Heroes Not Zombies

I listened to an interview with Iain McGilchrist recently where he said the difference between imagination and fantasy is that imagination engages us with reality where fantasy takes us away from it.

Iris Murdoch makes the same point about imagination in her “The Sovereignty of Good”…..

We use our imagination not to escape the world but to join it….

Imagination is our super power. We can’t know the inner life of another….whether that be a person, an animal or a plant.

When patients told me their stories I used my imagination to “see” them, to “hear” them and to “feel” what they were feeling. I think, and Iris Murdoch makes this point too, that we have to focus our imagination with a particular kind of attention – loving attention.

I know love has many forms and is different in different contexts and in every relationship but we need a loving attention if we want to get to know another. We need to regard them positively, to listen without judging and we need to care. All of that falls into place when we act with love, when we pay a loving attention.

Imagination, then, is essential to empathy because it connects, it builds bonds between us. I remember after 9/11, the author, Ian McEwan, described the terrorist act as a “failure of imagination”, and the 9/11 Commission picked up on that in its report. It seems to me that all such cruelties, such acts of heartless violence, are failures of imagination…..the perpetrators don’t know their victims, don’t pay loving attention to them.

Fantasy on the other takes us away from the world, from reality. Fantasies about immortality, fantasies about the human race leaving planet Earth to live on Mars, fantasies about consciousness downloaded into computers or robots…..they all take us away from reality.

Fantasy can be fun. It’s good to escape or dream from time to time. But it’s good to remember that fantasies remove us from real life because they involve a direction of attention away from reality.

There’s a lot more I could say about this but I’ll leave it at that and ask, what comes up for you when you reflect on the differences between imagination and fantasy?

As we drove along the coast road round False Bay towards Muizenberg in the Western Cape I saw several groups of fishermen standing in lines, pulling on ropes, looking for all the world like teams in a tug-of-war contest. However, this was no competition. There were no opposition teams pulling in the opposite direction.

They were pulling in their nets to harvest what they had caught together.

I know that competition is a fact of life. I know we’ve made competition the foundation of our society. It’s what we built capitalism on.

However, I’m convinced that’s been a mistake. A human baby couldn’t survive without all the people who care for him or her, right from day one, and for the rest of their life.

We are intensely social creatures. Our super power isn’t so much competition, it’s cooperation and collaboration.

The “self made man” is a myth. And “homo economicus” is a delusional mistake created by neoliberal fanatics.

We all “stand on the shoulders of giants”. None of us parachuted into this life unconnected to ancestors, family and biosphere.

If we could change our focus and our priorities towards relationships, to how we influence others, and how others influence us, we’d create a different way of living on this planet – especially if we extended our understanding of “the other” to those of other communities, traditions and beliefs, to our non-human neighbours, the animals, plants and all other forms of life.

Isn’t it time for all of us to shift from “me” to “we”? To explore, grow and nurture our connections. For our own sakes, for our children, and for Life on Earth.

When you’re very young the future seems so very far away. Children are better at living in the here and now than adults are.

As you get older the faraway path becomes clearer, but, still it seems far away.

Now, as I head towards 70, the faraway path seems much closer.

Still, I’ve no idea when I’ll get there so I’ll keep going forward, day by day, a wonder-filled day at a time, and another one opening up tomorrow.

Here are two characteristics of all living beings – they grow and they change.

We all experience significant challenges, traumas, gifts, opportunities and events of countless different kinds. We are changed by them. We adapt. We take a new path, step through a new door, carry on with determination but in the light of new circumstances.

Life, like the universe, is made of relationships and events. We are in constant interaction with “the other”, and with ourselves, living in a constant flow of materials, energies and information. We are continually forming mutually beneficial bonds….integrating.

Every day we encounter wonders, events we’ve never experienced before, sights we’ve never seen, sounds we’ve never heard.

Every day is filled with firsts and lasts….experiences we’ve never had, and will never repeat.

Savour the day.

Every day there are surprises, things we didn’t expect, events which we didn’t imagine. Some seem like miracles, many astonish or amaze us. Others strike us because they are synchronicities.

Some of them are obstacles, demanding we change direction, follow a diversion, or that we adapt.

Over the course of a lifetime we don’t follow a straight path. Looking back isn’t like looking at the wake behind a ship. A life is full of twists and turns.

These events, these adaptations, they shape us and they shape our lives. Whether we think of life as a journey or a story, every one of us is unique, and not one of us grows an identical life to another.

In every event we connect with others, and with the environment. As we interact we exchange atoms, energies and information which sculpt both ourselves and the others into these unique shapes.

These trees are over two hundred years old, and every twist and turn developed from their daily encounters…..and that’s what makes them so amazing, so unique and so beautiful.

I love to walk amongst trees. It’s good for my body and my mind. It changes my breathing, my heart rate and my day. It amazes me to be so close to creatures which have lived for hundreds of years.

We are not separate.

We didn’t just appear on this planet one day independent of all others.

We didn’t grow up all by ourselves.

We don’t survive separate from everyone and everything else.

Within all the vast networks in which we live there are two absolutely essential ones. Nature – we are embedded within nature. There are no absolute boundaries between us and all of Life. And, other people. We are fundamentally social creatures. None of us would have made it past the first few days, first few hours, of life, without others. We need to be cared for, just as we need to care for others.

Our society privileges the idea of objects and individuals but maybe we should focus more on connections and relationships, seeing what we have in common, seeing the bonds of mutual benefit.

