Heroes Not Zombies

Isn’t this the most extraordinary plant? I came across this a few years ago and I don’t know what it is. I suspect it may be a plant which has the common name “honesty”. Do you know it? It has delicate paper like leaves, or petals, I’m not sure which. They are semi-transparent and you can see a couple of seeds held in the middle of each one. Well, this looks like that plant once the substance of the leaf/flower (which is it?) has gone, freeing the seeds to find new ground to grow on. What’s left is this almost skeleton of structure which looks like a small, beautifully crafted sculpture of rings attached to a central stalk.

When I look at this I see what seems to be a collection of lenses. I want to get down beside it and peer through them to see what I can see. I imagine they might let me see what’s invisible.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. The essential is invisible to the eye.

The Little Prince. Saint Exupery

I’ve just finished reading The Nutmeg’s Curse, by Amitav Ghosh. In that book he argues for a “vitalist politics” to counter the dominant “mechanistic” one. Although his book is a critique of colonialism, capitalism and neoliberalism, he doesn’t adopt a Left/Right position but instead contrasts the materialist/mechanical view which regards the Earth and its living forms as stuff and resources to be conquered, consumed and grabbed with an animist one which sees our planet as one vast interconnected living being, where we emerge, briefly, within the cycles of this life world.

His description of the actions of the Dutch East India Company in the early 17th Century is horrifying. He shows how the mechanistic/materialist beliefs and attitudes they had, created the structures which supported their use of genocide, slavery and destruction for short term profit. And he shows cycle after cycle of similar behaviours across the planet in the last four centuries leading us to our present crises of climate change, wars and extreme inequality.

This mechanical/materialist view of the works isn’t working out too well, is it? Maybe it’s time to see reality more clearly, to become more aware of what’s invisible – life, love, meaning, purpose, beauty and wonder – and change our priorities to find how we can play a part in enabling Planet Earth to survive and thrive.

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I spotted these two strange little creatures on the ground. I don’t know what they are but what struck me at the time, and what strikes me again now, is that one is curled up tightly into a little circle and the other is stretched out straight like a stick or a line.

Two the same, two different.

I’m pretty sure that if they had both been behaving the exact same way as each other I wouldn’t have noticed them, and probably wouldn’t have stopped to photograph them.

The fact that every patient I saw was unique and would tell me a different story was one of the most important things to me. I looked forward to each clinic knowing I was going to meet someone who would tell me their unique life story.

We are all different. No matter what labels we apply to each other. And we have a lot in common. We connect through our values, needs, desires, problems, challenges and delights. Both the patient and the doctor.

Two the same, two different.

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This pool with the concentric ripples radiating out towards the edges from the centre has always fascinated me. One of the trains of thought it sets off for me is the amazing powers of self healing which all living creatures possess.

This power comes from within and radiates through the whole being. In one telling this is the Vital Force, or Life Force, a mysterious phenomenon which flows through all animated substances. But my issue with that telling is it suggests this energy is an entity of some kind, a thing. And I’m pretty sure no such “thing” exists – well that could send me down the whole rabbit hole of our habit of separating ourselves out and reducing all we encounter to objects, things, resources or whatever. A big mistake in my opinion!

Another telling is that self healing is one of a set of characteristics possessed by all “complex adaptive systems” and all living organisms can be viewed that way. I’ve written plenty here on “complex adaptive systems” so if you want to read more put that term in the search box at the top right of the page.

From that perspective living creatures can self heal, self repair, and self defend themselves. But how do they do that?

I reckon we are at a very early stage of understanding these processes but it strikes me there are at least three major “systems” or “processes” which are most commonly involved.

The first is balancing. The term homeostasis was coined to describe this. It’s our ability to maintain a pretty steady internal environment. Through a vast web of interconnected feedback systems involving cells, molecules and structures such as the blood vessels and nerve fibres, when there is “too much” of something we self regulate to reduce it, and if there’s “too little” we increase it. You can see this in blood pressure, as well as in a host of circulating levels of different nutrients, enzymes and hormones.

