bipolar

Day 143

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Taj Mahal

At dawn today, we visited one of the seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal. It is a majestic white marble monument with immaculate inlay work using precious stones from across the world to form delicate and ornate floral patterns on the inside and outside of the tomb. This is where the Moghul king Shah Jahan and his third wife, queen Mumtaz Mahal are buried. The Taj Mahal was built by this king as a symbol of his deep love for her over a period of 22 years with 20,000 artisans working on it.

While telling us their story, our guide mentioned that the queen died at 39 years of age in childbirth (of their 14th offspring). The king died 35 years later.

Suddenly I felt great sympathy for the king. It must have been very painful for him to go on living for so long after having lost the person he loved so dearly. But he must have found a way. May be it is different for men, especially if they are kings. I wished I could speak with him about how he coped for so many years.

The Compassionate Friends is a charity that provides grief support after the death of a child. This is their mission statement:

“The Compassionate Friends is about transforming the pain of grief into the elixir of hope. It takes people out of the isolation society imposes on the bereaved and lets them express their grief naturally. With the shedding of tears, healing comes. And the newly bereaved get to see people who have survived and are learning to live and love again.”

This is a 16 minute long film about their work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS9z3dwMhZs

What a great cause!

Day 142

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As a full day of very enjoyable site-seeing with close friends came to an end, I could not help but wish that my son was around. “He would have loved it.” I said to a friend who responded,” He is loving it… with you. In fact he is in a great place having much more fun.”

May be he is. May be he is around all the time. The connection that we feel with people who are around us in the physical world is in fact a connection of our souls. Why is it that sometimes for no reason we like someone and likewise for no apparent reason we don’t like somebody we don’t even know? How come sometimes even at first meeting we feel that we have known the other person for a long time?

There is so much that cannot be explained. It can only be experienced. What I am experiencing at present is a sense of calm. Of course I miss him and I always will. That is the new part of my life that I am learning to embrace. Missing him is loving him and I always will.

Day 141

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Erratic, unseasonal rain showers, long haul flight arrivals, jet-lagged but happy friends, lots of lovely Indian hospitality and food, gins and tonics, 3 generations eating and drinking together, an easy walk in the damp park and on wet roads, a few unnecessary purchases, lots of catching-up, laughter and love – these are the things today was made of.

It was a reminder about life being made up of small things and of people. In fact it is made of small things about people – a house-maid thinking someone was extremely kind because he went looking for her before leaving home to say thanks, a granny being reminded of her college days by the rain, a little boy being so tired that he slept mid-sentence, an aunt who liked her G&T just so, a tour guide with the funniest pronunciation of English words and so many more endearing little anecdotes and stories.

After a long time, today was a busy day but it was embellished with these beautiful gems from the storehouse of memories that brought a smile to my face every few minutes. Before I knew it, the day was done.

The tapestry of life seems to be rich.

Despite everything, life is good 🙂

Day 140

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“Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.“

As I searched ’detachment’ on Google this morning, I came across Ignatian spirituality. It is based on the experiences of Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556 AD) who was able to interpret the spiritual meaning of his emotional life as he was recovering from war wounds.

“The heart has its reasons of which the mind knows nothing.”

Ignatian spiritual renewal focuses more on the heart than the intellect. It holds that our choices and decisions are often beyond the merely rational or reasonable.   

Ignatian spirituality emphasizes interior freedom. To choose rightly, we should strive to be free of personal preferences, superfluous attachments, and preformed opinions. Ignatius counselled radical detachment: “We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.”

It places great value on collaboration and teamwork. It sees the link between God and man as a relationship—a bond of friendship that develops over time as a human relationship does. I intuitively like this relaxed and common-sensical approach to life.

Thank you my friend! I hope one day I will be able to find the spiritual meaning of my emotional life. Help me. For now I would like to share this link on the black dog that is depression. In 4 minutes this funny animation has artfully taught me a lot:

http://www.idealistrevolution.org/what-is-depression-let-this-animation-with-a-dog-shed-light-on-it/

Day 139

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Good decision-making involves proper awareness of a situation and then choosing a course of action. If the awareness is inaccurate the decisions taken will most likely be incorrect. In high-risk fields of work, such as medicine, this can mean the difference between life and death.

Thinking about how we think is one kind of ‘Critical thinking’. More often than not we are unaware that we have biases, which greatly affect our ability to make decisions.

1. Action-Oriented Bias

This makes us take an action believing in a positive outcome and completely dismissing the possibility of a negative result or a chance occurrence. We are overconfident in our ability to influence events positively.

Example: “This is not the first time I am treating this condition. The last time I did this it worked so it is bound to do the same this time (and of course “I know best”)”.

2. Self-Interest Bias

When the wrong behaviour is incentivised due to conflict of interests, it is easy to get it wrong.

Example: “my surgery saves money if I don’t refer patients to specialist services”. Or, “If I ask for help I might look silly” – very common amongst some senior doctors.

Silo thinking is not considering the bigger picture or other stakeholders. In this case educating the carers and paying attention to their inputs was not considered important.

3. Pattern-Recognition Bias

We look for and see patterns where they don’t exist and give more weight to recent or to highly memorable events. Once we have formulated a theory, we pay more attention to items that support it and ignore evidence that disproves it.

Example: A belief in the myth that directly questioning a depressed patient about suicidal ideation makes them actually think about it.

4. Social Harmony Bias

Maintaining the status quo, not rocking the boat and not alerting the relatives about warning signs and possible outcomes.

In the absence of proper training or significant self-awareness it is easy to fall into these biases with tragic results.  It would seem that the necessary training is not widely available with respect to mental health in the UK National Health Service.