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Archive for the ‘from the living room’ Category

The four elements and joy

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on February 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »

4 elements

As I stood looking out over the Mediterranean I saw this.

Water. Stretching in every direction. From this distance it looks calm, almost smooth. But from where I stood I could hear the waves breaking on the rocks, the water spraying into the air then slipping back down from the land into the sea again. Without water, no Life.

Fire. That silver shining strip of light caused by the Sun’s rays sparkling the sea. But it’s a false horizon. Beyond that apparent edge, if you look carefully, you can see more water. The fire of the Sun warms the water and warms the Earth. It’s the source of all our energy. Without the fire of the Sun, no Life.

Earth. Look more closely now, beyond the water on the other side of the sunlight. Can you see shadows? Hazy impressions of something more solid?  The Earth. Islands, other lands, rocks and stones and sand. Earth, the element which changes so slowly. Without earth, no Life.

Air. No, you can’t see the air. But as I stood there I filled my lungs with it. The clear, fresh, sea-scented air. The most invisible of all the elements, constantly changing, as I breathe in and breathe out again. As you breathe in and breathe out again. As all living creatures breathe in and breathe out again. Without air, no Life.

Then look again. Look down at the bottom right hand corner of this photograph. See the tree? Doesn’t she look like she has a fancy hat on? Doesn’t it seem as if she is looking out over the water, the fire, the earth and the air?  It seems to me that she is stretching both her arms up towards the sky and celebrating. A joyful tree.

We share all of this, you, me, everyone we know, everyone we don’t know, and every other living organism on this one, small, finite planet.

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The importance of story

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography, Uncategorized on February 15, 2023| 2 Comments »

What do you think about this path?

path

Not very impressive is it? Not sure it would catch your attention at all if you stumbled across it.

But then what about this sign on the wall telling you a little bit about this path, the “Via Aurelia” (nice name, huh?)

notice

Now, I’m sure that’s not a complete listing of all the famous people who have walked along this very path, but even knowing that Napoleon, Emperor Charles V, Macchiavelli and Catherine of Siena, (not to mention the various Popes!), all walked along here completely changes it doesn’t it?

I’m sure that if you were to read some of the stories about where these people were coming from and where they were going to, then this little, apparently unimpressive little path, would take on another quality altogether. Try it for yourself, look some of these people up on the net and imagine the part of their story which describes them walking along this very path.

There’s no doubt in my mind that stories make all the difference. They transform our world.

 

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Dealing with obstacles

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on February 11, 2023| 1 Comment »

obstacles

How do you deal with obstacles?

When something gets in the way of your project, or if someone blocks you, what do you do?

Confusingly, there are two opposing pieces of advice. Either you interpret it as the universe telling you that you’re going the wrong way, so you change course, or you should think it’s the universe asking you to prove how hard you want whatever it is you’re working towards.

I’ve tried both interpretations, but I must say I don’t find either to be particularly convincing!

What do you do when you come up against the immovable? Push harder? Jump up and down? Scream and shout? Cry “unfair”? Nope, none of those strategies are very satisfying either.

What does a river do?

It flows around it. I like that. I’ve come to think that obstacles, difficulties, opposition and delays are all a part of the rich tapestry of life. I guess what I mean is that I don’t ascribe a greater meaning to them. I don’t think “the universe” is actually trying to tell me anything.

Rather, I’m learning that there will always be bumps in the road, problems to solve, things that break or stop working. My choice is to adapt. That’s what we humans do so well….accept and adapt. We can’t use brute force to make reality conform to our fantasies, but we can always learn more about the nature of reality……or as some say, “every day is a school day”.

But more than that, look, the river does more than flow……it creates beauty as it does it!

This photo is of the River Charente flowing through Jarnac. There’s a road bridge over the river and I was struck by the beauty of the patterns as the water flowed around one of the concrete pillars. Mesmerising.

I thought….there’s a lesson here…..

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Qualities over quantities

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, from the viewing room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science, video on February 8, 2023| Leave a Comment »

moon sky

The Guardian has published 15 quotes from Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, of those books which has so many quotable sentences in it. I’ve read The Little Prince many times, and I’m sure I’ll read it many times more.

One of my own personal favourites is this –

It is only with the heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.

We can all quite easily take a moment to reflect on something – anything – it can be a choice which has presented itself to us, a decision to be made, a person, a relationship or an event.

The way I like to do this is to sit somewhere quietly, take three slow, deep and even breaths, call whatever it is I want to reflect on to my mind, place my hand over the area of my heart, and ask myself the question “What does my heart say about this?”

Give it a few moments and see what, if anything, emerges. It won’t always, but sometimes, suddenly, something seems crystal clear.