The second is the inflammatory system. We tend to think of inflammation as a bad thing because too much inflammation is highly destructive but this ability is at the basis of our ability to defend ourselves and to heal wounds. You’ll be very familiar with the changes in your skin around the site of a cut, or in response to an infection. This is the inflammatory system at work.

The third is integration. I find that integration can be both a simple and difficult to grasp….which is interesting because integration is all about our ability to handle paradoxes. There are two opposite and essential patterns in the universe – wildness and discipline or chaos and order. We need both the play together nicely to have the world we live in. It’s that classic “and not or”.

Too much organisation and order and everything becomes rigid and stuck. Too much chaos and disorder and everything falls to pieces, implodes or explodes!

We need all our systems to integrate – not balance in the sense of cancelling each other out – to flow, to grow and to flourish.

So even if we don’t understand these processes in detail, these three viewpoints can help us to understand how we got sick and what we need to do to mobilise and support self healing – homeostasis, inflammation and integration. All three are constantly present. All three interact with each other perpetually. It’s not about reducing the problem to one of them. It’s paying attention to them all.

And here’s the thing – sometimes there are small specific adjustments to make, but, generally self healing is a holistic function. It’s individual, unique and embedded within multiple contexts. So we need to be wary of one size fits all solutions and we need to tend to the environments in which the individual lives – the physical, social and cultural environments.

I don’t know if this way of thinking is helpful to you but it’s how I came to understand both how patients became unwell and what my job was to help them heal.

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Here are two photos taken on the night of a full moon.

They are actually two consecutive full moons so they show one full lunar cycle. These were taken back in 2007. I took the first one from my bedroom window, and the second from a twenty seventh floor Tokyo hotel room.

Of course, neither is actually a good photo of a full moon. Trying to take a decent photo of the moon isn’t easy, especially if you want to show the landscape over which it is shining. But I really like both of these photos all the same. They are such a contrast. One blue shot of Scottish hills and fields, and the other, several million electric lights shining in a dense urban landscape.

The fact that these two nights bookend a single lunar cycle, yet show such dramatically different living conditions, makes them an interesting pair of photos to contemplate together.

My preference is for the Scottish one, perhaps because that’s where I was born and grew up. But a lot more people prefer to live in Tokyo!

I’ve heard people say they could never live anywhere but in the city, and just going on population size, clearly cities are a popular choice.

I think we’re all different. Some of us genuinely prefer to live in small towns or in the countryside but others definitely prefer city life. Given how different these environments are, I’m pretty sure they show us a good argument for the devolution of power to the greatest extent possible. The needs and daily issues of country and city dwellers are not the same, and neither are the solutions to their problems.

And yet, lift your gaze a bit higher and that moon reminds us that despite our differences we all share the one planet, the same atmosphere, the same water cycle, the same living web of Nature.

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I noticed this weeping willow while I was out exploring my new locality. Isn’t it glorious?

Of course I’ve no idea how it came to grow there but you can tell from the size that it’s been around a long time. I suspect that as with most plants in the world, this one wasn’t put there deliberately by a person. Does that mean it’s appeared completely by chance?

Well, chance isn’t always as random as it appears. The way I understand it, this tree will only grow to maturity here when a number of events, factors and circumstances come together.

The seed, no doubt one of many, had to land on this particular area of ground, it had to germinate, put down roots and find the nutrients it needed to grow. The weather would influence it, as would any human interventions or actions of certain animals.

In fact, when it comes to living organisms, there are more connections and factors in play that when it comes to an individual, you can never fully understand all that’s brought them to this point, and you absolutely can’t predict their future course.

That knowledge always influenced my work as a doctor, keeping me both humble and open minded, reinforcing my preference for attentive, non-judgemental listening.

In Medicine, as in the garden, or the in the wild places on Earth, we can care, attend, understand, support and do whatever we can to encourage self healing, growth and flourishing.

