Heroes Not Zombies

There’s always many ways.

When I first looked out over these vines and saw this glimmering road winding it’s way up the gentle hill, I thought that was the only route through the vines. But I quickly learned that there is a vast web of paths through the vines. They are gravel, crushed stones, or time worn paths across the grasses which grow between the “wires” and between the individual vineyards. There are no fences or hedges. There are no walls.

Everyone knows which vines are theirs but everyone is free to navigate their own way between them.

When I look at this photo it always sets off my thinking about how there are always other ways in life.

Recently I’ve become more aware of two contexts where we, collectively, tend to forget that lesson.

During this pandemic, time and again, I’m amazed at how little governments and authorities look outside of their own patch, both to highlight problems and to find potential solutions. I live in France but all my relatives live in the U.K. and I have friends as far away as South Africa, Australia and Canada. So I’m often aware of how each of those countries are experiencing and handling the pandemic. But you rarely hear the authorities in any one of them make any reference to the others. As if everyone has nothing to learn from anyone else. Virtually the only attempts at comparison I see is the U.K. government’s consistent claims to be “world leading” without actually showing how they’ve arrived at this position.

This narrowness of view is amplified by the media and there is virtually no sign of mainstream analysis of different policies or practices.

Surely we could all learn by exploring and reflecting on different ways.

The second, and related context, is health care. The dominant model is pharmacology and the pursuit of technological fixes. But healing, true healing, occurs within a person living within their particular circumstances and environments. This pandemic has shown us that the most vulnerable are usually exposed by their poverty, their precarious jobs, their marginalised position in society and by inadequate care.

Healing is stimulated and supported by relationships, by caring, non judgemental, attentive, long term relationships. But that’s not how we’ve built our systems of drug delivery and surgical procedures.

Healing is stimulated and supported by good nutrition, by time spent in Nature, by practices such as meditation, massage, rehabilitation and convalescent care.

Maybe we need to be exploring other ways? After all how are we caring for those who get infected by coronavirus but don’t need hospital care? And how are we caring for those with “long Covid”? Because those two groups alone make up the majority of people who experience the illness called “Covid”.

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This style of window is very typical in northern Spain. I think it’s beautiful. I like the shape and the design of the window frame, so it’s not a surprise that this one caught my eye as I wandered along the street in Segovia.

But my eye was caught by something else once I looked at the windows. The curtains were drawn on the first floor while they were still closed on the other two floors.

It’s often difference which catches our eye. Something stands out because it’s a different shape or a different colour. Or because it moves.

Movement is the creation of difference moment by moment. I’m sure you have experiences like that frequently, where you notice something out the corner of your eye because you’ve detected a movement.

In this case, it wasn’t movement but a difference in pattern. Perhaps if the curtains on all three levels had been drawn the same I wouldn’t have noticed them at all.

Having had my eye caught first by all three windows, then by the first floor one, it was colour which caught my attention next.

I think I notice more when I am traveling. I go out with an intention to notice, to see what I can see. But I’ve found I can do that anywhere. Even in my own garden. Any time. I can set my intention – to see what I can see – and go out and notice what’s changed, see what’s different.

It’s very easy for us to do the opposite, to walk or even drive without noticing. Have you ever had that experience where you arrive at your destination and you think “Goodness, am I here already?” You have no memory of the journey itself because your thoughts were elsewhere. You were preoccupied. Or simply living on autopilot. Zombie mode.

To try to counter that autopilot, zombie default whilst commuting I’d set my intention to notice. As I walked to the station in the morning I’d have my camera in my hand intending to take a photo or two. That worked. It kept me present, made me more aware. It’s even easier to do that nowadays because we all have cameras in our mobile phones, but you still have to set your intention.

Why not try it today. Set an intention to notice and see what catches your eye.

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Harmony is so pleasing isn’t it?

I love to listen to musical harmonies. For example when two singers voices sound just so good together. Simon and Garfunkel are the first to come to my mind when I think of that but there really are thousands of examples because I’m sure this is something I share with all humans.

We love resonance and harmony don’t we? It pleases us, delights us, calms us and nourishes us.

I’m always noticing harmonies in the world around me and one type is where two or more shapes echo or ressemble each other.

In this photo I’m struck by the resonance between the shapes of palace roof and the mountain behind it.

This palace at La Granja was inspired by the one at Versailles. If you visit both you’ll see echoes of the one in the other and both were built by powerful men demonstrating their status and wealth. But the mountain behind was created by much greater forces as Gaia sculpted the very face of the Earth.

Synchronicities are perhaps even more striking than physical shapes. They are the experiences we get which resonate so strongly with other similar ones that they astonish us. I often find them in the texts I’m reading, the music I’m listening to and the films and programmes I’m watching on tv. At times I think they occur because one of the big tech companies is following my activities online but the most impressive ones don’t involve the digital world at all. They occur in conversations, events and experiences.

