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Archive for February, 2021

The singular

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on February 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

This little ice crystal mesmerises me. It’s beautiful. Look at the intricate branching structure of each little bristle of ice. It’s almost like a tiny tree, or, at least a snowy leaf. Look at the way it catches the sunlight and sparkles like a jewel. But maybe the most astonishing thing about it is how it is attached to the iron bar from which it is hanging. Can you see? There is a single icy spike holding the entire structure onto the metal. In an instant you can see that this little piece of frozen water is not only incredibly strong, but that the entire crystal has grown from that single point. Isn’t that amazing?

What I love about something like this is that no matter how much you describe water and its behaviour in cold temperatures, the singular, the actual, the specific, particular ice crystal you encounter takes you beyond the limits of your expectations.

I find that everywhere in life, but, especially so in the practice of Medicine. No matter how much general knowledge I had of diseases, their origins, their life histories, and their likely consequences, I never had enough to know precisely what this individual patient today was experiencing, nor how this disease had arisen in their particular life, nor how their illness would progress. On top of that, no matter how much general knowledge I had of therapeutics, I could not predict, with 100% accuracy, what this individual patient would experience as a result of what I was going to prescribe today.

You might say that sounds like a lot of uncertainty, and I guess it is. A GP’s job, after all, has been described as dependent on his or her ability to cope with, and manage, uncertainty. But there was nothing to despair in there. It was a simple recognition that we have to be humble, because there is always more we don’t know, than there is that we know.

More than that…..it meant, and continues to mean, that the individual can never be encountered, understood and helped as a mere example of the recorded experience of groups. That’s another way of saying that statistics are never sufficient to replace stories. Only this unique, singular human being can tell you what they experiencing, what has happened in their life, what sense they have made of it, and only this unique, singular human being can tell you what effect your treatment has had.

The singular can never be replaced by the averages or “norms”.

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Cold calling

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on February 7, 2021| Leave a Comment »

When was the last time you used one of these? Actually, if you don’t live in the UK and you’re half my age (I’m in my 60s), then chances are, you’ve never used one of these. I can’t remember the last time I saw a public phone in France, but there must have been some once upon a time. What were public, shared phones like in your country? Do they still exist?

This stimulates my thoughts on how we communicate. When I was a GP in Edinburgh, my partner, Sandy, and I were one of the first Practices to use mobile phones on call. We had a huge brick sized Motorola thing, and there was only one telecoms mast in Edinburgh so it only worked on one side of Arthurs Seat! How things changed…and how fast!

This pandemic has had an impact on how we communicate too….I don’t just mean what technologies we use, but who we communicate with and when. A lot of communication is now “asynchronous” – which you could have said was the case before the telephone was invented. But I don’t think that text-based or messenger-based asynchronous technologies have brought about a revival in letter writing skills! Of course, we aren’t just using asynchronous technologies, there has also been a huge growth in our use of Zoom, FaceTime, Skype and other video-calling platforms. Then there are social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which drive the growth of “one-to-many” communications, “public” communications over “one-to-one” and “private”. Obviously there are many many more, but what’s clear is that for most us, we don’t limit our communications to only one of these services. We are using combinations of them – messenger services, social media platforms, texts, email and video calls, and, hey, some of us still even use the telephone!

So, what do you think? With this vastly increased ease in our ability to communicate, are we communicating better?

Hmm…..I think I’ll take my time over that one.

The first thing that springs to mind is how many people I have reconnected with in the last twelve months. Without this expansion of services, combined with the extended, forced, physical distancing and isolation, then I don’t think that would have happened. But the second thing that springs to mind is the growth of “echo chambers” which feed conspiracy theories, fake news and social division. I suppose the answer to my question depends on how you define “better”. And isn’t that always the case? Isn’t life complex and interconnected? Nuanced and diverse?

Is anything ever reducible to a single label? Like “better” or “worse”? I don’t think so.

However, I still think it’s interesting to spend a little time reflecting on the following three questions –

  • Who do I communicate with?
  • How do I communicate with others? (I mean technologies)
  • and, finally, Does my communication build bridges?

I think that’s the important thing after all – how we use these technologies will always be determined by our intentions – and, hold me to account here, I want all my communications to be open, tolerant, kind, compassionate and understanding. When they aren’t, I want to address that, and improve.