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We don’t parachute onto this Earth from outer space. We emerge within the planet, the atoms, molecules and cells of our bodies arranging themselves into a one time unique configuration. Not for a moment, or an instant. Not as a goal or a target. Not even to produce an outcome from the process. But they constantly arrange and rearrange themselves, accepting the flows of energy, materials and information from all that we are connected to, transforming the patterns and relationships to create new structures. A process which continues throughout our lives and on beyond the time of the body’s dissolution.

But as we live our ordinary every days we aren’t usually aware of this flow. We don’t usually stop to consider from where we have emerged, to reflect on the stories, the events and experiences which uniquely create our lives.

However now and again we glimpse something below, behind or beneath and we get a sudden moment of enlightenment, of realisation – that we are not separate; that we belong here within a centuries old flux of energies, materials and stories.

And that we too create the conditions, the foundations, for the lives to come.

I thought about that as the clear water in the spring nearby revealed the old walls constructed by the Romans centuries ago.

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Around here there are a lot of trees which look like this. Do you know what those clumps are? Let’s look closer.

Maybe you recognise it now? It’s mistletoe. Let’s take a closer look.

Isn’t it amazing? Every one of these clumps is like a whole colony. Mistletoe is a parasite, although at some stages in its lifecycle it does contribute some photosynthesis to the tree. It’s used in health care and has a long history of symbolic and mythological use amongst the Celts, Druids and even Romans. But of course you probably know it best from its use at Christmas where it’s hung up in a house and people kiss under it – however, the origins of this Christmas kissing under the mistletoe seem obscure!

Let’s take one step closer for a final look.

There are more forms of Life and more ways of living than we will ever know.

I like mystery and I love to explore the stories, myths and traditions associated with the plants I encounter.

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Across the road from my house, the water from the spring flows out of the pond over into the channel built by the Romans, and as it does so, these astonishing patterns appear.

I find them quite mesmerising. They are waves or ripples, delicate, transient folds on the surface of the moving water.

They remind me why I write a post here every day. There is such a lot of turmoil and stress in this world these days, so many things to disturb us, upset us, make us angry or afraid, that I decided, when the first lockdown came in here in France at the start of the pandemic, that I would send some positivity out into the world every day.

Each day I share a photo I’ve taken and write some words of reflection. Together they bring me joy, make me wonder, delight me, and/or provoke my thinking about reality, life and health.

My hope, no, my conviction, is, that these images and words spread far and wide carrying the energies of awe, wonder, joy and love. And that these positive waves, or ripples flow into your life, touching you, moving you, inspiring you to pass them on…..not just pass on the posts to friends and family, but to transform their deep energy of wonder and love and create your own ways of spreading that further.

One by one, one day at a time, we can spread the energies and influences which can heal our shared, and our individual, traumas.

Make some positive ways today.

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We grew a tree paeony in a trough in our previous garden. It took about five years to grow just over a metre high. It produced, briefly, the most astonishing flowers each Spring but many years the buds would be eaten by something before they could flower.

It was such a beautiful plant we decided to dig it up and replant it in a pot when we moved house. It seemed to survive the winter and yesterday it opened its first flower.

Look at it spilling out an abundance of yellow pollen. It just amazes me. There are at least half a dozen buds on it, and so far, none of them have been nibbled.

New life, growth and flourishing always entrance me. They seem miraculous not least because you can never be sure how things are going to go.

I’m more convinced than ever that health emerges when a good environment exists and that flourishing occurs as a consequence of care and attention.

I think that’s just as true for humans as it is for flowers. There is no healing other than through the natural processes of self-healing. Recovery and flourishing take time, patience and hope. And there are no artificial substitutes for loving care and attention.

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I’ve often mentioned the French phrase “l’émerveillement du quotidien” here. It roughly translates as the wonder of the everyday. It’s a key concept for me. It’s what brings me happiness and peace in life.

Well, I certainly find that I am continuously surprised by what I encounter and so take a look at this little colony of mushrooms which I found growing on an old tree stump in my garden. Aren’t they incredible?

I’m no fungus expert and I don’t know what these are but they might be “Brittlestems”.

Whatever name someone has given they are simply astonishing and quite beautiful.

Little encounters like this paint the day in shades of joy and wonder.

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