Harmony is definitely beautiful but these resonances which we experience or notice do something else too. They give us a sense of everything having a purpose. They stir our souls and deepen the feeling that Life and Universe are all amazingly woven together.

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What’s so remarkable about a single purple flower?

Why did I even notice it, and why bother to photograph it?

Well first of all it is very beautiful. The colours are so vivid. But although the splash of colour caught my attention what makes this flower so remarkable is time and place.

It’s flowering in late October. There are no other Morning Glory plants flowering in my garden at this time of year. More than that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Morning Glory flower in late October.

And it’s flowering in the middle of vegetable plot. Yes, I know, the vegetable plot doesn’t look up to much in this photo but that’s because we’ve harvested all the tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce from this patch and the whole patch looks bare and brown.

What’s more, I didn’t plant any Morning Glory flowers in the vegetable patch. They grow in quite another part of the garden, far from here.

So it’s the context of this flower’s appearance which makes it unique and remarkable.

I am used to noticing the unique, the singular, unusual, peculiar. I did it all the time in consultations. It was never enough to just name a disease, to reduce diagnosis to the application of a particular label. I wanted to hear the whole story. What were the circumstances of this illness? When did it appear? How has it developed since then? What’s the life context of this illness? What place does it have here and now at this place in this patient’s unique and singular story?

I’ve always found that exploring the contexts and connections in someone’s life brings out what is remarkable, what is unique and what is most personal.

It’s not enough to apply a label, to reduce a diagnosis to a particular example of a known disease. I was taught it’s much better to understand the patient who has the disease than the disease the patient has.

So I find that all those years of seeking out the contexts, of exploring the timings and the places, makes noticing the unusual easier and more meaningful.

Beautiful and remarkable.

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Strange how the universe works huh?

I was struck by this scene of neat piles of fallen leaves on the wide paths in the garden of the Royal Palace at La Granja and earlier I noticed this on coming out of my hotel in Segovia……

Have you ever seen that level of tidiness in a Public space? I’m not sure I have…which is one of the reasons why I took that photo.

So did that earlier experience of the pile of leaves next to the pile of cut grass prime me to notice the neat piles of leaves in the gardens? Maybe but even that is part of a bigger picture….

I emigrated from Scotland to South West France seven years ago and because I didn’t know if I’d really want to stay here – reality meets dream – I decided to rent somewhere to stay instead of buying a home. I ended up liking living here so much I wasn’t very motivated to go house hunting. Then came the chaos and uncertainty of Brexit and Covid.

Well now the new regulations are clearer and my permissions etc are all in place it seemed the time was right and we went housing. It really took no time at all to find a place we fell in love with and we’ve bought it. Well, still some legal steps to complete but hopefully about a month from now we’ll get the keys.

So – tidying – in the broadest sense of the word is my world at the moment. Sorting through everything I own, giving things away, getting rid of broken things, forgotten things I wonder why I ever kept, and filling boxes to transport from here to the new house.

Maybe this is a good time to be creating some order in the chaos of this pandemic?

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I love both Spring and Autumn because then change is so obvious.

When the leaves start to change colour going from green to vivid red as they’re doing in this photo, they’re beautiful and they grab my attention. I mean how could I miss a spectacle like this?

I know that over the next few days, or couple of weeks, these changes will be everywhere. I’ll be surrounded by reds, yellows and gold.

Change is perhaps THE most fundamental characteristic of reality. Nothing never changes. But often change is so gradual or slow that we don’t notice it. We become familiar with our everyday and slip comfortably into not noticing.

But change is underway all the same. I’m changing. You’re changing. Everything you can see, hear, smell, taste or touch is changing,

When we notice change we wake up. We become aware. And in that moment we can experience the flow of Life, the movement of energy, the cycles of living, the seasons of Nature.

I love it when that happens but it’s not always an experience of pure joy. There can be tinges of sadness in there as we become aware of what is going. Or even more so, change can be felt mainly as loss and pain. It’s not so beautiful then and we might resist. We might refuse to accept that change has happened and experience the pain and sadness more intensely.

But then we adapt. Because time doesn’t stand still. We change along with the new losses and/or gains.

Isn’t that the true marvel of living? That life is complex, so nuanced, so full of paradoxical phenomena, often active and swirling around at the same time. So we experience the reality of a multitude of emotions often over extremely short periods of time.

“This too shall pass” is the old saying and depending on the circumstances that might fill us with relief or sadness, with joy or fear, with delight or regret. Or a lively mix of all that and more.

But that’s the beauty of reality…..and we develop the necessary life skills of acceptance, gratitude and awareness through exactly these experiences of change.

