The Tree of Life

I love big trees. A while back I was sitting under the Banyan Tree in Pakistan.  Recently I’ve been to visit the Tree of Life in Bahrain. 

The Tree of Life is remarkable. It lives all on its own on a small hill in the middle of a desert.  You can see how big it is by the size of the people beside it (including Sue, if you look very carefully). Apparently it’s over 400 years old.  It’s a member of the mesquite family, known for their very deep root systems which can tap water more than 50 metres below ground.

Local legends abound. One story is that the Tree of Life marks the location of the Garden of Eden, and the origins of our knowledge of good and evil.  Another is that it survives thanks to Enki, the Sumerian and Babylonian god of water, mischief and life.   It makes an appearance in the 1991 Steve Martin film L.A. Story, but has nothing whatsoever to do - thank goodness - with Terence Mallick’s pretentious Tree of Life film.

Sue and I get to see it just before sunset, after a tortuous journey through the oil and gas fields of central Bahrain.  There are no other trees or any vegetation in sight, just sand, rocks and a couple of gas flares burning in the distance.  There are a few other people there, Indians on their day off from jobs in the service or construction sectors. Our host, who’s lived in Bahrain for over 40 years, has never been to see the tree before.

It is easy to climb and sit in. Lots of signatures, hearts and dates are inked in its lower branches.   It doesn’t have the immense solidity and security of the Banyan. It’s a comfortable, friendly tree. The sort of tree you'd just like to hang out with for a while. No need to say much, maybe a bit of a chat about old times.  

The Tree of Life is deeply reassuring. It has survived and flourished in the some of the toughest conditions you can imagine, arid and hot, often over 50 degrees in high summer. It’s seen people come and go over the centuries: Portuguese and British, Iranians and Indians, Germans and Americans, Shias and Sunnis.  And it’s still there.  

Given the recent troubles in Bahrain, and the possibility of more to come, the Tree of Life is a powerful symbol of survival and resilience during tough times.

It lives on its little hill, untroubled by difficulties or events around it. As my favourite philosopher Spinoza says, it is 'persevering in its own being'.

It is.

Walking the dogs

I love going out walking with our two dogs.  They scamper to and fro, noses to the ground following scents in apparently random patterns, then rush on ahead of me, turning round every few seconds to check they’re on the right path – and bounce back to me if they’re not. They are living completely in the moment.

They lighten my heart. Sometimes I just laugh out loud at the joy of it all.    

And they are very good for me.  They probably improve my physical health, reducing my blood pressure and my risk of heart disease.  They certainly are part of my wellbeing recipe.

Way back in the seventeenth century, Robert Burton wrote thousands of pages about melancholy and how to cure it.  But he was able to boil all his research and his thinking down to two very simple ideas:

As thou tenderest thine own welfare ..., thy good health of body and minde, observe this short precept, give not way to solitariness and idleness. Be not solitary, be not idle.

Dog walking sorts out both of these things for me, very nicely. It’s not solitary, it’s sociable - and it definitely stops me being idle.

Much more recently, instead of two cures for melancholy, the New Economic Foundation have come up with 5 Ways to Wellbeing. You may have heard of them, but just in case you haven’t, here they are: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning, and Give.  For me, all five of them are covered by walking with the dogs.

Connect: I connect with the dogs themselves, and with a surprising number of other people. Lots of people just smile, at the dogs and at me, when they seem them lolloping along. And all sorts of interesting conversations emerge with other dog walkers.

Be active: of course walking is good aerobic exercise, releasing those endorphins. The other day (don’t ask me how!) we all ended up on a boat in the middle of a Welsh lake.

Take Notice – all sorts of good things to notice while we’re out:  wonderful sunsets over the sand dunes at Formby, the changing seasons on our usual walk along the nearby cycle path, blackberries ripening and ready for eating as we go along.

Keep Learning – hmmm, this is the challenging one! Dog training is a skill     I have not yet fully mastered. I can get them both to sit, and (usually) to return to heel, but I’m not so good at stopping them leaping up when they meet new people.  So I need to keep learning on that one.

Give – that is, seeing myself and my happiness linked to others, to things or beings beyond myself. When I’m walking the dogs I’m thinking about their wellbeing, and their safety - I’m on the lookout for danger from other dogs, cars, cyclists or whatever.

So for me, walking the dogs is a great antidote to stress and gloom. Who needs pills?  Who needs therapists?

What about you? Tell us about your two cures for melancholy, or your 5 ways to wellbeing. Does dog walking do it for you?  If not, what else does?  

Thank you all

Just a note to tell you how much I appreciate your support for my wellbecoming blog.  We've just passed 10,000 page views. I am thrilled to bits!!

My most popular post has been Reaching Out (22 October). It continues to get regular hits, more than 100 in the past month alone. I wonder if someone or some group has been focusing on this one? If so, do let me know.

