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Archive for the ‘life’ Category

Trees are good for you

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography on March 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Before the Mulberry tree in my garden gets its leaves each year it casts wonderful shadows on the grass. I was thinking about them when I started to read the book “Penser comme un arbe” (Think like a tree) by Jacques Tassin. He starts out by setting the evolutionary scene where we humans evolved in the trees and reflects on how much the human body is constructed using tree-like patterns. Like the one you can see in this shadow. Our circulatory system which carries the blood all around our body branches and branches just like this, splitting into ever smaller arteries and capillaries, then coming back together the way a river gathers all the streams which feed it, along ever bigger veins until it connects the blood to the heart and the lungs again.

Our lungs are like this. Branching first into left and right, then into the different lobes, down the bronchi and bronchioles to open out like bunches of grapes in the alveoli.

Trees are the lungs of the Earth, cleaning the air of pollutants, gathering up CO2 and emitting Oxygen. Interesting to think of the respiration of a person and the respiration of the planet using similar patterned structures (OK, up to a point, the trees don’t have lobes and alveoli, but their leaves provide the maximum contact with the air, just as our alveoli do that job too.)

Our lymphatic system, so crucial to our body defences uses the same “arboreal” pattern, just like the circulatory system.

Our nervous system too, with the continuously branching structures of nerves and the way each neurone in the brain reaches out to contact thousands of others.

There is something magical about our relationship with trees, isn’t there? It really does us good to be amongst them, to look at them, to contemplate them, to smell and touch them. The Japanese “forest bathing” has been studied to show the beneficial effects on our immune systems of substances emitted by the trees in the forest.

Jacques Tassin talks about studies which show the beneficial effect on children with ADHD of spending some time in the forest, and, perhaps even more surprising, the calming effects on the heart rates of people contemplating images of trees…..in other words, we get a benefit from just looking at them, even when we can’t be physically present with them.

So, I thought I’d share a few photos I took in a Cedar Forest just north of Aix en Provence.

Enjoy!

Finally, look at the tree right in the middle of this shot. The sign by the path was labelled “Candelabra Tree”.

Do you have any favourite trees?

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Words and stories and poetry and art

Posted in books, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, personal growth, photography on March 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I took this photo recently when visiting the Caumont gallery in Aix en Provence (before France closed down!).

I was attracted to the light shapes on the wall of the building opposite. The one on the right looks like a cocktail glass, but the other two are vaguely like kanji – which, given that the gallery had a special show of Japanese prints, is highly likely!

When I look at the photo now I’m reminded of two things – a famous painting by Magritte

And, a photo I took in the New Carlsberg Museum in Copenhagen of ancient biblical scripts written in Aramaic and found in Palmyra.

The room with the scripts showed the letters projected across the images on the walls as a soundtrack played of someone speaking words in Aramaic from the book of Genesis. That was one of those moments where the hairs on my arms stood up on end and my eyes got watery.

I have long since had a love of words. I have hundreds of books. I read all the time, often several books at once. I love stories and I am insatiably curious. When I qualified as a doctor I bought a complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica with my first month’s salary. I know wikipedia might have surpassed that now but I can still get the thrill of serendipity by leafing through its pages and falling down a knowledge rabbit hole. At work I looked forward to every Monday morning because I knew it was the start of a week where patients would come and tell me their stories. Every single one of them unique.

I taught in Japan at one point and tried to learn a little Japanese. I didn’t get very far but I am still enthralled by their three alphabets – yes THREE! I chose to emigrate from Scotland to France when I retired to have the experience of living in another language and I’ve got a little collection of favourite French words for which I can’t find any direct English translations, or where the English translation feel somewhat inadequate. I love that. (Emerveillement would be my first example!) I’ve also been trying to teach myself Spanish over this last year, just because I’ve discovered Spain since moving to South West France, and have had a number of fabulous road trips there (I’m using the Duolingo app).

Words, and stories.

I’m also quite an avid reader of poetry, and I recently heard a fantastic interview with the American poet laureate, Tracy K Smith, on Ezra Klein’s podcast. Highly recommended!

With more and more of us having to put our normal lives on hold and stay at home I think this is a great opportunity to explore more books, more poems, more stories, words and art. Are you finding that too?

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Pandemic

Posted in from the consulting room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on March 17, 2020| 4 Comments »

There’s one thing this pandemic is showing us – we all share the same world.

We all live in this Earth together. What begins in one place quickly affects all the other places.

This infection will run its course, and it will fade away, but I think it’s pretty likely there will be other episodes like this.