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This photo captures a sense of place for me. It’s a view of Segovia with the blue mountains in the distance. The colours of the buildings and their rooftops seem classic Segovia to me. And although you don’t get to see how the streets are laid out from this perspective you still get a feel for it. You know somehow that this isn’t a modern city built on a grid plan for example.

I think it’s the view of the mountains on the horizon which gives us the idea that this is an inland town, fairly high up above sea level. Or is that just because I’ve been there and experienced it?

I grew up in Stirling in Central Scotland and every time I go I have the same tugging at my heartstrings and the same feeling of deep belonging the moment I see the castle high up on the rock with the Ochil Hills as a backdrop.

I lived for many years in Edinburgh and it would be hard to miss the influence of both the castle in the middle of the city and the immense Arthur’s Seat when you are there. There’s also something special about Edinburgh’s street layout with the hugely contrasting Old and New Towns separated by Princes Street Gardens.

How about where you live? What do you think it is about the geography of the place, the architecture of the buildings or the patterns of the streets which give you a strong sense of place when you are there?

And have you ever wondered how those features, those environments, influence your psyche and that of the other people who live there?

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I looked up and noticed this lady leaning on the rail of her balcony on the top floor of the building.

She was watching the world go by. Or so it seemed to me. She could, of course, be looking out for someone in particular, waiting expectantly for their arrival, but even then she seemed to be watching the world go by in the meantime.

I immediately thought of my gran. I was born in her house, and spent my childhood living in the first floor flat above her. It was a corner house and her flat had two large rooms, each with a bay window, one facing one street, and the other “round the corner” facing another.

My gran liked to sit in one of these bay windows “watching the world go by”. One of these rooms was a bedroom and the other a sitting room. I could return from school and find she’d swapped the furniture around during the day making the bedroom, the sitting room, and vice versa, “for a change of view”.

Watching the world go by is an exercise in observation. We do it to practice noticing, and to enhance our awareness. It’s almost a meditation practice. It’s certainly a type of contemplation where we strengthen our recognition of the familiar, and, consequently, the unfamiliar, quickly noticing what’s new, what’s different.

Surely this lies at the heart of our powers of perception – the ability to recognise the familiar AND the ability to spot differences.

Where are your favourite places to “watch the world go by”?

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When I was a teenager I worked in the local hospital for a few weeks during the school summer holidays. I worked first as a “ward orderly” then as a “theatre orderly”. Both of these jobs were primarily cleaning jobs but a theatre orderly also had to transport patients to and from the surgical theatres, and the ward orderly also made and distributed tea, coffee, water and other drinks as well as serving meals.

There were daily tasks, weekly ones and monthly ones. It was one of my favourite monthly ones which came back to my mind when I spotted this man polishing the brasses on the balconies above a restaurant in the middle of Segovia.

There were brass plates and handles on the doors of the wards in my day, and plates on the ground too where the doors were hinges. Polishing the brasses was a monthly task and bringing them up to that beautiful bright colour.

Funny, isn’t it, how a small, chance observation can spin you back decades and remind you of little tasks, little pleasures from many decades ago. Of course, this simple memory soon spreads in every direction and I’m quickly remembering what it was like to work in a hospital where, over a few years, I was on first name terms with everyone who worked there…..doctors, nurses, cleaners, porters, secretaries and managers.

I went on to spend the second half of my medical career in a small hospital where, similarly, everyone knew everyone.

I can’t stress how strongly I value that. It’s a bit like Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”…..human sized enterprises remain much better attached to human values than vast, industrialised ones.

I’m convinced we should put people before processes and/or profits. It’s likely my teenage experiences embedded that belief in me.

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As best we know we humans are the only species to create layers of significance and overlay them on the world around us. We do that using a combination of imagination and memory.

Perhaps one of the simplest examples is when we associate a certain food, a particular flavour or scent, with an event or experience. It might be a single powerful experience, either joyful or traumatic. For example the day we met someone we love, or, perhaps the day someone we love fell ill, or died. Or it can be one of those repeated experiences, like something which we came to associate with our grandmother, or with schooldays.

One of the most famous examples of this is in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past….the passage about that little French cake, the “Madeleine”.

In some cases the significance becomes much more than personal. It becomes cultural, shared by millions.

In the gardens of the Royal Palace at La Granja I saw this sculpture of a pomegranate. Is this our most significant fruit? Does any other kind of fruit have a city named after it? “Grenada”, the Spanish word for pomegranate.

In many cultures over many centuries the pomegranate became the symbol of abundance and fertility and has featured in many works of art and rituals.

Has any other fruit achieved such prominence as the pomegranate? I’ve been racking my brain but I can’t think of any.

However, at a personal, or a family level, are there any other fruits which are significant and important to you?

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