I like the second sentence in that quote too – “what is essential is invisible to the eye”. I’m a big fan of that one.

As I looked down through the list of quotes I was remembered this one –

Grown-ups love figures… When you tell them you’ve made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? “ Instead they demand ‘How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?’ Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

….which is some ways is a continuation of the “what is essential is invisible to the eye”.

Why do we put such emphasis on numbers, when what is most important to each of us is the personal, the subjective, the invisible?

This little scene from “Gregory’s Girl” (from a LONG time ago!) popped into my head –

In particular the line which Claire Grogan says about a minute into the scene.

 

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Time and place and light

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on February 4, 2023| 1 Comment »

Cognac

This image is one of the ones which makes me very aware of the quality of light. It’s a simple shot of a street in Cognac around mid-day, but I find the light quite magical.

Isn’t it interesting how different the light appears depending on the time and place? Here are some very different examples, all taken in early afternoon light, but all on different days and in different places.

First up, here’s the Saint-Eutrope crypt in the town of Saintes.

The crypt

 

Then, the Charente river as it flows through Saintes.

 

Then, the bridge to Île-de-Ré, with the oyster beds in the foreground………

From the Ile-de-Re

In each of these images, the light looks different, partly because the weather conditions are different, but also because where the light hits the land, it reflects back in altered states…..the light illuminating the land, and the land altering the light, so what we see is the result of this intimate, constantly changing relationship.

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Two kinds of attention

Posted in education, from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on February 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Iain McGilchrist, in The Master and His Emissary, says we use our two cerebral hemispheres differently. The hemispheres, remember, control the opposite sides of the body, so the right control the left hand, and the left hemisphere control the right. It’s the same with vision where the right field of vision is the responsibility of the left hemisphere and the left field of the right hemisphere. I’m simplifying here, but you get the idea. In birds which have their eyes on the sides of their heads instead of in the front of their faces, each hemisphere controls the opposite eye but the idea is the same.

The right hemisphere supports a broad, vigilant attention. In a bird the left eye, therefore, is taking everything in to be aware of predators.

left eye

See how this duck is looking at me?

They use the left hemisphere to focus the right eye on details….for example, when picking out food.

right eye

There’s something else interesting about the field of view of interest to each hemisphere.

In we humans, the right hemisphere is more interested in what is far from us….

distance

while the left is more interested in what is close up….

catkins

 

We need to use both hemispheres – a whole brain is better than half a brain! But Iain McGilchrist shows that we’ve all developed a rather bad habit – using the left hemisphere to focus on parts and utility to the extent that we ignore or disregard the right – which seeks out the personal, the particular, the connections and the whole.

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More than survival

Posted in creativity, from the consulting room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life, personal growth, philosophy on December 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »

passing the light

The philosopher, Whitehead, wrote that there are three drives for us – to live, to live well, and to live better. I was reminded of an old post I wrote about light when I read that. Here it is –

Candle light reminds us how sharing light increases it. Have you ever lit one candle from another? When you do, the first candle doesn’t get any dimmer. By lighting one candle from another, you end up with more light.

I wonder what kind of light I bring into this world? You might like to wonder about what you pass on to others too, because, although we might not physically pass light to each other, we certainly pass our emotions, our attitudes, our way of being onto to those around us and spread them the way that light can spread.

Around the turn of the year, when I was thinking about my Life (with a capital “L”), I played with this idea of light and I thought, actually, what I try to do, as a doctor, can be captured in three verbs about light.

Firstly, I try to lighten others’ loads. I try to ease their suffering. If I didn’t achieve at least that, I’d not be much of a doctor. I hope that everyone I see has their life, or the burdens in their life, lightened a bit as a result of my care.

But that’s not enough for me. I don’t want patients to come back and just say they feel a little lighter. I want their lives to be brighter. By that I mean I hope their days become better days, more fulfilling, more colourful, brighter days. I hope for others, and I hope for me, that life becomes brighter, and by that, I really mean an increase in that “emerveillement du quotidien“.

But even that’s not enough for me. I hope, at best, to enlighten, to show new possibilities, to support and stimulate new growth. I just love when I hear that a patient’s life has become lighter, brighter and, yes, transformed – that they’re experiencing a personal enlightenment.

If you think about light this month, why not think of it as a metaphor, as well as a physical phenomenon? What metaphors of light seem most relevant in your life?

So, in answer to yesterday’s question about evolution being about more than survival, I think we have to take on board this perspective – that we are driven to do more than survive. We want to live well. And we want to move forward improving – to live more deeply, more beautifully. We want to savour every moment, to create, to share and to love.

The direction of the universe and of evolution is towards greater complexity and beauty, towards greater diversity and uniqueness. And every day we can play an active part in that.

