Heroes Not Zombies

This is Loch Gary. When I stopped at the side of the road to take this photo many years ago, I was struck by how the shape of the loch so closely mimics the shape of the Scotland. It’s almost good enough to be a map!

If you do look at this as a map of Scotland, then one of the interesting little extra things is that the bridge you see could represent the connection between Edinburgh and Glasgow across the “Central Belt”.

I was born in Stirling, a town which is almost equidistant between Scotland’s two cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. I studied Medicine in Edinburgh, worked there for most of the first two decades of my career then changed to work in Glasgow for the second two decades. There’s a long, long rivalry between these two cities. Each has a very distinct culture, and each is home to remarkably different accents. Maybe because I came from Stirling, people in Edinburgh often guessed that I’d come from Glasgow, and people in Glasgow often guessed I’d come from Edinburgh. I never subscribed to the rivalry between the two cities, liking them both for their very different cultures.

Maybe all of that has contributed to my love of connections, of seeing, accepting and even relishing difference, and my distaste for rivalry and competition.

I wonder how much the geography of our lives affects our values and our beliefs?

What do you think? What comes up for you if you reflect on that?