cuddles, laughs, grazing and nibbling, sipping and drinking, listening to a Christmas playlist on Spotify, playing with tractors and racing penguins, wearing party hats, google-eyed glasses, wearing socks with robins on, sharing time and space and Life……
Posted in from the living room, life | 1 Comment »
I’ve been reading “Stoner”, by John Williams, which has been getting rave reviews in the UK in recent weeks. I’m enjoying it and can easily see why it’s been attracting such positive reviews, but today, I had one of those experiences you get when you read really great writing. Suddenly a phrase leapt out at me, stopping me in my tracks, catching my breath and sparking my thoughts….
…love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another
Oh, yes! Love isn’t a goal to be achieved, or a target to be hit, or a product to be purchased. It’s a process of attempting to know someone. In fact, it seems to me that it isn’t possible to know another unless that attempt at knowing grows out of love. (Incidentally, I also think one of the reasons why many people find it so hard to really know themselves, is a lack of self-compassion…or loving attitude towards the self)
But then Williams, in the very next page writes this about how Stoner thought about love –
he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.
“a human act of becoming” – oh I SO love that phrase, and in the rest of sentence he shows us how love constantly changes, how it is a creative act, and how it involves the will, the intelligence and the heart.
Don’t you just love it when a book of several hundred pages, suddenly throws a few words at you and you feel awe, amazement and admiration?
I do.
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As we come towards the end of another year, there are many articles and programmes looking back over 2013, and looking forward into 2014. In the socio-economic world what we hear about most is “growth”. Concern about whether or not there has been “enough”, and how we can all strive to produce more. Every single country in the world is measured in terms of the “growth” of its economy. Very little growth, bad marks. Increasingly more growth, good marks!
But growth of what? And for what?
Growth of consumption. That seems to be one marker. Consumption of what? Doesn’t matter. Stuff. Just, the more consumption, the better. Growth of “activity”. That’s another. But what kind of activity? Just activity. Busy turning financial derivatives into even more complex products to sell others. Busy making stuff. Busy moving stuff. Just activity.
Why? Why is more consumption and more activity good no matter what is being consumed, no matter what activities are being carried out?
Is it to produce more and more wealth for less and less people? Because that’s the sure and certain trend we are seeing.
Meantime we are seeing two other forms of growth. Growth of the number of people alive on the planet. Growth of the amount of finite resources we are taking out of the planet. Growth of the number of drugs people take every day. Growth in long term diseases and cancer.
Something isn’t going right, don’t you think?
Marc Halévy, in his “Prospective 2015 – 2025”, [ISBN 270331017X] takes this whole issue by the scruff of the neck and points out with stark clarity that we are just not on a sustainable path. More than that, we seem to be caught in a communal delusion, that this current path of ever more consumption by ever more people is a good thing – in fact THE good thing – THE criterion on which to judge the health of any economy.
This is just crazy. It makes no sense.
Marc suggests an alternative and he captures it in a simple French phrase – “la jouissance de la frugalité”.
These aren’t the easiest words to translate into English (help me out here if you are good at translating!) – but you get a bit of the sense of “jouissance” from the french phrase “joie de vivre” (which, interestingly, is one of those phrases we English speakers use directly as it is). It’s something to do with pleasure, joy, delight, satisfaction, something life enhancing. It’s, fundamentally, about quality. And “frugalité” isn’t exactly “frugality” as we would say in English. In fact, frugality isn’t a word which is used much by English speakers any more, but Benjamin Franklin had it as one of the most important of his virtues. It doesn’t mean something inadequate, or poor. It isn’t about poverty. But it is about “less”…..a kind of making the most of whatever it is you have…..
We can find this suggestion in the “sweetness of life”, and in the “slow movement“.
It’s about more quality for less consumption. It’s about living in the present, savouring, enjoying, mindfully experiencing every single moment.
Once you apply that personal principle to the universal, then you stop to ask yourself at each level. Does this enhance my life? Does it enhance the life of the human species? Does it enhance Life on Earth? Does it enhance the Universe?
Enhance might not be the best word, but I hope you get the idea. We need to shift our focus from more, more, more numbers and stuff, to deeper, greater, more impactful quality of living.
We need more of “la jouissance de la frugalité”
Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography | 1 Comment »
Here’s what you can do.
You can do what the whole universe does.
You can do what absolutely everything in the universe can do.
You can realise your potential, your completely unique potential.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, personal growth, photography | 1 Comment »
Paths…do you wonder what kind of path you are on? Have you taken any time recently to look at it? To really see and feel what this path is like?
