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Dead or alive?

Last year I found a walnut under the earth when I was weeding. It had a small pale green root (or stalk? Who knows?) sticking out of one end so I took it and planted it in a pot. A few weeks later I had a tiny tree with a few delicate leaves on the top, so I transplanted it into the forest area of the garden and put a little fence around it. Along came autumn and the leaves dropped off and all…

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The desire to fly

It’s not uncommon for human beings to want to fly. I know we’ve partially met that desire through technology by inventing machines which can fly, but we can’t fly the way a bird can fly. We can’t just leap up and head off into the blue mountains. We can’t soar above the forests and the oceans. But we imagine it would be pretty great if we could. I think flying like a bird represents freedom for…

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“Unimportant people”

I read a report in the Guardian recently. It was about the use of AI by the Israeli army. One of the officers was quoted saying this – You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people – it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs] I know war is horrendous and inhuman, but these words really shocked me. What a way to talk about anyone. “Unimportant…

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Creating the conditions

While travelling by train across the Alps last week I noticed this striking phenomenon. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground but the area immediately below each tree was clear. I don’t know if this is due to the soil there getting warmed up by the activity of the tree roots, or there’s another explanation. (If you know, maybe you could let me know). Then I was chatting with a gardener…

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Life and water share this desire

Life and water share the desire to flow. You can slow water down by freezing it, but the ice will eventually melt. You can place obstacles in its path but it will flow around them as it gradually wears them down. You can heat it up and it’ll evaporate, disappearing for a while until it forms clouds, rain, rivers and oceans again. Stagnant pools look and smell bad. The water doesn’t want to stay…

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Diversity of cultures

I’m in Palermo, on the island of Sicily, as I write this. One of the things I enjoy so much about being here is the glorious presence of such a diversity of cultures….even this street sign provokes me to be aware of that. The architecture, the art, the symbols and the multilayered history that different peoples have left on this island are obvious everywhere. I was born in Scotland and my…

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Layers

I noticed this doorpost the other day while strolling along by the canals in Milan. I find this kind of image beautiful. Because you can see the remains of at least four layers of different coloured paint, you realise you are looking at the past made manifest in the present. I think I’ve been guilty of oversimplifying at times, splitting reality into three parts….past, present and future. The…

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Gardening vs managing

Q. How do you make a flower grow? A. You create the conditions favourable to the growth of the flower. The modern orthodoxy of Medicine isn’t about cure, it’s about management. The majority of drugs prescribed and surgical procedures employed aren’t curative. We don’t generally talk about curing asthma, diabetes, multiple sclerosis or dementia. At best, our treatments attempt to manage disease…

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How we stay well, and how we get sick

Mostly doctors see sick people. Generally, we don’t go to visit doctors when we are well. However, we think of doctors as “health care professionals”, who work for the “health service”. Whilst the goal of a doctor is to help a sick person back to health, their knowledge and skills are focused on treating disease. Health and illness are not two entirely separate states. There’s a spectrum of…

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Certainty

One day a patient came to see me and I asked how things were. She replied, “not so good, my husband has been diagnosed with cancer and he’s been told he’s got six months to live.” “Oh dear, how do you feel about that?” I asked. “I’m angry” Not a response I expected but I was interested to understand. “Why are you angry?” “Well, how come he gets to know how long he’s got and I don’t get to…

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Loving attention

Many years ago I used to listen to a pirate radio station called Radio Caroline. It was broadcast from a boat in international waters which got around the broadcast licensing issues of the time. At one point they went through a phase of promoting something they called “the LA habit”, encouraging the listeners to “get the LA habit”. LA, in this phrase, was short for “Loving Awareness”. I…

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A 3 E Life

Yes, you read that right – a 3 E Life – not a 3 D one! I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting these last few months, not least because a diagnosis I received last summer has made me more acutely aware of both mortality and the vulnerability of Life. What I’ve come up with feels very important to me and I don’t know if it would be good for you as well, but I decided I’d share it and then you can…

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Lifelong

This photo is one of several I’ve taken where I’ve been really astonished by the shape of a tree. Actually it’s not just the shape that catches my eye, but the impression of movement which appears. It’s as if you can see the past, the present, and the future all at once. For the first half of my medical career I worked as a GP, what we used to call a “family doctor”. My childhood role models for…

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Imagination and fantasy

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…

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Pulling together

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…

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The faraway path

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…

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Growing and changing

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…