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The ochre gods of the forest

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, photography, psychology on February 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »

It isn’t difficult to be utterly entranced by this world. Near the town of Roussillon, in the South of France, there is an ochre trail you can follow through a forest. Two things have made this place as amazing as it is…first, and foremost, the Earth herself, which has created the most incredibly beautiful ochre rocks….pink, rose, yellow, orange, and many shades in-between. They are really, really gorgeous. Secondly, human beings who have mined this rock in the past, and have since, allowed, encouraged, and nurtured the forest to grow up around the rocks. So you look at a site like this and you see that interplay of human and non-human forces.

One of the most stunning features of the ochre is how often the surfaces look like faces. As best I know, these are not art works. Nobody deliberately carved the rocks to look like this – although it would be none the less beautiful if they had. No, it seems that we see the faces because of that part of the human brain which has evolved a special skill in seeing and recognising faces. Yes, there really is such a part of the brain! We use it to recognise other humans, but it works all the time, showing us what appear to be faces in rocks, clouds, trees….you name it.

I love that all of this – the geological creativity of the Earth, the living world of trees, and the evolution of the human brain, all combine to make a place like this feel utterly magical. This is the kind of “enchantment” I think we humans long for. This is the kind of “spiritual longing” which only the Earth can satisfy.

For me, these images will always be “The Ochre Gods of the Forest”. Aren’t they fabulous?

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What are you waiting for?

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on February 5, 2021| 3 Comments »

This little flower caught my eye. She’s growing, and flourishing, in a small cavity on a rock face. I’ve zoomed right in to see the flower better, but, take it from me, this was a long way up! Frankly, I was astonished. I mean a seed must have blown in there, or been dropped by a bird, and, goodness knows there must have been precious little soil way up there on a rocky cliff face. And yet….not only did that seed germinate, but it grew right up to an adult stage of life, finding sufficient nutrients from who knows where, and has produced these beautiful yellow flowers at the top of the plant. Not only that, but it seems to have grown to a size which exactly fills the size of the cavity.

The first time I saw this, and every time I look at it, I get thinking about the incredible drive of the Life Force….how Life seeks to exist, express itself, and flourish, in a myriad of forms and in more than imaginable habitats across the surface of this planet. Then I marvel at the capacity of Life to be opportunistic….to make the most of whatever conditions it finds itself in and to thrive.

How often do we procrastinate? How often do we tell ourselves we’ll pursue our dreams, we’ll live the life we want to live, but just not until all the conditions are right? How many of us spend our lives waiting for those right conditions to appear?

I think this little flower teaches us a different lesson. Call it “seize the day” if you like. Call it “make the most of today”. It’s a teaching which says “you already live on this Earth with all the conditions you need to flourish”. It’s a teaching about abundance. A teaching about the underlying benevolent, supportive flow of the universe, which has enabled Life to exist, and continues to supply what it needs to grow and to flourish.

You don’t have to wait. Imagination truly has no limits, and loving attention nurtures growth…..starting with the loving attention of self-care, nurturing the desire to exist, to grow, to express your uniqueness, and to flourish.

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The Hanged Man

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology on February 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »

When you look closely at a water droplet you can see that it acts as a kind of lens. You can see the world around the drop reflected in the water. But it’s upside down. Just like you’d see inside the old kind of camera which cast the image of whatever the lens was paying attention to, onto the film at the back, and/or, onto the viewfinder.

The first camera I ever had was a box camera. You held the camera at waist height, flipped up the lid and looked at the image lying on the horizontal glass plate underneath. I think it used a prism to flip the image around so that you could see it “the right way up” in the viewfinder. We don’t even think about that with our modern digital cameras which process the image before we even get to see it.

I think it makes you stop and think when you see an upside down image like this. It literally makes you look at the world differently. And we need to do that sometimes to actually see and understand what is around us. For most of our days we sail along not really noticing most of what our senses pick up. In some sense we only notice what we pay attention to, and we only pay attention to what we notice. This relationship between noticing and paying attention is curious, partly because we can make a choice and attach our attention to whatever we choose….we can choose to become more aware of a scent, a particular colour, a shape or a texture. In fact, it’s a pretty great way to live more in the present, isn’t it……to pay attention to what our senses are sensing?

But it can happen the other way around – our attention can be “caught”. Something which moves suddenly, something which changes, like a loud noise, or a change in temperature, a darkening or lightening of the room as clouds pass over the sun…… Or it can be caught by something “odd”, something “unfamiliar”, something “unexpected”.