I read a small poem recently by Alec Finlay it was about “today“, the word “today” which starts, in the “t” with a junction, he says, and ends in fork (in the “y”). I like that. A lot. The thought that every day starts with a junction and at the end of it we come to a fork. Because that’s true, isn’t it? We have a choice every day about which path to take next…..
Posted in from the dark room, photography | 2 Comments »
(Part 1)
I was taught that bad medical practice was to prescribe a pill for every ill.
I especially remember sessions where we had to reflect on our use of the prescribing pad, asking ourselves exactly why we were choosing to prescribe at all, not just why we chose a particular drug.
That teaching may be long since gone. Prescribing rates grow exponentially. I read the other day about the number of prescription drugs found in waste water in cities, and how around 70% of adult Americans now take at least one prescription drug every day.
I wonder why that is. Why are more and more people being prescribed more and more drugs? Are we, as a species, becoming sicker and sicker? Is it because the drug companies “don’t sell drugs. They sell lies about drugs“? Is it because of the distortion of “evidence” by drug companies?
I think it is at least in part due to the fact that modern medicine is practised on the basis of a delusion that human beings are complicated machines. They are not. They are complex organisms.There is a huge difference. When you see a person as a machine with a part which doesn’t work, the idea that you can sort that part with a drug makes some kind of sense. What’s lost in this way of thinking is a very, very important truth.
The only healing which occurs is natural healing. It is the person’s own healing system which gets the results. Drugs, if they do anything useful, act as adjuncts to steady things up whilst the body gets on with sorting itself out. There is not a drug on the market which directly cures anything. Benjamin Franklin said “God heals and the doctor takes the fee” – same observation, framed in a particular way.
So, given that the truth is we don’t have any drugs which cure, and its only the natural self-healing capacities of the human being which actually repair tissue, and restore health, then why don’t we FIRST of all seek to stimulate and support self-healing, self-care and self-repair, and ONLY when necessary, support the process with a carefully prescribed drug?
The problem with the data, algorithm, drug model of medical practice is that all roads lead to drugs.
We need new maps. We need to be able to understand how to set the conditions for recovery, for resilience and for health. We need to understand how to live differently to have sustainable health, and to maximise health when we have a chronic condition.
Posted in from the consulting room, health | 3 Comments »
The NHS in England is trying out an approach to Primary Care where the patient accesses the GP Practice website, completes an online questionnaire about their symptoms, has their identity checked by a member of staff on the phone, then receives a prescription for a drug.
This is pretty much what happened during the great swine flu epidemic, except I think they skipped the ID check – answer 4 questions online correctly and win a box of Tamiflu. Honestly, I thought Medicine had reached a new low at that point.
Here’s what I was taught at Edinburgh University then subsequently in GP training –
Start with the patient’s history. By the time you’ve taken the history you should have a diagnosis, or a differential diagnosis (a list of possibilities).
Next do a physical exam as needed to confirm the diagnosis
If you still haven’t confirmed the diagnosis, then ask for any investigation which potentially will confirm the diagnosis.
The next stage is treatment options (I’ll come to that later)
I was taught the history is not a data set. It is a narrative. Patients come and tell a story. They don’t come to share data.
Data can be collected on examination and investigation which can help inform the doctor and the patient but data is NOT “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”
Human beings cannot be reduced to data sets. Mary Midgely, the philosopher, said
One cannot claim to know somebody merely because one has collected a pile of printed information about them
As a GP I learned that some people present with “minor” ailments as a “ticket” to access the doctor. There is actually a bigger issue they want to address (often emotional, psychological or related to a more chronic symptom) and the “minor” ailment is what precipitates the appointment request – it is neither the sole reason, nor even the main reason for the consultation.
As a GP I learned that noticing the patient’s body language, their speech pattern, their hesitancies and word choices opened up the potential to explore what they were really experiencing and concerned about – and so allowed a fuller, “better” diagnosis – and so a more appropriate treatment.
As a GP I learned that eye contact, my body language, the way I formed a question all either opened up, or closed down, possible other avenues to explore with a patient.
How often has a patient told me something important only to add they had never before told that to anyone?
What about patient centred care and compassion? Human beings don’t fit algorithms. Human beings, as complex adaptive systems (CAS), are open, emergent, dynamic, changing, contextually embedded creatures. What algorithms have been invented which can cope with the complexity of individuality? The complexity of everyday living?
We can squeeze people into algorithms, but we can’t make algorithms which fit the breadth and depth of natural variety.
And this is the heart of my concern.