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How to live; 20 answers

Posted in books, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth on June 9, 2022| 2 Comments »

How to live. Well, there’s a question which always feels fresh. There are whole sections of book shops dedicated to this question and an enormous diversity of ways of addressing it. You’ll find some advice in the Popular Psychology section, some in the Philosophy section, some in the Mind, Body, Spirit section, the Religion section, and on and on.

What’s the secret?

Probably there is no secret, and anyone who claims to have everything all worked out….well, what do you think?

Still, it’s a question which won’t go away so when Sarah Bakewell published “How to Live. A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer” back in 2010, I couldn’t resist. I really enjoyed it back in 2013 and this week I’ve started to re-read it.

Montaigne lived from 1533 to 1592 in the area around Bordeaux in the South West of France. I won’t tell the whole story here, but he was part of a wealthy family, and retired from Public duties as Mayor of Bordeaux at 39 years old. As the inscription hanging on the wall of his study says, he decided that after years of duties and responsibilities he was going to dedicate the rest of his life to freedom, tranquillity and leisure.

 

Montaigne’s chateau.

What he did for the next twenty years was enjoy life, have conversations, read and study, travel, and write. He decided to write to explore what it was like to be Michel Montaigne. He described his writings as attempts – that’s why they are called “essays” (from the French, essais, meaning to try). With great honesty and humility he set about reflecting on his past and present experiences. Sarah Bakewell, who spent years studying his writings highlighted the fact that this exploration was about trying to discover how to live, and in her book comes up with twenty “answers” to explore aspects of his thought and his life.

He didn’t write a self-help book. He didn’t write a manifesto. He didn’t write “the key to the secret of Life”. But what he did write has turned out to have much more staying power than it might have done had he done so. Over the next almost 500 years, reader after reader comes across Montaigne’s essays and recognises themselves. We think, goodness, how did he know that’s what I feel? Or how I deal with that? Or what I think? Because in exploring himself and sharing that, he helps us to understand what it is to be human.

I can’t think of a better introduction to this amazing man and his writings than “How to Live” [ISBN 978-0099485155]. I’ll share a few of the attempted answers in future blog posts, but let me just quote you a nice little summary of some of Montaigne’s personal principles which I found in Antoine Compagnon’s “Un été Avec Montaigne” which I picked up in bookshop near Montaigne’s chateau one summer.

Prenons le temps de vivre; suivons la nature; jouissons du moment présent; ne nous précipitons pas pour rien

My rough translation of this is to take your time to live; follow nature; enjoy the present moment and don’t rush into anything. (If you are a fluent French speaker, feel free to improve my translation!)

In other words, he predated the current “Slow movement” by almost 500 years, encouraged us to live in the now (which Eckhart Tolle has popularised), to live mindfully (and isn’t mindfulness everywhere just how? 12,200,000 hits on google today!), and to learn from Nature so that we can live according to natural principles instead of trying to fight against them (a lesson we are a long way from learning with our contemporary technology, economics, health care and relationship to the global environment)

Let us permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.

Montaigne was classically educated and drew on the teachings of scepticism, stoicism and epicureanism. In fact he was the kind of sceptic I thoroughly identify with (not the modern, arrogant, sure of themselves and their own opinions variety!). He felt that knowledge was never complete so we could always learn more, and that no one person could have access to all knowledge so everyone’s opinions, experiences and views were interesting to discover. This approach made him humble and this comes through everything he wrote and did.

He didn’t tell people how to live.

Instead he reflected on his own life and shared it.

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Creators or consumers?

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography on June 3, 2022| Leave a Comment »

illuminate

One day, I stepped out through the back door of the cathedral in Segovia and onto a large paved terrace surrounded by stone lions. When I turned to look back towards the tall arched doorway I noticed that the plain glass doors which hung in the doorway perfectly reflected the buildings across the street. I took a photo.

When I loaded up the photo later I noticed that there were some strange lights above and on the roofs and when I zoomed in I saw more clearly that behind the reflection of the tiles and the satellite dishes some of the cathedral’s stained glass windows shone through the glass door.

That got me thinking……

For centuries the church has created images and told stories to convince people what the world is like, what life is like, and how we should live. With captivating art and gripping stories it presented a particular view of the world. More than that, really, because in presenting that view and spreading it so widely, it created a reality for the people who lived in it.

But look at those satellite dishes.

Who is creating the images and the stories now? Who is telling people what the world is like? What life is like? And how they should live?

Who is presenting a view of the world and spreading it so widely, that it’s creating the reality for us who live in it?

