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Archive for January, 2025

The joy of everyday discovery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

How do we improve the quality of our everyday lives?

One way is to do whatever brings us joy, and makes us wonder. And we can do that, either by pursuing an activity which we know brings us joy, for example, listening to our favourite music. Or, and this adds in the element of wonder and discovery, pay attention to the hear and now.

As I wandered through my garden one day, just looking to see what I might notice, I spotted this tiny plant. First of all, I’d never seen a plant like this before, so I didn’t know what it was called. Secondly, I kneeled down, got up close, and just looked. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it amazing? What an incredible structure, and what beautiful colours. I love those tips of purple emerging from the green. Then I got my phone out and took a close up photo….this photo.

I like to take a photo for two reasons. First of all, I can then go back and look more closely over and over again. I can enrich an already rich experience. Second, because my curiosity has been stimulated, I can touch the little “(i)” button on the phone screen when I’m looking at the photo, and it magically tells me the name of the plant.

Apparently, it’s a “self-heal”. Oh, like all plants, it has many other names too, but the name “self-heal” immediately appeals to me. After all, in all my years working as a doctor, that’s exactly what I was trying to do – to stimulate and support a patient’s self healing. I know we live with a kind of medical myth that doctors heal us with their operations and their drugs. But they don’t. Nobody repairs a single wound without the body’s capacity to self heal. Nobody recovers from a virus without the body’s defence and repair system doing its job. Nobody heals without the body’s complex system of self healing doing what it is designed to do. Doctors should remember that. They don’t heal patients. Patients heal patients and the doctor, when working at their best, support, stimulate and work with, the capacity if the patient to self heal.

Once I had spotted this plant, identified it, explored more about it online later, then I suddenly saw it appearing everywhere in the garden. Well, not everywhere, but over a very wide area. Now there’s something else amazing about gardens. I didn’t plant this beautiful plant. I didn’t “propagate” it. But there it is, and it’s thriving. I find that wonder-full!

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Beauty and utility

Posted in Uncategorized on January 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I was in Cefalu, on Sicily, last year, and took several photographs of the beautiful works of art which fill the streets of the little town. These planters are beautiful. And each of them has a plant in it, which somebody must be looking after. People have taken the time to create these wonderful objects, and to place them on the steps of this narrow passageway ascending to the next street. Isn’t that so appealing? Doesn’t it draw you in? This is a street which is just a delight to walk in. And imagine if this is a street you walk up, or down, every day, to buy your bread, to get to the cafe, to visit your friends. How something this simple changes everything. How it make the lived environment more beautiful, more human, more a celebration of creativity and uniqueness. I love this. Here’s another photo from round the corner….

In a hot place like Cefalu, you need to sit in the shade from time to time. But look at these two benches. Simple, elegant, yes, functional, but also beautiful. And look at the planters. Different from the ones on the stairs, but glorious all the same, and with images from history and myth relevant to this particular place. We humans are great at deepening and enriching our daily lives, through art, design, myths and stories.

Thank goodness, we are not all obsessed with “utility” and “efficiency”. Thank goodness we are humans, not machines.

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Bread and Roses

Posted in Uncategorized on January 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I’m currently reading Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant “Orwell’s Roses”, and, in that book she describes the origin of the phrase “Bread and Roses”. This isn’t a phrase I was familiar with but it seems to have originated with Helen Todd, the early 20th Century campaigner for Womens’ Suffrage in the USA. Helen Todd wrote that women’s votes would ……

go toward helping forward the time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child….

Rebecca’s chapter on this phrase outlines its history from that time, and how it spread to other countries and languages right up to the present day, including “Pan y Rosas”, a feminist-socialist organisation which originated in Argentina.

I love this phrase and the idea which underpins it. I love how it captures the human needs for, on the one hand material security and nurture, and, on the other hand, for the unquantifiable….beauty, joy, pleasure and learning.

The photo I’m sharing with you today is from a fountain in Zurich. I was there last March. Starting during the pandemic, I believe, people started to fill the fountains with roses in Zurich in the run up to Easter, as a symbol of hope. They’ve carried on that tradition every year since. Here’s another photo I took when I was there.

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Wide open

Posted in Uncategorized on January 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday I wrote about the exercise of taking the “view from on high“. Today, I’m returning to another of my favourite themes and activities……the wide open.