You are viewing the blog from all over the world. The main places you are from are the UK and Spain. The next most frequent viewers are from USA, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Philippines, Germany, South Africa and Hungary. 

Thank you!

Meadows of delight

My last post on trudging through treacle struck a chord with many people. Thank you so much for your words of empathy and wisdom, and the offer of custard to pour on my sticky toffee pudding.  

One of the many things I love about this blog is the richness and variety of your responses. Catherine, who lives just a few streets away, knows all about the stickiness of treacle, and how hard it is to stay afloat and not drown.  Murthy emails me from India to share his response to the stress of developing diabetes: recognise the crisis, identify changes needed and harmonise them with other aspects of life.  Deb writes about the suffering of others as being tiresome but necessary work to take on; and how “cultivating loving-kindness" may help us to keep giving without the feeling of emptiness. And for Katie, vulnerability is part of being human.

Indeed it is....  We are in this together, for good and for ill. We can’t just choose the fun bits, and leave the rest behind. They’re all part of the package.

I’ve been thinking about the17th century poet John Donne, and his famous poem No man is an island, all about the indivisibility of humanity, and how we can’t help but be affected by the loss of others: ‘never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee’. And Garth Brooks’ lines from The Dance, about the end of a love affair : ‘I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance’.

And – mostly – I’ve been revisiting the writings of the Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue, who died far too young in 2008.

Beannacht (or Blessing) is one of his very best poems. Here it is, in its entirety:

On the day when

the weight deadens

on your shoulders

and you stumble,

may the clay dance

to balance you.

And when your eyes

freeze behind

the grey window

and the ghost of loss

gets in to you,

may a flock of colours,

indigo, red, green,

and azure blue

come to awaken in you

a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

in the currach of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,

may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

wind work these words

of love around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life.

(You can find John reading this here)

There are so many healing images in this poem, I can't begin to do justice to them all. They are grounded in the natural world around us - the safety of earth, the energy and guidance of light, the fluency of water.  The wind as an invisible cloak: this puts me in mind of Sue imagining her father's overcoat spread protectively around the aeroplane, whenever she is flying.

The treacle is runnier now, and I don’t have to trudge any more. I can stroll through it, and enjoy the feeling of it trickling and gurgling between my toes.  Perhaps it will nurture my own meadow of delight.  

Trudging through treacle

I’ve been at a conference these past two days, doing a lot of networking and catching up with friends and colleagues. Yesterday somebody asked me, ‘What are you passionate about at the moment?’ The honest answer is ‘I don’t really know’.

These past few weeks I’ve been feeling tired, without a lot of energy to be interested in things. Even just doing everyday things takes quite a lot of effort. Not much creative thinking or imagination going on. In response to the recent post about Iain (Rolling rocks), Natalie wrote about ‘ballet-dancing through treacle’. I’m not sure I can manage any pirouettes or pas-de-deux just now. Trudging through treacle is about the best I can do.

‘Hey, wait a minute’, you’d be forgiven for thinking to yourself. ‘I thought this bloke – and this blog - was all about giving positive messages. What’s he doing spreading doom and gloom?’

Well, the answer is that life’s been tough recently. Not for me specifically, but for people I care a lot about.  My wife Sue’s just had her right knee replaced, and it’s been hurting her like mad – we know it will get better, but it’s very hard going just now. My brother is not recovering from his major surgery as quickly as he’d hoped, and that’s getting him down. And our dear friend Carl has been seriously ill, admitted twice to hospital in the past couple of weeks. 

Life’s becoming intrusive. There’s a bit too much stuff going on for my liking. Its making me aware of contingency, of how things we take for granted suddenly might not be there any more, or might change in ways we just don’t expect - or want.  William Boyd writes brilliantly about this, especially in Any Human Heart.  I’m doing my best to look on the bright side, offering these lovely people constructive advice and encouragement. But you can’t shrug it all off. Sometimes it does get to you.

I know this is how a lot of people feel, a lot of the time. And with much tougher loads to bear. During my most recent surgery, I heard about living with recurring lung cancer; dealing with the sudden death of an older sister and the expected death of a younger brother; having to respond to severe homophobic abuse at work; and the trauma of a dawn police raid for suspected drug dealing.  There is an awful lot of suffering about.

When I ask them how on earth they manage to cope with all this, patients often tell me ‘I plod on, doc, I just plod on’.  They know life is tough, they know there’s not much they can do about it. Sometimes it’s just a matter of wrapping ourselves up against the elements, battening down the hatches, and keeping on doing the things that need to be done.

I’m going to revisit my post on well-being recipes, because I’ve realised the best way out of this is to take the advice I give others.  Maybe watching some cricket, climbing a mountain or diving through ocean waves will do the trick. I’ll do a bit of reaching out, maybe find a hug or three.  And I believe there are some fresh starts just round the corner. Sue’s knee is going to get better, and I’ve just seen a photo of Carl back home, cooking up something in his kitchen.