Is the practice of Human Medicine about the health of human beings? If it is, we have to work with the reality of what a human being is. A complex, conscious living being who communicates and makes sense of the world through narrative, and who is embedded in a web of interconnections which inform their values and their choices. If it is, we have to work with the reality of diversity and uniqueness.
Please, please, let’s emphasise the need for a scientific approach to human health – one which is based on the science of living creatures, not one based on a delusional reductionist, materialistic science of complicated machines.
We are heroes, not zombies.
Posted in from the consulting room, health | 6 Comments »
Hmmm…..haven’t come across this acronym before but its an exciting one!
It stands for Music Evoked Autobiographical Memories.
This interesting study used “No. 1 songs” to stimulate autobiographical memories in patients with brain injuries. They compared this method to the standard psychological “AMI” – Autobiographical Memory Interview. It’s a very small study of 5 patients and a very specific type of problem so the conclusion that music was more efficient than verbal prompts at eliciting autobiographical memory needs further study.
However, this whole idea has pricked my imagination. How often does a particular song or piece of music take you right back to a particular place, time or person in your life? How often do we share music with old friends or family to recreate our shared autobiographical memories?
One element of the study which is especially interesting is that most of the MEAMs were associated with positive emotions. When you think of our brain’s bias to negativity (Rick Hansen says our brains have velcro for negativity and teflon for positivity), and the common claim that we need a ratio of 3 – 5:1 positive to negative thoughts a day to experience flourishing, then surely music must be a GREAT tool for embedding positive, accessible experiences into our memories.
I know, there are lots of other reasons why music plays an important part in our lives, but, hey, MEAMs just sound such fun!
Posted in from the music room, from the reading room, music, neuroscience, personal growth, psychology, science | Leave a Comment »
David Cameron made a speech at the recent G8 Dementia Summit recently.
Frankly, it seems to me the premises on which his speech was based are wrong-headed, and the language – that fighting, defeating, destroying war type of language which is used way too often in relation to problems in the world – is at best unhelpful and at worst takes us in wholly the wrong direction.
What really bothered me?
this disease steals lives; it wrecks families; it breaks hearts and that is why all of us here are so utterly determined to beat it.
What exactly is this “it”? What kind of creature is it which steals, wrecks and breaks? This is the fundamental problem. Dementia is not a creature, it’s not an alien, it’s not an object even. It’s a process. In fact, I wouldn’t even use the word “it” in relation to dementia (I don’t use “it” in relation to any disease). This is a process which is a process occurring within a human being, a human being who lives within multiple physical, cultural and social environments, a human being who cannot be understood in isolation. If we see dementia as an object we are going to have a hard job achieving sufficient understanding to make a difference.
And then there is this….
In generations past, the world came together to take on the great killers. We stood against malaria, cancer, HIV and AIDS and we are just as resolute today.
We stood against malaria, cancer, HIV and AIDS, Mr Cameron? “Mission accomplished”? I don’t think so. What does WHO think about cancer rates?
The WHO predicts the number of cancer cases will soar to more than 19 million a year by 2025.
(14 million cases in 2012, up from 12.7 million in 2008)
The rest of his speech celebrates the amount being spent on pursuing drugs to treat dementia –
We are throwing everything we have at making the UK the place to invest and locate and work in life sciences. And I can tell you today, this strategy is reaping serious rewards. In the past 2 years we’ve had £1.8 billion of investment into this country announced.
But what do we know already works to reduce the chances of developing dementia?
Is there anything which has been shown to reduce the risk by as much as, say, 50%?
Yes, there is. Exercise.
How much of that £1.8 billion of investment has gone into this proven prevention? Nope, I don’t know either…..
Actually there are many things which seem to reduce the chances of dementia, and they are all related to how we live our lives – diet, exercise, smoking, stress management, mental stimulation and learning, social engagement and healthy relationships. In fact, pretty much the same things which have been shown to reduce chances of getting cancer too.
Turns out the best ways we know of tackling these big rises in these diseases is not to treat them like evil enemies to be defeated but by seriously changing our lifestyles.
We are not, as a species, living sustainable lives on this planet. How about we invest in tackling that issue?
Posted in from the consulting room, health | 2 Comments »
When I read the word “poetizes” I thought it was a neologism, or maybe a bit of French-English creation, but, of course, it’s a regular English word, meaning “To describe or express in poetry or a poetic manner”. I stumbled over this beautiful verb today in the following quote
From the moment we begin to look at things, the world changes, the world poetizes immediately if you begin to pay attention to the grain of a jacket, the color of a curtain, or a falling drop tap…….says Thomas Clerc
Here’s a little collection of some of my photos which I think show that phenomenon clearly……enjoy yourself for a moment as the world poetizes itself…….
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