Modern medicine often boasts of its success in conquering bacteria. With the invention of antibiotics we had begun to focus on “non-communicable” diseases instead – heart disease, cancer and so on. But we never really had the equivalent of antibiotics for viruses. We have some (as in HIV treatment for example) but we still can’t treat the vast majority of viruses. Maybe one day we will have the treatments. But look what’s happened with antibiotics….. because we’ve been misusing antibiotics in farming and in treating viral diseases which don’t respond to antibiotics, they are losing their power. We need a different model of health care.

Is there a Health Service in the world which has enough resiliency and adaptability built in to cope with these waves of illness? It doesn’t look like it, though it was pretty amazing to see the Chinese building whole hospitals in six weeks. For most of the world these services are run on a bare minimum (or below) basis. The truth is we don’t have enough doctors, enough nurses, enough hospital beds, enough equipment. And that’s what this particular virus is revealing. Although only a small minority of people will get seriously sick with it, the actual numbers overwhelm the hospitals and services very quickly. And once they get overwhelmed then everyone who gets ill loses out.

This pandemic is revealing other things too – it’s not only health care which is threadbare and inadequate. From the globalised “supply chains” of goods, to the daily vulnerability of workers, families and small businesses, resilience and adaptability are seriously  lacking.

I know that for now the priority is to try to slow the spread of this virus and to treat and care for as many of the sick as possible, but soon it will be time to ask ourselves what we can do to make a better world.

  • What are we going to have to do to adapt?
  • What can we do to be more resilient?
  • How can we look after each other better?
  • What should we change?

How about we explore these questions together in the days and weeks ahead?

Meantime……from midday today I’m in lockdown here in the Charente. France has closed all the bars, cafes, restaurants and all “non-essential” shops, and now it’s quarantined most of us in our houses. I’m not afraid but life is not going to be “normal” for a long time. So, here’s one thing I can do – share my beautiful photos, my daily “émerveillement”, and my caring heart more often.

I’ll be posting more regularly from today.

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beginnings

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, photography, science on March 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »

You know these seeds which helicopter down from the trees? Strangely one-winged and decidedly “wonky” looking?

Well, maybe humans wanting to make something which would be carried on the wind wouldn’t design it like this, but, hey, Nature’s designs are the best!

So, sometime, maybe last autumn, this little seed spirals its way from a tree, who knows which tree, and tumbles and flies and skips and zigzags its way through the air, to land here, on the forest floor. Then, a few months later, who knows how it knows, it wakes up, yawns and starts to stretch, feeling that Spring is around the corner.

And look at it now!

Out of the pod uncoils a long stem, probing down through the moss to find nutrients, and begin to grow itself into a tree!

I mean, do you ever stop and consider something like this?

Have you any idea how it happens?

We can’t even tell if an individual seed is alive or not, is viable or not, until it wakes up and begins to develop. Isn’t that incredible? That we can’t even tell if it alive or dead? Nobody can.

Then how do the cells start to divide and “differentiate”? That means start to develop into the different cells which will produce all the different parts of the tree.

One of my most favourite and most memorable lecturers at Edinburgh University was the Professor of Anatomy, Professor Romanes. He used to start a lecture with a box of coloured chalks and one of those giant rotating blackboards which gave you one screen after another. By the time he finished he’d produced what were no less than works of art showing each different kind of cell, each different kind of tissue, in a different colour. We were transfixed.

He gave a series of lectures on embryology taking us through the various stages of development of a foetus from a fertilised egg cell to a ready to be born baby. I remember thinking at the time, and those thoughts are still with me, “how on earth does that happen?”

I mean, how on earth does a single fertilised cell divide and multiply and differentiate to produce all the organs, all the tissues, all the parts of a human body, and every one of them in the “right” place?

It utterly amazed me.

It still does.

 

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Hope or fear?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on March 3, 2020| 1 Comment »

Coronavirus, epidemic, pandemic, deaths, school closures, travel bans, hospitals overloaded, patients in the corridors, floods, fires, plagues of locusts, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, snowstorms, climate change, immigration, deportation, walls, cancer…….

It’s not hard to make a list of threats, to find things to be afraid of.

Every headline screams – be afraid, be very afraid!

“Prepare for the worst and hope for the best”

Sounds good advice, huh? Said this way around the first thing to do is focus on the worst, then once you’ve done that you might get around to dragging up a bit of hope. Said the other way around you hope first, but what you do, what actions you take, are determined by imagining the worst.

Is this a good way to live?

Imagining the worst every day? Feeling fear every day? Feeling anxiety every day?

Maybe not, huh, but isn’t it just common sense? Isn’t it just “sensible”?