I think these upside down images are a bit like that. We aren’t used to seeing the world upside down, so we notice it when it happens, and that noticing “grabs” our attention, and leads to a natural exploration.

There’s a Tarot card called “The Hanged Man”, which I think about when I see an upside down image in a lens like this. I’m no Tarot expert, but I think there’s something about that card which is about changing our perspective, about looking at the world differently, in order to understand it better.

We have to do that from time to time if we want to understand reality. We have to change our perspective, look from a different angle. Other people can be the trigger to doing that….but only if we encourage and are genuinely interested in other peoples’ views.

Getting stuck in social media echo chambers, or trapped in the manipulated information of advertisers and politicians happens all the time. That’s why it can be helpful, though not always comfortable, to try to understand the world view of people who don’t see things the same way we do. It’s not a question of who is right and who is wrong. It’s a question of reaching a fuller, deeper understanding of other people, and of the world.

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Light in the darkness, darkness in the light

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography, psychology on February 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday I wrote about a road, and how we can be inspired to think forwards or backwards by that same road.

Today I want to share this photo taken in the North of Scotland. I’m pretty sure you’ll agree it’s beautiful. Beautiful, moody, atmospheric. The still silvery grey water of the loch, the dark, craggy islands, the far shore rising to a gentle peak with low cloud and disembodied spirits of mist obscuring our view of the mountain. The large, black, lumbering cloud, dominating the upper half of the image, and the bright, white clouds with a hint of pale, washed out blue sky above the mountain slopes but below the ragged edge of the rain cloud.

Dark earth, bright sky, glimpsed between two bodies of water….the loch and the heavy, black cloud.

You see all of that, don’t you?

I wonder what you noticed first? Whether it was the foreboding heavy weight of the black rain cloud, or the bright white, sunlit clouds over the pale blue sky?

And where did you go from there? Did you start with a sense of foreboding, only to end with a feeling of optimism? Start from an experience of dark times, softened by a hint of brighter times to come? Or did you start with the bright light between the dark mountain and the black cloud, only to feel it in danger of disappearing under the lumbering weight of the Death Star rain cloud?

Or have you finally ended up appreciating it all, delighting in the contrasts, the shades, the variety of forms and of light, of the interplay of water, earth and the fire of the sun, and the belief in the pure, clean, fresh, life-giving air which you can’t see, but which you know is all around?

Breathe deep. Breathe deep. And breathe deep again. Take a moment, then carry on.

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Which direction?

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, photography on February 2, 2021| Leave a Comment »

In my photo library I have this image entitled “The road north”, but when I looked at that title just now I thought, “Maybe it’s also the road south”? I know why I called it “the road north” – because I took it while driving north and I stopped to take some photos of the amazing mists travelling over the surface of the hills ahead. I was mesmerised with how they moved, how some grew bigger and how some disappeared into thin air. I was fascinated by the thought – are these mists or “low cloud” and realised I didn’t really know the difference – and did it matter anyway?

But when I took this particular photo of the mists, I included the road and the little house to make it an interesting composition. I had pulled up by the side of the road to take these photos and I know I was on my way north so the title seems appropriate.

However, without that experience and memory, this road can be seen from two different directions, can’t it?

You can look at it and see it as the road ahead. You can wonder where it is leading to. You can speculate about what lies over the crest of the hill, whether the road turns sharply to the left or the right, or carries straight on for a bit yet (there aren’t many straight roads in this part of Scotland!) In other words you can orientate your thought and your attention to the future.

On the other hand, you can see it as the road just travelled. You can see it as a moment’s pause on a journey, to look back, recall and reflect. If you weren’t the one travelling along this particular road, then it’s more likely you’ll be drawn to imagine the future, than to reflect on the memories from the past…..after all, if you didn’t actually travel along this road, then you don’t have any memories of it, do you? Interestingly, you can’t say the same thing, exactly, about the future. We can all imagine the future. In fact, we humans are doing that all the time. We are always imagining what lies ahead, or around the corner, or in some distant time later in our lives. We are always imagining, even fearing, what might happen next, falling down a rabbit hole of “what ifs”.

