Heroes Not Zombies

This photo gets me thinking about three dimensions of context…..horizontal, temporal and depth.

The horizontal dimension contains what’s around us here and now. All of our experiences occur within the context of a place. We live, moment by moment, in a web of physical connections which extend in every direction we can see. It includes the natural environment of all the elements and all the other living organisms which share this space with us. It also includes the social environment of all the other people around us (and now with phones, video and messaging services that social environment can stretch out over thousands of miles. It’s not limited to the physical horizon any more). It also includes the cultural environment of habits, behaviours, values and rules with which we co-construct our lives together.

The temporal dimension includes the past….the trails and tracks we can see behind us, the memories we have and the roots which lead from our beginnings to where we are now. It also includes the future, or rather all the possible futures we and others can imagine….that multiplicity of possibilities which collapse into a single reality as each moment emerges from the next one.

The depth dimension lies within us. It’s often unspoken, largely unconscious and unknown but it creates the foundations and defaults of our daily lives. Some of it emerges in our dreams, some is revealed in our language and words, some erupts through in the strength of feelings.

I think if I want to understand someone, whether that someone be me or an other, I need to see them, hear them, discover them in all three of these dimensions.

That’s why a holistic approach in Medicine always seemed necessary to me and why a rigidly reductionist one was often just too narrow to be of more than just a little help.