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Strange, rare and peculiar

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I’ve seen this only once.

One day, three years ago, I looked up and saw this sort of rainbow. I say “sort of rainbow” because it isn’t actually an arch. From time to time, in different places, I have noticed various rainbow-type phenomena. I’ve seen them in the spray of water in a fountain, in short almost square patches in the sky, and even in long thin strips once. But this particular one looks different from all the other ones I’ve seen elsewhere.

I don’t expect I’ll see another one the same.

What caught my attention? Was it the sudden appearance of colours in the sky? Perhaps. But I don’t think it was all down to the colours. The shape, the size and the location were equally important. What really caught my attention was its uniqueness. It appeared strange, rare and peculiar.

Some of you may recognise that triad of terms – strange, rare and peculiar. It’s one which was at the heart of my medical practice for several decades. I found that every single patient who came to see me was unique. I was never able to, nor ever wished to, reduce them to a diagnostic category. Naming their disease was one small step towards understanding them. Listening non-judgementally, with genuine curiosity and interest allowed them to unfurl their stories. Every story was strange, rare and peculiar. In every story I would be struck by something. Something would provoke a question, stir a sense of awe or amazement, in me, move me, suggest to me that here was a story of a unique life, a life where particular (peculiar) events occurred, and which had unusual (rare) effects. Every story would strike me as having something distinct, something “not normal” (strange) about it. Because that’s how life is.

Every single one of us is “strange, rare and peculiar”. We cannot be understood as “data sets”, spreadsheets full of “variables”, “averages”, “norms” or “typical features”.

And so, I learned, this is true, not only of patients in a consulting room. It is true of life.

Iain McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary” remains one of the key texts of my life. His description and exploration of the asymmetry of the two halves of our brain (our two cerebral hemispheres) has helped me make sense of things in so many circumstances. Our left hemisphere is great for picking bits out of what we perceive, matching them up against our memory banks of what we know already, ascribing labels to them, and filing them away as further examples of familiar categories. Our right hemisphere, however, is continually on the lookout for what’s new, what’s different. It engages with the world as a whole, not as a collection of bits. It sees whatever we are looking at in its contexts, understands it in its vast web of connections and relationships with everything else.

In short, I think, our right hemisphere is terrific for finding the “strange, rare and peculiar”.

So what? you might ask. Well, look again at this photo. I find that the colours and shapes together are beautiful. I love the way light has been prised apart into these bands of colour, in two clouds, one above the other. I love how this phenomenon hangs on a setting sun orange sky, how the silhouettes of the trees form the lower border of the image, and how flocks of birds scatter across the entire sky.

It’s all very beautiful. Enchanting. Entrancing, even. It amazes and delights. It makes me feel good to be alive, and humbles me with the awareness that I will never know all that can be know. I will never cease to encounter what I’ve never encountered before. And neither will “we”, we humans together. I love the feeling of wonder and curiosity that these events create. I love the sense of mystery.

Opening ourselves up to what’s strange, rare and peculiar, turns out to be a great way to live.

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One year….

Posted in creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 17, 2021| 2 Comments »

17th March 2020, I sat down and wrote my first post of the pandemic. We went into a national “confinement” that day here in France. None of us knew or even guessed exactly how the next 365 days would unravel. I certainly didn’t think I’d write a post every single day for an entire year. But here I am, still writing. What I committed to on this day one year ago was to share a beautiful photo I’d taken, describe some of the “émerveillement” (wonders and delights) of my every day experience, and share my caring heart.

I still think those are some of the best things I can do – share my joy, my delight, my awe, my wondering, my perspectives, thoughts and understanding – share them all through the lens of a loving, caring heart.

I still think that whatever we think, imagine or do, influences our daily experience of life, changes the lives of others, and co-creates the reality of life on this one, small, blue planet. So we should try to live not on autopilot, but with awareness, with consciousness and with agency. “Heroes not zombies” folks!

As I look at this photo this morning I remember the day I sat on a plane and saw the Sun come up between the clouds. Yep, that’s what that image is – the Sun emerging with clouds above and below (as above, so below) – and I immediately hear Leonard Cohen in my ear. I suppose his line has become one of the most famous lines in song history, but it’s still a brilliant line.