One day I was out walking along the Mediterranean coast and I looked up at this immense grey rocky cliff and a patch of yellow caught my eye. I zoomed in with my telephoto lens and took this photo. Wow! Look at this single, beautiful yellow flower. I was about to write “delicate, little flower” there but stopped myself because “delicate”?? I don’t think so. How did that little seed, blown there by the wind, or dropped by a bird, find enough to sustain it, enough to keep it alive, enough to make it burst out of its shell and stand tall and reach for the yellow sun and spread its petals to say to the world “Here I am” “I am alive”.

People die without hope. I’ve seen it. Many times.

If my mind is flooded with daily fears, if my thoughts swim in an ocean of dread, what kind of day is it going to be today? What kind of life will I experience? And what if this is “my one wild and precious life“? Is this how I want to spend it?

What’s the alternative?

Denial? Delusion? Escapism? I suppose so…..but I think there are better options –

“Hope for the best, and adapt”

If we start the day with hope, make our plans based on hope, then we set off positively. If obstacles appear, accidents happen, luck runs out, then we can adapt. I used to commute from Stirling to Glasgow on the train every day to go to work. I never set off thinking “maybe I won’t get there”. I never went to Queen Street Station after work thinking “maybe I won’t get home”. I never planned for the worst, then got round to trying to hope all the dreadful things wouldn’t happen.

Well, I didn’t always get there, and I didn’t always get home. One day the G8 Summit was held in Gleneagles. The authorities closed Stirling down. No trains. No buses. Motorways blocked. I didn’t get to work that day. One day at work it started to snow. It snowed and it snowed and it snowed. By the time I finished work there were no trains leaving Glasgow. The buses were all full, then there were no more buses because the motorway was blocked. I found a hotel room using my smartphone, stayed the night, and next morning, stopped off in Marks and Spencer for a new shirt on my way to work.

Many, many times, trains were cancelled or ran late. Many times the train would stop in the middle of the countryside for half an hour, or an hour, or sometimes, even longer. The journey wasn’t always as straightforward as it should have been. But I still never set off thinking “maybe I won’t get there”.

So that’s one way……

“Hope for the best, and adapt”

Here’s another –

“Look for the good and adapt”

This isn’t quite the same because it isn’t based on a starting point of hope. It starts with an intention. An intention to seek, to be curious, to be on the look out for what delights, and what amazes. To find “L’émerveillement du quotidien“. Because it’s always there. There will always be beauty to discover, music to excite or delight, scents and flavours to savour, textures to relish. There will always be acts of kindness, acts of courage and acts of love. You can see that all the time. In how many terrorist attacks do we see the cruelty of one person, followed by the courage, kindness and love of many, many others.

What if every day I look for the good, and when obstacles, accidents, infections, bad luck come my way, I find a way to adapt?

I look at that flower, flourishing (because that’s what flowers do, isn’t it, they flourish?) in what looks like barren adversity, and I think, well, that’s amazing, that’s beautiful, that’s life.

 

 

 

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“And not or” – it’s natural

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, writing on February 29, 2020| 2 Comments »

I’m writing a book just now about “and not or”.

“And not or” is a concept I’ve been exploring for some time and I thought it was time to start writing down some of my discoveries more systematically because I thought that would help me to think and, hopefully, take my understanding to a new level. Well, I’m in the midst of all that and, so far, what I can is…..I’m really enjoying it! Hey, that strikes me as a pretty good reason to write….to enjoy it. When I say I enjoy it, I don’t just mean it is pleasurable. I mean I feel it adds value to my life and helps me to make more sense of it. It’s fulfilling.

I’ve also been browsing through some old digital photo libraries of mine and re-discovering images I haven’t thought about for years. I think that because I’m so immersed in the “and not or” idea of my book that I’ve developed a different perspective from the one I had when I took these photos, so now I contemplate them through that new lens. I think this particular image is a good example of that.

What do I see when I look at this photo?

I see two hills. One is dark and the other light. I immediately think of the yin yang symbol, with its dark half and its light half. Isn’t that pleasing? To see BOTH the dark and the light hills in the same scene?

I see the reflections of the two hills in the astonishingly calm surface of the loch. Clear, clear reflections, one dark and one light. Isn’t it delightful to see the objects and their reflections in the same scene? I think of the connections between the conscious and unconscious parts of our minds. How what lies below our consciousness, emerges into consciousness as a kind of reflection, at night, in dreams, and in the waking hours, in our emotions and thoughts.