Maybe it’s because I was born and brought up in Scotland, or maybe it’s something many of us share, wherever we live, or wherever we come from, but a view like this opens me up to the world. An expanse like this, including a clear view of distant, snow covered mountains, reflected on the surface of a body of water makes me want to take a big deep breath in, slowing empty my lungs, and just take it all in.

This simple action of slow, large in-breath, followed by an even slower, longer out-breath, activates the parasympathetic nervous system, and it’s this response in the body which slows the heart, lowers the blood pressure, and relaxes our muscles.

The wide open natural environment opens the heart and the mind. In one and the same moment, I feel calm, feel my consciousness expand, and my heart open to this one, amazing, beautiful planet. I feel gratitude, contentment, and peace.

As the boundaries between my individual self, and the whole of the planet, of the universe even, dissolve, I experience awe, and know, in my heart and my mind, that I am inextricably connected to what is greater than me.

I am quite a fan of forest bathing, of the influence of trees on our health and wellbeing. I’m also a fan of being in the garden, listening to the birdsong, feeling the warmth of the sun (not in the midst of winter however!), and wandering around to discover what new plants and creatures I can find sharing this little space with me. But the experience of standing in the “wide open” is something else. It has a power. I recommend it.

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The view from on high

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on January 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

There’s what some people call a spiritual practice taught by the Classical Greek philosophers. It’s called “The view from on high”. I thought of that when I looked, again, at this photo which I took from the train crossing the Alps last year.

The idea of the view from on high, is about taking an overview. It’s about seeing the context of something, seeing the “bigger picture”. We can be too close to something, so close in fact that we can’t “see the wood for the trees”. The answer is to go higher for a more comprehensive perspective.

Although the Greeks didn’t know it, this is advice to access your right hemisphere. The left hemisphere of the brain has a very narrow focus. It enables us to zoom in, separate out elements, and grasp what we are looking at. But the right hemisphere takes in the context, sees the connections, enables a more holistic understanding.

Of course, it’s best when we use our whole brain, not just half, but, sadly, we’ve developed the habit in our cultures of thinking the left hemisphere knows best. It doesn’t. It only helps us when we take its “re-presentation” of reality back into the right hemisphere, to situate it in the whole.

Reality is not made up of pieces which are assembled. Reality is a whole, in constant flow and change. Stepping up a level and taking “the view from on high”, can help us to appreciate that.

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Living on the edge

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I imagine that the first thing you notice when you look at this image is the sea. In fact, it was the sea which caught my attention, and triggered my camera release. But when I review it now, my eye is drawn from the water, to the rocks, and then to the houses perched on the top of the cliff. Strangely, I didn’t notice them when I was taking the photo.

How would you like to live there? Right on the edge?

You’d certainly have a fabulous view of the sea every day, for as long as you wanted to. As best I know house prices on the coast, with a sea view, are pretty much higher than house prices inland, so, perhaps most people are keen to live on the edge.

Others find it a bit scary. They’re not so secure perched on the top of a cliff, and open to the winds and storms which sweep in from the sea from time to time.

We’re all different.

The philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, writes about the “far from equilibrium” zone. It’s where change occurs. It’s the closest area to chaos, to phase changes, to producing emergent phenomena which we couldn’t predict. He says that when we follow a “line of flight” towards the edge, things can become clearer. In the middle, in a balanced, and relatively static place, the mix of streams of information and energies can make it hard to distinguish characteristics and themes, but as you stretch out towards the edge, it’s a bit like unravelling a ball of threads, each colour becomes easier to see.

But there’s something else about living on the edge which occurs to me. I’ve noticed the word “extreme” is used a lot these days, especially in politics, and always with an intention of shutting people down. Some views are described as “extreme right”, others “extreme left” (sometimes the word “extreme” is replaced with the word “hard”) but what does it tell us about the person to whom we are attaching this label? It’s a judgement, not an observation. The label is applied differently in different contexts of course. As I understand it, something like “universal health care” is described as an “extreme” view by some (much more so in the USA than in Europe). Here in France, that’s definitely not labelled “extreme”.

I’m wary of labels at all times, but I’m especially wary of this “extreme” label. It doesn’t tell me anything. I want to hear what the person has to say. I want to understand their world view and their beliefs. I want to explore their values. Labelling them doesn’t let me do that.