There is a crack, a crack, in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

By the way, if you want to read about the origins of that phrase, check out this excellent article. It reveals some of the roots and influences which led to this particular form of words.

Back to my photo – it looks to me that I’m staring right at that crack which is letting the light in. But, hey, hasn’t this pandemic been just such a crack?

Hasn’t it shone a bright, clear light on the fact that we are one human race, embedded in one living planet, sharing the same air, the same water, the same earth?

Hasn’t it shown us the power of co-operation and collaboration?

Hasn’t it highlighted the vulnerabilities we are subject to from our current model of civilisation? Highlighted poverty, precarious employment, poor nutrition, inequality and injustice, climate change, loss of biodiversity, how we treat animals, and just how broken our economic and political models are?

We are a long, long way from dealing with any of these problems and our current silver bullet of vaccination will not be enough to create a stronger, more resilient, healthier community of humans on this planet. I still have hope. I still hope that as the pain of the wounded crack, and the illuminating brightness of the light which gets in, we will be motivated to enhance the incredible inventive genius and co-operative, social power of human beings to create a better world.

But, hey, right here, right now, I will continue with my commitment and share with you a beautiful image, a positive thought or idea, and my passion for love and kindness. I hope these touch you, and you transform them with your own unique experience and imagination, and pass them on to others.

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Transition – becoming not being

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, science on March 16, 2021| 2 Comments »

This half frosted leaf reminds me of the yin yang symbol. About half is white with frost and half is coloured brown. The white half has an area of brown in it and the brown half has an area of white. OK, I know, it’s not the same shape as the traditional yin yang symbol but, still, it captures the same essence I think.

This, for me, is a symbol of transition. We are at that time of the year where one season recedes and another emerges. It’s not that winter has gone completely, and it’s not that spring has quite set in.

Transition is a time of emergence. It’s where whatever exists is in the process of becoming something else. I only discovered this term, “emergence”, a few years ago, but it has been one of the most useful concepts I’ve ever encountered. Emergence describes change in complex systems. The thing is, complex systems are “non-linear”. They aren’t like machines. They don’t change predictably step by step. Because complex systems (like the human being, like all living creatures, like Life, like the living planet, like reality) are non-linear and “open” ie embedded within other systems with constant flows of molecules, energy and information between and through them……then they change in this very different way, which has been called “emergent” – looking back you realise you couldn’t have predicted what they become from how they were! Even if you knew ALL the conditions today, you could NOT predict accurately how a complex system will change.

All that might seem a bit frustrating. I mean, it would be great if we could just gather the “data” and the “evidence” and know for sure how things were going to change. But we can’t. That’s the delusion of the positivist, technocratic world view, the kind of view which claims to know with certainty exactly what “will work”, and only later to realise that it didn’t. In fact, for me, it’s the delusional view which I find most frustrating. I can’t stand the constant pushing of the next “silver bullet”, the next “quick fix”.

I find it liberating to acknowledge and accept the reality of complexity and emergence. It brings several things with it. It demands humility. It requires me to keep an open mind at all times, to remain aware and conscious of the here and now…..just as that here and now constantly comes into being. There’s something exciting and ALIVE about transition and emergence – do you see that phrase I have at the top of my blog?

“Becoming not being”.

I choose that to keep my focus on change, on emergence, on transition, on the everyday, as the everyday unfolds. It brings me my abundant experiences of wonder, awe and delight. It brings me joy.

Final thought for today – transition, the yin yang concept, the idea of emergence – these all fit beautifully with the scientific, rational, and philosophical understanding of complexity – complex systems which are open, non-linear and massively inter-connected. That demands that we always consider contexts, connections, relationships and environments. It shifts us away from the delusion of a world made up of separate unconnected pieces, and brings us face to face with the reality of holism. The whole is always more than, is always different from, the sum of the parts.

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Cycles of life

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography, science on March 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I got down on my tummy and took this photo. What captured my attention was the delicate but vibrant life of this new leaf on its bright green stalk. I’ve come back to this image again and again to contemplate the incredible phenomenon of birth and growth……how a seed can germinate, push out stalks and leaves and begin a long journey upwards towards the Sun…..growing and maturing until it realises its full potential as a flower, a bush or a tree.