In the meantime, I'll plod on. I’ll pat myself on the back from time to time, remind myself how well I’m doing, considering what’s been going on. Trudging through treacle – maybe I’m gathering ingredients for a delicious sticky toffee pudding.    

Possibilities

Some of you will have seen this story before, but it is such a wonderful one that it’s well worth repeating. For me, it puts in a nutshell why we doctors spend far too much time worrying about how to diagnose and treat mental health problems.  Given the chance, our patients have much more interesting and useful ideas than we do, about how to find their way out of difficult circumstances and improve their lives.

Jenny comes to see me in my surgery one morning. She tells me she feels dreary, denigrated.  She says she has no self esteem. She is thirty seven, and has realized - like Lucy Jordan - that she’ll never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair. ‘By the time you’re 40’ she tells me, ‘what is inside you comes out to the surface. I look in the mirror and see an old, ugly, hard bitch’.

She can find no value in her relationship with her partner. Recently he went five days without washing himself. ‘Just attention-seeking’ she reckons, ‘but it didn’t work’. He has warned her that if she ever tries to throw him out of her home he will kill himself - and their eight year old son. Jenny doesn’t really believe him but she is not quite sure. She might risk it when her son is older - thirteen, maybe seventeen – and can look after himself.

I ask Jenny what she would do in an ideal world, if she had all the choices available to her, if she could do anything she might possibly want. ‘Not money or fame,’ she replies. She sits and thinks for a while. ‘Respect from others would be good… and being able to write’.

How would she like to get there, I wonder? We talk about antidepressants – they might be an option, maybe sertraline which she she’s tried before. Alternatively, I suggest she might like to take part in a Positive Thoughts Course, one of the group psycho-education programmes that my wife Sue runs.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, a whole set of other possibilities emerge from our conversation.

Jenny tells me she’s been thinking about signing up for a creative writing course. She’s also been wondering about taking up meditation or yoga, and exploring Buddhism. Or she might join the anti-war movement (our conversation takes place in the weeks leading up to the second Iraq war).

‘Or maybe’ she says, ‘maybe I should fall in love’.

Racing pigeons

In my last post (Rolling rocks) I told you about Iain, how he can’t see any point in getting up in the morning - and asked you how you’d respond to his despair.

You sent in some great Facebook replies and blog comments.  Thank you.

You have a lot of empathy for Iain’s problems, summed up by Natalie’s trying to ‘ballet dance through treacle’. Karl encourages Iain to be kind to himself, to remember that life is precious, and not to be afraid of trying new things, even if they fail. Natalie would like Iain to stop drinking, and get involved in something that gives him a sense of worth.   I agree.

There is something here about being able to look life in the face and – somehow, despite everything it throws at us– carry on. It’s as simple (or as difficult) as the active acceptance of life as it is, the recognition of the circumstances in which we find ourselves and the determination to make of them the best we can.  

This brings us back to Sisyphus, forever straining to roll his rock up the hill before watching it fall all the way back down again. The French writer Albert Camus has a great take on this story.  He tells us that Sisyphus is happy.  Happy because knows that there is no ultimate logic or purpose in what he is doing – and this gives him a sense of liberation. ‘There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night’. His fate belongs to him. He remains its master, his mind and body fully engaged in his chosen activity: ‘The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.’

And it reminds us of Nelson Mandela and his favourite poem, Invictus:  ‘My head is bloody, but unbowed... I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul’.

This way of looking at life can help us to engage, fully and knowingly, with the real and specific circumstances we find ourselves in: whether that’s the  daily demands of work; the never-ending responsibilities and expectations of caring for young children; a long prison sentence on Robben Island; or living with physical disability or a chronic health problem.  It brings with it a sense of dignity. Even when life is tough and we appear to have run out of luck, we can hold on to the belief that we are, indeed, worth it.

Back to my conversation with Iain. We sit in companionable silence for a while.  Then I ask him, ‘What do you enjoy?’

I don’t honestly expect much of a response. But I am wrong. Coming from nowhere that I had anticipated, he leans forward and starts to tell me about his passion for racing pigeons. He owns some fine specimens, he takes real pleasure in caring for them, and in how well they race. I realise the importance they have for him, in their freedom of movement, the beauty and grace of their flight. They encourage his imagination to take flight, reaching towards new unseen possibilities.   

Our conversation ends at this point. The next time we meet, Iain says ‘You know doc, I can talk to you’. He still has problems with his feet, and tells me he is still drinking more than medical wisdom says he should (though his binges are less frequent and less severe). But now we have a basis for discussion, and a mutual respect which may - in time – enable us to change a few things together.