I see within the reflections two boats. A black boat with a light cabin in the middle of the reflected dark hill, and a white boat in the reflected image of the light hill. Each boat has its own beautiful mirror image beneath it in the water. This symmetry of reflections reminds me of the fractal nature of the universe, with patterns and images cascading through time and space.

I see brightly lit sky and heavy rain-laden clouds above the loch, and I see the dark shoreline, grassy, and mossy and earthy, in the foreground. I love this spread of earth, water, air and light and this one image.

I see the activities of humans, the little boats, some for fishing, some for pleasure, and the machinery on the raft in the middle of the loch. And towering over these little boats and equipment, are the magnificent, rocky hills, standing like quiet giants, watching what lies at their feet.

This is like a kind of meditation for me. As I explore this AND that AND these AND those and see the connections, the reflections, the symmetries and patterns, my mind and my heart slow down to match the pace and the rhythm of the scene.

I hope you get a similar experience.

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Looking back, looking forwards

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on February 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I can’t remember if I took this photo as I was on my way towards the mountains, or I was leaving them behind me. So, I thought I’d imagine it both ways.

I remember leaving home for the first time when I was 18. Leaving to catch the train to Edinburgh where I was about to start six years at university learning Medicine. As I walked down the empty road I had the sensation of suddenly leaving my body, soaring high up into the sky, and looking back down at what seemed a tiny figure walking along the road. In that instant I felt very small and very alone. I turned and looked back. Even my house seemed small now. As I look at this photo I’m reminded of that day, even though this is not a photo of my house, nor of the road I walked down. It’s just that as my eye is drawn back down that deserted road past a tiny white house, that I see the centuries old mountains standing there, as still and as familiar as ever, but obscured today by insubstantial, wispy clouds of water, thoughts and memories.

The past fades behind us as the clouds of time veil the once clear outlines of our memories. But the past is still there. Still exerting its gravitational pull. Still anchoring us, reminding us of roots, and ancestors and belonging.

I sit here today looking forward. Sometimes I see the future looming large ahead and I strain my eyes to make it out, but it hides, or is hidden, behind my anxious thoughts of what if, and what if not, and who knows? These ever changing thoughts and concerns floating in front of my destination. Or my destiny? Walking along a clear, straight road without knowing where it will lead, when it will turn, or dip, or rise.

Maybe the years and experiences which have shaped me give me a new confidence now. An acceptance of not knowing. A humility from not being able to predict. An excitement about the mysteries and wonders which, undoubtedly, lie ahead.

I find myself looking forward to these moments when I’m able to look back. And I love how I my attention can float, like those wispy clouds in front of the immense unknowns of the mountains, allowing me to appreciate the past, the future, and this flitting, yet eternally present moment.

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What does “everything is connected” mean?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology, science on February 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »

The phrase “everything is connected” immediately appeals to me and strikes me as true.

The first thing I think of is the human being.

Although I was taught Medicine in parts, learning about cells, tissues, organs and even systems separately, it was an almost unspoken given that all the parts were connected. In Second Year of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, one of the main subjects was Anatomy and we were put into groups of six to spend a year dissecting a human body. Our guide was a three volume textbook, “Cunnigham’s Manual of Practical Anatomy”, along with “Gray’s Anatomy” (probably the most beautiful textbook I ever possessed). I was a bit overwhelmed with the sheer number of pages in these texts and asked one of the tutors “Which bits of this book do we need to learn?” He replied, “Which bits of human beings do you think patients will ask you about once you’re qualified?” “Ah, you mean we have to learn it ALL?” He smiled and walked away.

It would be a full two years after that before I met an actual live patient, but, hey, they don’t teach Medicine that way any more do they?

I don’t remember a single lecture about holism, but somehow it was a core value for me right from the start. However it was over a decade after graduation before I came across “Psychoneuroimmunology” and “Psychoneuroendrocrinology” which were fields of study looking at the connections between the Mind, the Nervous System, the Endocrine System and the Immune System. I think that’s where I first encountered a more holistic science, one focused on “systems” not “parts”.

It was much, much later when I encountered “Complex Adaptive Systems” and both “Chaos Theory” and “Complexity Science”. Somehow I think we are still in pretty early days of developing the sciences of the connections. But it sure still excites me!

As a GP I also had to be aware of the individual patient’s connections between themselves and the rest of the world….their relationships, their work, their housing, their family and so on. Those are threads you never quite get to the end of. I think that makes us humble, that knowing that we will never know all there is to know.

Sometimes it seems to me that our minds are like fractals, vast webs of mirrors reflecting similar patterns of reality to each other. Actually, as I write this I remember “Indra’s Net” – where every drop reflects every other drop. I think we humans are great at spotting patterns, and regularities, and that, combined with our ability to use metaphors and symbols enables us to appreciate the incredibly rich, dense nature of reality.