Ever since I studied embryology at university I’ve been in awe of how a single fertilised cell can differentiate into so many other types of cells, and how each cells develops in exactly the right place! I mean just think of it in terms of a human being…..how does that single fertilised cell which first divides itself into two cells, then four cells, then eight, and so on, grow a head where a head should be, a heart where a heart should be, and so on to create a beautiful fully formed baby? It still astonishes me.

But the other reason I return to this image is because I look at where the young plant is growing and I can see it is emerging from a forest floor covered in dead leaves. Right in that observation we see the basic principles of life and death….of how there are cycles to life, cycles of birth, growth, development, maturity, ageing and death. That story isn’t a straight line. It’s a circle. Many people have pointed out how, unlike human beings, there is no waste in Nature. Everything transforms into something else. We humans haven’t quite learned that trick and throw away, discard, dump what we don’t want. Where do we think it goes? What happens to all the waste we produce? What effects does it have on the complex, interconnected cycles of Nature on this little shared planet?

I’m already hearing economists and politicians say how they are looking forward to the world economy “re-starting” and saying “we need to get people consuming again”. Already they are talking about how to stimulate “growth” with little thought given to growth of what, and how that increased consumption is both sustainable in a finite planet, and how it fits with the cycles of the natural world.

My hope for after this pandemic is that we undergo what I recently heard an economist call a “metamorphosis”. He said “A butterfly is not an upgraded caterpillar”. What a great phrase! The current system is broken. It’s not meeting the needs of either the human race or the rest of life on this planet. It’s increasing inequality, it’s making us all more vulnerable and it’s teetering on the brink of total collapse.

We need a metamorphosis – we need to emerge from this crisis with new ways of living, new ways of meeting the needs of Life on Earth.

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The heart is the key

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Do you know what I like most about this photo?

The heart shape is carved into the keystone.

Without the keystone, the entire structure will collapse. The bridge can’t exist without the keystone. What are our keystones? We, human beings? What are the keystones without which we cannot exist?

Well, actually, I’m simplifying things already, aren’t I? Because you can’t reduce the entire existence of a single human being, let alone the entire human species, to a single structure. In reality there are many essential “keystones” in a life.

But I still like this concept of the keystone. It’s kind of a declaration of a priority. It highlights something so important that life would be utterly different without it.

And this keystone has a symbol of a heart carved into it. So, here’s something to consider today –

What if we recognise that our heart, our way of “seeing with the heart”, our “heart felt emotions”, our “heart felt values”, should be the keystone in our life?

Without going into all the science of affective neurology, of neural networks within the human body, of the intricate and elaborate connections between the heart, the brain and the rest of the body, I just want to focus today on how we support, nurture and develop the heart……the heart-centred way of living.

Well, we know the heart is healthy (and I don’t just mean working well as a pump) when it is in harmony, when the “heart rate variability” hits a certain sweet spot. And we know that this sweet spot is associated with certain emotions and certain experiences. Specifically, joy, awe, wonder, and love. Whether you look at the work of someone like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who describes flow states from a psychological perspective, someone like Dan Siegel, who teaches about achieving a state of integration, or The Heartmath Institute, which focuses on heart rate variability, you will discover what experiences and behaviours are associated with a healthy heart.

If we put the following to the fore –

  • love
  • joy
  • kindness
  • compassion
  • gratitude
  • wonder
  • awe

then we are creating the opportunities to build healthier and better lives, for ourselves, for loved ones, for others, and for the entire planet.

It’s not everything, there’s a lot more we can do, but if we create the intentions every day to exhibit, to practice and to experience love, joy, kindness, compassion, gratitude, wonder and awe, then we will build a really powerful, strong keystone – a heart-centred keystone.

You might say, but, hey, I can’t experience all of those every day, and you’ll be right, but I’d be surprised if you can’t choose to express, and/or discover at least one of these, every single day. I mean, why not give it a go? Why not take it as one of those “30 day challenge” exercises? How about making a chart and recording each day which of the ones you have expressed or experienced?

Maybe something like this ……….

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Kindness

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 12, 2021| 2 Comments »

Ever since I saw this door with its heart shaped hole (presumably a “peep hole” to see who is knocking at the door?) I’ve really liked it. It got me thinking how this shape, this powerful symbol, right there on the front door, might influence the lives of those who come across it every single day. It also made me wonder about whether or not it led the residents of this house to see the world through the lens of the heart – and as Saint-Éxupery wrote in “The Little Prince”, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”.