With the rapid development in communications technology, with powerful mobile phones, connected computers, the internet, social media, memes, images and videos which “go viral”, some writers say we have created a whole new layer of the environment in which we live – the “noosphere” (the sphere of human thought).

The truth is we’ve always had a noosphere. We’ve always lived, we humans, within this environment of human thought.

There are image creators and story tellers who fashion the patterns of thought in this noosphere, and in so doing, they influence many others. They create the reality we experience.

But we have a choice. We can be the image creators and the story tellers, or we can be passive consumers. If we choose to be passive consumers, whose world, whose idea of the world, are we choosing to live in?

If we choose to be the image creators and the story tellers, what images shall we share? What stories shall we tell?

Are we going to live as zombies or heroes? Let’s co-create the world we want to live in. Let’s “be the change [we] want to be”.

I think it’s time to resist, to refuse to accept the world view which is responsible for massive inequality, injustice and suffering through the promotion of selfishness, division and greed.

We can make a better world than that. Can’t we? Let’s share our images of beauty, truth and goodness. Let’s share our daily delights and our experiences of awe and wonder. Let’s tell each other our stories of kindness, love and generosity. And let’s promote the world view that we are all connected and interdependent in this one, small planet we call Earth. Let’s share our attempts to adapt and live sustainability so we can co-create a better future for our children and grandchildren.

Shall we?

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The Believer, the Sceptic and the Heretic

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on June 2, 2022| 2 Comments »

dscn7600

I read Barrie Condon’s, “Science for Heretics” a few years back and returned to it recently. The subtitle of the book is “Why so much of science is wrong” and his aim is to provoke the reader into questioning both the claims of science and its methods. He uses the device of three characters, The Believer, The Sceptic and The Heretic, throughout the book as he considers several fields of science including mathematics, physics, and medicine.

The Believer is one for whom science reveals the Truth and will one day enable us to understand everything in the universe. The Sceptic accepts the basic tenets of science but retains some doubts about whether of not we will ever be able to understand everything. The Heretic doesn’t buy the whole project. He thinks the universe is not completely knowable and that our scientific theories which shape our views of what we see are simply the projections of our human brains.

He particularly attacks the use of theory in science which tends to be translated into “laws”. He clarifies that no such “laws” exist and sets out the case for a return to observation and experimentation instead. I really enjoy his writing style and some passages particularly stood out for me.

For centuries we have been measuring all sorts of things but generally only recording the results we expected and ignoring the rest.

This captures two of my main objections to so much of medical practice – the reduction of human beings to measurements and the belief that the particular measurements which are made allow us to completely understand a patient and their illness. Although I have heard of a medical teacher say “Don’t listen to patients. They lie all the time. You can only trust the results.”, my own experience of doctoring couldn’t be more diametrically opposed from that view. ONLY the patient’s experience can be trusted. Measurements, sadly, frequently mislead, and ALWAYS need to be set in the context of this individual patient.

Life saving claims for medicines need careful examination. Drugs do certain things which are beneficial to the human body in disease, but they inevitably have other effects which can be deleterious or even fatal.

I wish more doctors made that more clear every time they write out a prescription.

He’s even better on physics and cosmology.

For me, the two most important things he has to say are, firstly –

Science gives us theories that purport to explain how the universe works. This breeds confidence in scientists who then go on to do things that carry certain risks. These risks are rationalised away on the basis of existing theory. Even if our Heretic is wrong in saying that all theory is actually erroneous, history shows us that most or perhaps all theories ultimately prove incorrect. Our perceptions and calculations of risk are therefore also likely to be erroneous. Science generally also assumes a high degree of control over experimental conditions and again this faith seems misplaced. While we may routinely underestimate risk, we also routinely overestimate our ability to control it.

This is SUCH an important point. He’s arguing for a greater use of the “precautionary principle”. Instead of assuming that everything we produce, all our chemicals, all our technologies are safe until proven otherwise, we should be more wary. What we need is a whole lot more humility and the ability to confess that we really don’t know very much at all. And we certainly way overestimate our ability to control things. It’s the arrogance of believers which frightens me most – people who are so sure that they, and only they are right – I’m on the side of the Heretics in Barrie’s terms. It’s likely that what we think we know at any point will be proven not to be quite right in a few years time (or, indeed, to be completely wrong).

The second important conclusion he reaches is that there are no fundamental laws of the universe…..apart from, maybe, two –

As well as a possible law for uniqueness, the Heretic is open to the possibility of a second law governing complexity, namely that it increases with time.

Well, there he puts his finger on what I’ve written about many times on this blog – that the most important characteristics of the universe are its tendency to create uniqueness and its trend of ever increasing complexity.

Take those two undeniable features on board and try and practice science or medicine by measuring, generalising and trying to control the future! Good luck with that.

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