When I saw this shape on the surface of the water I wondered if it had been caused by a boat, or was it something lying on the river bed? But look at the shape drawn by the farmer who has been working this field. What a gorgeous echo of the shape on the river. One of the things that happens when we appreciate these connections is an experience of beauty and wonder intimately entwined.

One time when flying over the English Channel, I looked down and saw the shadows of the clouds on the water’s surface just before the coast. Ooh, that still pleases me so much to contemplate this image! I love the fragility and impermanency of the little clouds. I love the even more ephemeral nature of their shadows on the Channel. And I love that transition of density of the clouds from the area above the water to the area above the land, how you can see in that the dynamic, ever moving dance of the land and the water and the air. Magic!

What connections have you spotted today?

 

 

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What shape are the waves you are making?

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on February 20, 2020| 2 Comments »

I don’t think of myself as a separate object any more. There is a constant stream of materials, energies and information flowing into me. I ingest some when I eat, I breathe some into me when I inspire. Heat, light, sound, gravity, and many other energies I can’t detect, influence and shape me, some stimulating my senses, some influencing the flow of fluids and elements around my body and into and out of my cells. The way my body and brain have evolved allows my whole being to interpret all these flows, to make sense of them, attach values to them, to allow me to respond and react.

I am changed.

Second by second, minute by minute, day by day and year by year, I am changing. Not a single cell remains the same over my life time. The idea of an “internal environment” is quite an old one now, but more than ever we understand that this is a dynamically changing environment, not a fixed one.

We process all these streams and flows. We create new cells, break down some molecules, make some new ones. We make new connections in our brains, strengthen some feedback loops in our body and weaken others. We make sense of now in the light of the past and the myriad of possible futures.

Then these streams continue on their way. We breathe out certain molecules, subtly changing the mix of gases in our immediate environment. We radiate heat, make noises, and we act.

We send out materials, energies and information into the universe every single moment of our lives.

These flows influence, disturb, change and shape our environment, other people, and all the other forms of life we share this planet with.

So, sometimes, I think it’s a good idea to pause, take stock, reflect, and ask ourselves – what shape are the waves that I’m making?

Because these shapes repeat and echo and ripple out way, way beyond the worlds we can imagine.

What kind of world do we create when we send out angry waves? Waves of fear? Waves of kindness? Waves of joy?

I was thinking about this today because I came across this photo I took at Dunrobin Castle many years ago. The concentric shapes of the ripples in this fountain completely fascinate me. It’s mesmerising. Alongside that, I heard from a couple of people in the last couple of days how much they enjoy my blog posts, and how they have been reading them for years. I didn’t know that. Like any author who publishes a book, I don’t tend to hear from my readers. Yes, I know, some of you hit the “like” button, or make a comment, but I have realised before that only a tiny minority of readers do. And that’s how it should be. After all, when I think of all the books I’ve read and enjoyed in my life, how many of those authors (even just the living ones! 😉 ) have I contacted to let them know that? Almost none.

I know people blog, and tweet, and put posts on Facebook for many reasons, but I think it’s always important to wonder about what shapes the waves are that we are sending out into the world. They will travel further and for longer than you think.

I hope I’m sending you some waves of wonder, some waves of joy, some waves of kindness and some waves of beauty. Because that’s my intention.

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Diversity is beautiful

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on February 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Look at these rocks, dropped here by the river. What caught my attention were the colours. It’s too easy to dismiss rocks as grey and just move on. When I stopped to contemplate them I then started to notice the range of sizes and forms. Some are on the way to becoming pebbles, others are rocks way too heavy to lift. I’m not sure I can even begin to describe all the different shapes.

This, to me, is simply beautiful.

So is this…

….the harvest of tomatoes from my garden with their astonishing variety of shapes and colours, and, take it from me, tastes! (Oh, and, yes, I know that one on the left isn’t a tomato. There are some chilli peppers in this shot too!)

and this…

The Hanbury Botanical Gardens in Ventimiglia – one of my most favourite gardens in the world exactly because of the beauty which emerges from diversity.

Even when you stop to look at the sea (don’t tell me the sea is blue) you can’t help but notice the incredible range of colours and shades. It’s all the more beautiful for it.

Diversity is natural.

Uniqueness is everywhere.

Variety is all around us.

The world is all the more beautiful for its absence of mono-cultures.

I wish our societies were more welcoming, not just tolerant but communities which encouraged uniqueness, which relished the rich and beautiful phenomenon of diversity.

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