Of course there is a lot in that simple little phrase, but the meaning I’m reflecting on today is the power of the heart to shape our best thoughts, our best ideas, our best behaviours. The heart, it transpires, is not a simple mechanical pump pushing blood around the circulatory system. Around the heart is a network of specialised nerve cells – neurones – the kind you find in the brain. It seems that this “neural network” around the heart acts more to send information to the brain, than it does to respond to information from the brain. Just stop and think about that for a moment. We tend to have the idea that we do our thinking, our imagining and our feeling in our brains. But it’s not that simple. We also do a good deal of our mental work with the heart. Actually, there are other neural networks in the body too, and the reality is that the “mind” is an “embodied” phenomenon. The division of a person into “body” and “mind” is a tad artificial!

It seems the heart is especially involved in creating some of our emotions and in harmonising the diverse elements of our being. By that last phrase I mean, one of the things the heart is good at doing is producing “integration” of our entire complex being…..of producing “resonance” within ourselves, and between ourselves and others – yes, it actually sends out detectable energy waves beyond the body…..in rhythms which can influence the rhythms of those around us.

It turns out that the “symbolism” of the loving heart is rooted in biological, physical reality.

The truth is acting with love, wonder, generosity, gratitude and kindness is something that is really good for our health. When we approach others and the world from the heart-felt position of care and compassion then we increase the healthy resonances within ourselves and between ourselves and others.

So, that’s partly why I return again and again to the role of kindness. Can’t we use that more as a tool for living? Can’t we use it more to improve our own lives and those of others? How about we use that as the main touchstone? How about we ask ourselves, of our own actions and words, as well asking of others and even of governments and organisations, “how much kindness does this spread?”

Because I reckon whatever we do, think or believe that diminishes kindness harms us, and harms every other living being. In fact, I believe it harms “Gaia” – the living Earth. Conversely, when we come across the stories of cruelty, injustice, neglect, or violence in the world and we wonder “what can I do to make things better?”, then, one thing (obviously not the ONLY thing) we can do, is try to act, to speak and even to think with more kindness…..to live in better harmony with our hearts.

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Improvising

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I’ve only been sailing a couple times but I do think there are real life lessons we can learn from a photo like this.

First of all, life can seem full of threats like those rather scary, dangerous rocks. In this era of the pandemic that seems especially true and I wonder how our children are going to be as they grow up – they are having to wear masks, wash and/or gel their hands, get regular tests at school to see they are “germ free”, and are being taught that every physical contact is a potential threat – don’t hug! Don’t kiss! Don’t even stand too close!

Secondly, rocks are often much more of a hazard than they appear – we can see what’s above the water, but what lies hidden beneath? Which makes me think of viruses again – after all, we can never see them, and in fact the evidence for the effectiveness of things like wearing masks, social distancing, lockdowns and all such “non-pharmaceutical” interventions is disturbingly scant – by which I mean, not that they might be really helpful, but that we actually don’t know!

Thirdly, as a boat sails close to the rocks the pilot has to be aware of the currents and tides – because it’s not just the presence of the rocks which is a threat, but the potential for the water flows to push your boat onto them. Which reminds me that what we call threats are rarely fixed, often can’t be generalised and always need to be considered in their relevant contexts. Currents and tides change all the time…..and so does life.

Fourthly, I used this photo at the beginning of the pandemic to write about how it has always been a soothing image for me. Ever since I took it I look at it and I feel calm. It pleases me. But when I used it at the start of the pandemic, somehow I noticed the rocks as a threat for the first time. And here I am again, talking about how this image makes me think of potential threats. I guess this pandemic has changed us all. It’s certainly altered the lens through which we view the world.

Finally, I think sailing is a great metaphor for life. You can’t just plot your starting point and your destination and head off in a clear straight line from the one to the other. Nope, life will go much better if we stay aware and responsive. Sure, it’s good to have an idea of where you want to go….even to make preparations for the journey, hoping to anticipate what you’ll need and how you will deal with potential obstacles. But this is what life does – it throws up the unexpected. It surprises us again and again….which should be obvious really because the future is “emergent” – it comes into being from the combination of the past and the present – it’s not sitting there waiting for us to discover it. That’s a basic principle of complexity science – that the future is unpredictable in specific circumstances – that is, we can make broad generalised predictions – like about weather or climate – but we can’t predict accurately about specifics – the weather predictions get less accurate and reliable the further ahead you look.