There’s a third option of course, which is mine. I can mix them together, the memories and imaginings. I can remember the day, but discover, as I have discovered, that I don’t remember what lies beyond the little white house. But I do remember stopping to take the photo, so memory definitely colours my imagining……

….now there’s a thought – the truth is we use memory and imagination at the same time all the time. We have no imaginings without memories to influence them, and we have no memories without re-imagining them (they don’t lie in some brain drawer or filing cabinet, waiting for us to pull them out and blow off the dust – we re-create them every single time)

Story telling. We humans are storytellers par excellence, aren’t we? We tell stories to make sense of our lives and our experiences. We tell stories to know who we are and to find out who other people are. We tell stories to express our uniqueness, to appreciate the uniqueness of others and to make empathic connections with each other.

This image begs us to tell a story, don’t you think?

So, why not activate a few memories and imaginings today and see what story might emerge for you when you look at this image…..does it produce a story of a journey you once took, or does it produce a story of a journey you hope to take one day?

The choice is yours.

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Bridges, mountains and more

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on February 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Many years ago I did a road trip to Skye, and as I travelled up through the Highlands, around the island for a few days, then back down to the Central Belt again, I was stunned again and again by the beauty of the country. There’s no doubt that Scotland is a beautiful land. It isn’t best known for blue skies, sunshine and beaches, but, actually, on the right day, all of that is there. However, it’s always seemed to me it’s easier to find the darker, moodier, and I might even say, richer, atmosphere in Scotland. On that particular road trip I think it rained every day, and I got some of the most beautiful photographs I’ve ever taken.

This image captures so much that delights and inspires me. The first thing I notice is the bridge. It’s a traditional, old, stone, single arch bridge. There are dozens like it in the Highlands, and no two the same. I think it’s beautiful and I’m a big fan of bridges because I think they are the technology we humans invented to allow us to do two of the things closest to our natures – explore and connect.

We are insatiably curious creatures, we humans. Some of us more than other I’ll grant, but I still think the desire to explore and discover is as core to us as the Life Force. In fact, Jaak Paksepp, who is so important to an understanding the fairly new discipline of affective neuroscience – the neurological science of our emotions, identified seven core or “prototype” emotions, of which SEEKING is perhaps THE most basic and important. SEEKING is connected to the basic motivational arousal state of all forms of life, and we humans probably access it, and use it, more than any other other creatures on the planet.

Bridges speak to me of that SEEKING, that desire to discover what lies on the other bank of the river, what lies on the slopes of the opposite hillside.

They also inspire me to think of that equally strong drive which is central to our being – connecting. Iain McGilchrist, with his brilliant and detailed analysis of the human brain, shows us how the two halves of the cerebral hemisphere engage with the world in distinctly different ways. The right hemisphere is especially interested in making and exploring connections. Just stop to ponder for a moment – absolutely everything we encounter, everything we experience, everything we think, we connect to whatever else we know and imagine. It’s impossible for us to really consider anything at all as utterly and completely isolated from everything else. We are connection-driven creatures.

But there’s more than a bridge in this photo. There is a river too, which runs under the bridge, and this particular river has very stony banks. Stony banks with small shrubs and bushes growing in it. Rivers never stay the same. The water which flows down from the mountains doesn’t follow the exact same path every day. Some times the river will swell and all those stones will be hidden. Other times it will reduce to a trickling stream revealing vast stony banks. I love the river as a symbol of constant flow and constant change.

There are the mountains too. Tall peaks, so tall here, that the cloud base is hiding their higher regions. I love mountains. They inspire me to remember times I’ve climbed such hills in the past, struggling to get to the top, then finding myself utterly filled with delight at the views laid out before me once I get there (being careful not to go hill climbing on a day like that shown in this photo!) They inspire me too to think of the old philosophical practice of “the view from on high” – how helpful it is to stand back from the busy cluttered flow of the everyday, ascend to a height, and contemplate the bigger picture, change your perspective, and see how life changes as a result.

And then there are the clouds – clouds which hide tall mountains, clouds which dissolve into rain which then trickles down the hillsides to form the rivers which all run off to the sea again. Clouds which merge seemlessly with mists here – hiding trees, rocks and bushes, soaking them all as they pass on by. Mists which drift across the face of the glen like ghosts of clans from the distant past. Yes, I find that mists stimulate my imagination. They lead me to contemplate the invisible, and the traces of the past which still soak the present, the lives from the past which are still with us, carried by us in our genes, our memories and our stories.

Really, I can get a lot of enjoyment out of a scene like this. This is what I mean by “rich” experience, multi-layered, entangled, connected, inspiring……

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