It’s my experience that it’s normal to be kind, to offer assistance, and to smile. It’s normal to want to share experiences with others. It’s normal to realise we have much in common with every other person and every other living being on this one, shared, small, finite planet.

“La source” is French for “the spring”.

This one is just across the other side of the road from where I live now.

After four decades working as a doctor in the Scottish NHS I retired and emigrated to France. I live in a small village where neighbours gather spontaneously to chat in the street. My French language skill has improved enormously over the last ten years but I still study it every day, read French magazines and books, and take every opportunity I can to speak.

I decided many years ago I’d like to spend part of my life living in a different country, immersing myself in a different culture and language, and it feels, undoubtedly a good move. We humans don’t stay still. We grow. We develop. We change. We adapt and we explore.

I am sorry to witness the extent of anti-immigration narratives around the world, to see the huge increase in rules and administrative hurdles as countries build walls instead of bridges.

But I am happy that’s not my personal, daily experience. Everywhere I go I get a warm, friendly welcome.

The other big part of my experience now is closeness to Nature. We have a big garden, some of it a very small forest. It was all badly neglected but we’ve been opening it up to sunlight, planting flowers and vegetables and caring for it again. I encounter more birds, wildlife, trees and plants on a daily basis than I’ve ever done before.

The “source” across the road fills with clear, clear water which, I’m assured, makes its way here underground from the mountains of the Massif Central. It flows out of the pool into stone channels built by the Romans. This was a crossing point for the Romans, for pilgrims, and for Celts and Gauls before them.

I was born and raised in Stirling, an ancient market town with a castle overlooking the main bridge over the River Forth. The town was a crossing point where north met south and east met west.

I feel that parallel deep in my soul….connecting me to a life of encounters, of meetings and relationships between diversely different people.

We are all unique, and there’s nothing more enriching, more fulfilling, than making connections, building bridges, sharing, and understanding……

We all need to know there are these crossing points, these “sources” in our lives where we connect the past to the present, where we encounter “the other”, human and other than human, and find our lives enriched in the process.

La source, for me, is the physical manifestation of flow….the flow of Life, of time and change, of encounters and connections.

I took a road trip recently, over the Pyrenees from France to Spain. Stopping in a lay-by to admire the view I spotted this glorious flower. I imagine nobody planted it here. I don’t know what it’s called. But it caught my attention and drew me right towards it.

We have two kinds of attention working all the time, a focussing in, narrow form attention which lets us spot a detail and study it up close. And a zooming out, broad form, taking in the whole view type which shows us this…..

The first is a flower. The second is a flower in the Pyrenees.

As a doctor, making a diagnosis was at the core of my daily life. I’d focus in on the details to figure out what kind of disease this was (I’m better at naming diseases than naming flowers!) but, at the same time, I’d keep an open mind, keep my curiosity active, and zoom out to hear the patient’s unique story, to understand the contexts and connections related to this disease.

The narrow focus helped me recognise disease, the broad focus helped me understand human beings.

Ok, as always, it’s not quite that simple, but I thought these two photos were a good illustration of the different values underpinning the strategies of engagement of the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

We need both. We shouldn’t get into the habit of using only one.

I took this photo while out strolling round the village. From one of the small bridges you can see the stream winding its way among the trees, creating an astonishingly beautiful, green scene.

When I looked at this photo at home I thought it looked like an Impressionist painting, but, really, no art quite achieves the beauty of Nature. We can re-present the world to ourselves and others but our lives are lived in a continuous flow of energies, materials, sensations, thoughts and feelings.

Every single one of these moments is unique and no two of us standing on the same bridge at the same time will have identical experiences. We are all influenced by, you could say created by, the cumulative flow of personal, subjective moments which we weave together to tell that singular, unique story that only we can tell.

These are moments of awe and wonder, and Nature has the power to generate these, most healing of all, experiences.

This stream, by the way, flows from “La Source”, which emerges from the subterranean waterways coursing through France. That, too, contributes to my experience of awe and wonder.

As I had lunch outside one day this week, I heard a loud birdsong and looked up to see this swallow perched on the tv aerial.

He’s been there every day since, singing his heart out, broadcasting his presence, celebrating his existence, telling everyone his one unique story.

I don’t speak swallow but from what I know about these birds there’s a good chance he’s been down in Africa all winter and has flown over the desert, across Morocco and the Straights of Gibraltar, up through Eastern Spain to finally come back to this garden, here, in the Charente Maritime, a garden he left last autumn.

I find this both delightful and astonishing. That this little creature can make its way thousands of miles to Africa and back to the exact same garden amazes me. Of course, I don’t know if this particular bird, singing today from my rooftop, is one of the ones which swooped over this garden last summer, but I believe a good percentage of these birds do exactly that, returning to the same place, so there’s every chance he’s been here before.

Nearby, at the same time, I hear the call of a Hoopoe, yet another bird to make this annual journey of migration.

These returning birds put me in touch with deep natural rhythms and remind me that the everyday really is full of moments of wonder and awe.

This weekend I’m in Stirling, Scotland, for a family gathering to celebrate the 90th birthday of my mother in law. It’s a brief visit, just for the weekend, but I, too, have migrated from one part of this planet to another. I, too, return, periodically to the place of my birth.

I’m not perched up on a tv aerial but I am here singing my own unique song, telling my particular story with these, my relatives, my children and all my grandchildren.

That, too, delights and amazes me.