So, if life isn’t fixed, then we can make certain preparations and plans but we always need to be awake and aware…..stumbling through life in zombie mode doesn’t strike me as the best option! And we need to be awake so that we can change direction, be flexible, adapt, depending on what we encounter. It turns out that improvisation and creative responsive solutions to problems and obstacles is what we need……every bit as much, if not more, than we need “goals”and “plans”!

Here’s the strange thing – at first this image was a calming image for me, then at the start of the pandemic it turned into a metaphor of threat, but, now I find it has become a positive image of improvisation and adaptation. Well, well, I wonder what kind of image it will be for me this time next year??

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Diversity – revealing uniqueness

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, science on March 9, 2021| 1 Comment »

The truth is that every single flower is unique. There are no two flowers which share identical lives.

We have a tendency in our way of thinking which is dominated by how our left hemisphere engages with the world – it’s a tendency towards abstraction, labelling and categorisation. In other words we reduce whatever we encounter to a small range of characteristics or elements, consider them separately from their contexts and relationships to all else, label them and pop them into categories. So we can look at a meadow like this and identify, say, four different species of flowers. The trouble is, do we then just see only four species of flowers?

Maybe you think that doesn’t matter, and the thing is, most of the time, it doesn’t. We don’t need to know the life story of each individual flower. But the trouble is we extend that habit too widely. A good gardener tends their plants as individuals, noting how each one is growing, which ones are struggling, and so on, and dealing with any problems as they appear. We engage with domestic animals the same, naming them, learning their habits, characteristics and quirks. When a pet dies we feel grief which can’t be eased by “just buy another [cat] [dog] [rabbit] or whatever”.

In “The Little Prince” he talks about his rose which he says is not like all the other roses because he has spent so much time and attention looking after it….he’s developed a “bond” with it, a special and unique relationship. He’s right. When we create a meaningful relationship with an other, be that another person, another animal, another plant, then we appreciate their uniqueness, their irreplaceability.

Noticing diversity is a good way to remind ourselves that no two organisms are the same….no two trees, no two flowers, no two pets, no two people. When we become aware of diversity and see the individual as unique we can form a personal, meaningful, deeper, and richer relationship. That makes life richer.

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The beauty of diversity

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

I suspect “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is not the last word on beauty, but I don’t deny that there is a subjective element to beauty. What I find beautiful, you might not, and vice versa. So here’s my invitation to you – tell me, or show me, what you find beautiful and I’ll share with you what I find beautiful.

Today, I came across this photo of a tiled roof in a village in Southern France. This is a very typical roof for this part of the world. I find it beautiful. I’m sure there are many reasons why, but I want to pick out and explore just one of them today – diversity.

What I see whenever I look at a roof like this is that the tiles are all different. As opposed, of course, to them all looking identical. I love how they are different colours and shades. I love how some of them have lichens growing on them, and some don’t. I love how they are not all the same size (they are pretty much the same size but it isn’t exact) and I love how they sort of fit in a higgley-piggedly way!

In other words the characteristic which I find so beautiful about these roofs is that the tiles are so diverse.

Diversity is beautiful.

Nature loves diversity. Left alone you don’t get permanent mono-cultures in Nature. Instead you get the display of vast networks of relationships between widely diverse elements, all of which contribute to the success, to the survival and the flourishing, of the whole.

I also love diversity even in tiles because it gives them more “character” – you can distinguish one individual from another. I like that more that factory produced, machine made, production line sameness – don’t “mono-culture” and “mono-tony” have the same root? Isn’t that maybe why I an averse to “mono-polies”?

