can now dance better than he can walk and he regularly plays for community sing-songs in the residential home where he lives.

I think there are a number of interesting aspects to this story. Firstly, it does remind me of Edwyn Collin’s story, which is also a remarkable story of stroke recovery involving music. Secondly, right at the beginning of this story is the fact that this man’s stroke occurred within 4 days of his wife’s funeral. A powerful example of the strong psychological, emotional and social determinants of disease. We will never understand illness or health if we think of them in strictly physical/material terms. Thirdly, all three characteristics of health are present in this story. This man suffered a significant incapacitating event, but he adapted. He coped. He survived. But he didn’t just adapt, he grew. Through creative expression of dance and playing a musical instrument he enlarged his life. He developed. In fact, he developed to a point beyond the one he’d reached before his stroke. Finally, he was engaged with life and his community. Tea dances in particular are fundamentally social affairs and he didn’t just play his keyboards for his own enjoyment, he used his new skills to entertain and encourage others in the home where he lives.

What a great story!

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Season of mists…..

Posted in from the dark room, photography, tagged poetry on September 4, 2008| Leave a Comment »

I looked out the window this morning and saw this. And outside the temperature of the air has taken a dip – 7 degrees C it said on the car dashboard. I’m guessing Autumn’s arrived. It’s funny but years and years after I was taught poetry lessons at school I still can’t see a scene like this without hearing in my head –

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Here’s the whole poem –

Keats. To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
      Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

II                                  

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
   Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

III

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
   Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
      The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Funny how the swallows were twittering hundreds of years before people started doing it!

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Getting the most from your doctor visit

Posted in from the consulting room, health on September 2, 2008| 6 Comments »

I never go to see a doctor. Unless I have to. I’m guessing most people feel the same way. So when you do feel you have to visit a doctor, how do you get the most out of your visit? There are many ways to consider that question but I want to share three small drawings with you here. You might want to use one or more of them next time you go to see a doctor.

If you’re going to see the doctor because you feel something is wrong, then it’s pretty likely your first goal is to find out what the problem is. In medical terms, that’s a diagnosis, but in more general terms, it’s an understanding. You want to understand what’s going on. The point of asking the doctor is that doctors are well trained in doing exactly that – they are specialists in making diagnoses. At best, they specialise in understanding people and understanding peoples’ experiences. But you don’t just want a label for your condition. It’s not like naming flowers or trees. You want to know what that’s likely to mean and whether or not you should do anything about it. Here’s the first drawing –

The question is “Do I need to do anything?”

You can figure that out by asking your doctor first of all how serious this problem is…..in other words “how much of a threat does this pose to me?” If the pain you are experiencing is likely to be a pulled muscle, the threat level is low. If it’s angina (heart pain), it could be pretty high. So where, along the left to right axis of this drawing would you place the threat level? Second, how rapidly is this likely to get worse? This determines the urgency of action. If the condition you’ve got changes over minutes, something needs to be done right now. If it changes only over many years, you can take your time and consider what to do about it.

Having understood this, you and your doctor will be thinking about possible treatments. Before you leap into any treatments however, maybe you should consider whether or not ANY treatments are necessary. This second drawing might help you figure this out.

The question is “How much of a problem is this for me?” And the answer to that depends on how much you are suffering. There are at least these two aspects of suffering – restriction and distress. Health is a kind of flow experience. When things are flowing you’re pretty much unaware you even have a body. When something’s wrong, there’s usually disruption of flow. You get stuck, or inhibited by pain or stiffness or weakness or something. The more you feel restricted, the less able you are to live your life. So, it’s worth thinking where you’d place the degree of restriction you are experiencing on the axis from left to right. How much is this suffering inhibiting, preventing, impeding my life? That restriction contributes to the amount of distress you are feeling but I think distress is more than that and you should consider it as a separate aspect. How great is your distress? The more you plot yourself up and to the right of this little chart, the greater the suffering you are experiencing, and the more important it is to you to do something about it to change the quality of your life.

We don’t just visit doctors for an understanding though. We are probably seeking change. We’d like something to be better. So the second main priority of the doctor is to consider which treatments to offer. This isn’t as straightforward as it might appear and the doctor can’t decide this all by himself (or herself). That’s because different treatments will be best for different people with the same problems.

Most treatments offered are drugs or surgery. All drugs and all surgical interventions carry risks of harm. So here’s my third drawing to help you work out which treatment you’d like to try.

The focus here is on harm. The old adage “First do no harm” is still of great relevance to the practice of medicine. It’s unlikely your doctor will offer a treatment unless he or she believes that treatment has the potential to help you. Doctors use both clinical epidemiology (“Evidence Based Medicine”), their knowledge of YOU and your condition, and their own clinical experience to work out what treatment to offer you. But it’s always worth considering the aspect of harm. First of all, what potential has this treatment to harm? Has it ever killed anyone? How seriously can it do damage? Secondly, what’s the chances of that harm occurring? That is what is the risk – to me – of that harm?

Having considered all of these issues there’s still a lot to decide and it’s still the very beginning of a journey for you. A good working relationship with a doctor is a continuing conversation. It’s not an event, or just a series of events. As things move on and change you’ll be in continuing conversation with your doctor and both understandings and treatments will change as a result.

I hope you find these helpful.

What about you? Have you found any ways to make a doctor visit more successful for yourself?

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What does your workplace look like?

Posted in from the dark room, photography on September 1, 2008| 1 Comment »

You’ll have seen a few of the photos I’ve taken in the garden of Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital on this blog. I’m very lucky to work in such a lovely environment. But look at these guys! How would you like to work where they work?!