By the way, understanding a point a view, doesn’t mean you have to adopt it. It can, however, open up some points of common ground, and shift the discourse away from the harmful polarised quality which seems dominant at this time.

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Transient pathways

Posted in Uncategorized on January 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Even on a calm day, the sea is neither still, nor flat. Looking out over the Med from Sicily I noticed these pathways on the surface of the water. I’ve seen this phenomenon pretty frequently and every time it captures my attention.

Firstly, it’s beautiful. Life is better when we look out for the beauty which surrounds us.

Secondly, it’s curious. Life is better when we wonder, when we are aware of the truly amazing phenomena of nature.

Thirdly, it’s inspiring. When I look at a scene like this I realise how little I understand about this world. I am in awe.

Truly, this is an awesome planet. We should really be careful about how we change it, how we live on it, every single day. Because we do change it, every one of us, just by making our daily choices, just by where we focus our attention. We leave our marks. We leave our traces.

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Nothing is unchangeable

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

When I look at a mountain, my first thought, my first impression, is how unchanging it is. You can’t imagine a mountain changing. Can you? I used to look out across to Ben Ledi in Central Scotland, and what I saw every day was different. It was different because the light and the weather were different. So sometimes it would glow red with a setting sun, sometimes seem painted white with snow, other times hidden by low clouds and mists, but the mountain, itself, looked the same size and the same shape every single day. I couldn’t imagine a time when it wasn’t there, or when it was just created.

But look at this mountain beside Lake Annecy. It looks pleated. It has so many folds that it looks as if it is draped in a giant cloth. And when I look at that I can easily imagine that this mountain emerged…that it was created by massive forces, stronger than I’ve ever seen.

I can imagine a time when this mountain didn’t exist, and so I can imagine a time when it might disappear.

And I know, that if I was a scientist studying mountains, I’d be aware of just how the mountain changes, little by little, every single day.

Nothing is fixed in this universe. There are no fundamental, unchanging particles, the “building blocks” of all that exists.

The Universe is flow. Reality is always in the process of creation. Every changing.

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Collaboration vs competition

Posted in Uncategorized on January 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Darwin identified two drivers of evolution – collaboration and competition. It’s the latter behaviour which has dominated the development of our societies, almost to the complete exclusion of understanding the importance of the former.

We need both in order to survive, and if we get the balance wrong, we all suffer. Wherever you look in Nature you see the importance of relationships between creatures, and, much less understood, the importance of positive, mutually beneficial bonds between different species – between plants and insects, insects and birds, fungi and plants….and so on.

Nothing really survives or thrives in isolation.

We need each other.

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Beauty in form, spirals

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

One of the commonest forms you’ll see in the plant world is the spiral. Pretty much any plant which sends out creepers to latch onto something so the plant can grow higher towards the sunlight, uses this form. It doesn’t go for a straight line….what we were taught is the shortest distance between two parts. Why not? There just aren’t that many really straight lines in Nature. It seems there’s a great preference for meandering, changing direction, spiralling around…..not what a machine would do.

Machines, and the industrialised types of management which dominate our lives now, are said to be best when they are most “efficient”. But Nature has a different idea. “Efficiency” seems, these days, to be about expending the least possible amount of effort and money to achieve a standardised outcome. It’s not natural, and it squeezing out beauty and life.

Complex, natural, living forms are not like machines. A plant doesn’t produce the least number of seeds required to produce a second plant. It produces thousands and thousands of them, using a huge number of different methods to have those seeds carried far and wide, relying on the weather and other creatures to do the scattering. Have you ever watched a bee or a butterfly collect pollen? They don’t start top left and work their way “methodically” flower by flower until they’ve harvested the most possible. There’s an inherent, apparent randomness to their flight. You just can’t predict which flower they are going to explore next.

The spiral is a favourite form of exploration in many plants. It’s a way of discovering.

It’s also extremely beautiful. One that artists replicate again and again. Here’s an example from the sculpture park near where I live……

Beautiful, dynamic, attractive, pleasing, and even in a stone carving, bursting with “life”.

I reckon we’ve taken a life destroying path through industrialisation, and I’d love to see us grow whatever we find life enhancing instead. We can do that by paying attention to, and learning from, plants and other creatures. We can privilege beauty, joy and Life instead of consumption, “efficiency” and “profit”. That would lead us to a very different kind of “growth”, and a very different society.

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