I’m not a fan of imposed conformity, of the industrial, capitalist age of mass production and mass consumption. I love to see artisans at work here in France…..people with a lifetime of skill, learned by daily practice over years, taught by the most skilled ancestors and passed on to enthusiastic younger generations. I saw a great initiative in France recently where a small town invited two groups of people to a local building every Wednesday – retired people with a skill (an iron worker, a woman who used to sew for a fashion house, a stained glass worker, and others), and children aged about 12 years old. The children were learning these practical skills from these now retired skilled workers during their regular Wednesday time off from regular schooling. Both the retired skilled craftspeople and the children were loving it – it brought joy and meaning into their lives. It also connected the generations and gave both groups a different view of the other generation. Yes, it’s very small scale. There were only a handful of people in each group. But I don’t think that should put us off. Something doesn’t have to be “mass” and “standardised” to be successful. There’s nothing to stop any community taking this idea and fashioning it into their own practical project.

In my local town of Cognac there are several “Boulangeries” (Bakers) and they are ALL different. They might all include a core range of similar products, including baguettes and croissants, for example, but they all do it differently. Each baker has his or her own skill and experience, own strengths and weaknesses, and I know which one to go to for different types of bread, which make the croissants the way I enjoy them, and which make the best patisserie (like eclairs, and other cakes). Here’s the thing – I don’t buy all those different products in the same boulangerie. Yes, I know, you might prefer the “convenience” of a standardised, one stop shop, and that’s your right to enjoy that. But for me, acquiring this local knowledge then using it to find just what I want, when I want, enriches my life.

Diversity – it’s beautiful and enriching.

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Twists and turns of an evolving world

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology, science on March 7, 2021| Leave a Comment »

We change all the time. The world changes all the time. Nothing is fixed or, so called, “permanent”. I thought about that when I received my residency card here in France recently. I’ve been given what is called a “Carte de Sejour Permanente” – a permanent residency card. That’s me sorted, you might think. Then I notice that it expires in ten years time. Do they know something I don’t? Well, no, thank goodness, it’s just that permanent seems to last ten years in this instance.

That did get me thinking about the whole concept of permanent. Which isn’t something I’ve explored all that much. I have wondered for a long time about the concept of “now” – which is a period of time when we instantly recognise but is devilishly difficult to pin down or define. I mean the moment you think “this is now”, that moment has slipped away into the past and been replaced by an entirely new “now”! But back to “permanent” – I guess we just use this wonder to mean a fairly longish piece of time – in relation to geology we might be talking thousands of years, and in relation to the universe perhaps billions, but, in every single case, we discover that nothing is fixed, nothing really does retain the same, exact features and characteristics (cripes, even the same molecules!) for ever. It’s just the speed of change which alters.

Yet, in our own lives, things happen, and after they’ve happened nothing ever seems the same again. Like you can see in this image of a tree that I’ve shared above. This tree has the most dramatic change of direction which has completely changed its shape forever….ok, for the rest of its life then. And when I see a “lesion” like this I immediately wonder “What happened?” I used to have the same approach with patients in the consulting room. They might come with a problem which had gone on for decades and I always asked them to think back to the time when they felt completely well, then to tell me about the appearance of the first symptoms. That naturally led on to a discussion about what was happening in their life around the time of the big change. I don’t think there’s any way to prove cause and effect in such a scenario but I found it helpful to take the position of “Let’s imagine that what was happening then was significant in bringing about what happened next” That seemed to open the way to a new understanding of illness, it’s significance and possible meaning, which gave a patient the opportunity to change their way of dealing with it to something more helpful, something which might even open the doors to growth and development.

In that sense I think that the events of our lives change us. The most significant events change us dramatically and for the rest of our lives. Death of a loved one, giving birth, serious trauma……you know the kind of thing. All of that, for the individual concerned leaves a permanent change – it can’t be erased. But the way forward with that is learning to create different responses from the ones which have trapped us in suffering. In other words, we can’t change the past, but we can change the way the past impacts on us by choosing to respond differently.

This pandemic is going to change us all……has already changed us all. There won’t be any “return to normal” even if many people desire that…..and nor should there be. Because this event is an opportunity for us, individually and collectively, to reflect, ask ourselves what we were doing that might have contributed to the particular experiences of the pandemic and what we might do differently now to not end up in the same place again.

We have a chance now to reassess our values, our beliefs and our behaviours. To change our priorities, to demand change in our economic, political and social systems. I hope we do that. We’ll all remember 2020. I hope we remember it as the year which led the world to take a different direction.

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