Community

Loneliness and belongingness

Day 769

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Oxford dictionary definition of ‘tribe’ is –
“A social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognised leader.”

Modern societies are diverse, cosmopolitan and fluid. Tribes and their leaders are not fixed. Leadership is made out to be something much bigger than ourselves when in fact it is embedded in things we do that have a fundamental impact on other lives while we are unaware of that impact. We are just being ourselves – kind and compassionate, funny and silly.

Marianne Williamson said that our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us.

One of Saagar’s flatmates was a hidden singer. One day he invited her to join his band for rehearsals and see how she felt. They casually asked her to sing with them, which she did. Soon she became a star in their band. She sang beautifully at his memorial and recounted this story to me.

We need to value the impact we have on each other’s lives more than money, power, influence and titles. We need to create opportunities for one another, acknowledge it when someone else adds to our life, thank them for it and pay it forward.

This is our tribe and in our own special way, we all are leaders.

Ref: http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership#t-311634

Day 768

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“For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.” – Seth Godin

Moving from Belfast to London was a culture shock. Suddenly, I was a nobody. Completely anonymous. I loved the freedom it afforded but missed belonging to a group or community. Luckily, it grew around us over time. For many people living in this overcrowded city can be an extremely lonely experience.

The phrase ‘social networks’ appeared many times in today’s lecture on resilience. It reminded me of Saagar. He was all about his friends. His life revolved around them. He was happiest when he was with them. After he left for university, he had officially flown the nest. His identity rested with his peers. Even when he complained about some of their characteristics, he went back to them.

Unfortunately the timing of his illness was such that he was home when all his friends had gone back to start their third year at university. They were physically away from him. He lost his tribe. He lost himself.

Day 766

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“I have only a story and my belief in the power of story to save us.”
– by Bruce Weigl.

“We are beings who require language to be. It is an existential imperative that people share stories. Indeed, the human experience is contingent upon the interaction of stories.”
– by Frances Driscoll, a survivor of rape and a writer with the power to heal through poetry as a way to process pain, giving voice to the voiceless.

Island of the Raped Women

There are no paved roads here
And all of the goats are well-behaved.
Mornings, beneath thatched shelters,
we paint wide-brimmed straw hats.
We paint them inside and outside.

We paint very very fast.
Five hats a morning.
We paint very very slow.
One hat a week.
All of our hats are beautiful
and we all look beautiful in our hats.

Afternoons, we take turns:
mapping baby crabs moving in and out of sand,
napping, baking.
We make orange and almond cake.
This requires essence and rind.
Whipped cream. Imagination.
We make soft orange cream.
This requires juice of five oranges and juice of one lemon.
(Sometimes we substitute lime for the lemon. This is also good.)

An enamel lined pan.
Four egg yolks and four ounces of sugar.
This requires careful straining,
Constant stirring, gentle whisking.
Watching for things not to boil.
Waiting for things to cool. We are good at this.
We pour our soft orange cream into custard cups.
We serve this with sponge cake.

Before dinner, we ruffle pink sand from one another’s hair.
This feels wonderful and we pretend to find the results interesting.
We all eat in moderation
and there is no difficulty swallowing.
We go to bed early.
(Maybe, we even turn off lights. Maybe, we even sleep naked. Maybe.)
We all sleep through the night.

We wake eager from dreams
filled with blue things and designs for hats.
At breakfast, we make a song,
Chanting our litany of so much collected blue.
We do not talk of going back to the world.

We talk of something else sweet to try with the oranges: Sponge custard.
Served with thick cream or perhaps with raspberry sauce.
We paint hats. We paint hats.

droppedimage

 

Day 763

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leaf-collection

The semi-circular Green was covered with autumn leaves. The skeletons of trees stood semi-nude, exposed yet statuesque. Andy, who normally clears up the leaves is away on a long holiday. The others in the neighbourhood took it upon themselves to fill in for him. One woman with a new hip came on to the Green with her ‘Bulldog’ rake and leaf-collector called ‘Anita’. The gadget was a Christmas gift from a few years ago. She thought it was rather quaint at the time but it had proved to be cleverly designed and very useful. Next came her friend who is 79. She brought her ultra-light yellow rake and a couple of light wooden boards that served as efficient leaf collectors. Along came a couple in their 60s with a wheel-barrow, another metal rake and huge bags to carry the leaves in.

They caught up on the gossip, exchanged remedies for wasp stings, made jokes, talked about their respective pets and took pictures of each other. Together they piled the leaves up in little hillocks dotted randomly across the Green, deposited them in a big bag, mounted it on to the wheel-barrow, took it away to a designated spot, emptied it out and brought it back for more. That cycle repeated itself a few times with team members assuming different roles at different times. More people joined in and left at various points over the course of the activity. The Green was green again.

We gathered in our house for a cup of tea. A country morning well spent.

 

 

Day 762

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Bone doctors can sometimes forget  there is a heart and a mind attached to the bone being fixed. Orthopaedic surgeons are the butt of many jokes for some unknown reason. They think it is because everyone is envious of the vast amounts of money they make and of course, they would like to think that.

What do you call two orthopaedic surgeons looking at a chest X-ray?
A double blind study.

What’s the difference between a carpenter and an orthopaedic surgeon?
A carpenter knows more than one antibiotic.

How do you hide a 20 pound note from an orthopaedic surgeon?
Put it in a textbook.

They are not what they are made out to be. Mostly. 😉

I am lucky to work with some funny, gentle and bright orthopods. One of them has changed from a purely professional colleague to a friend through the last 2 years. Yesterday, I shared with him my frustration over any meaningful improvement in the awareness of mental health issues within the medical community and beyond. I feel as if nothing has changed and no lessons have been learnt from Saagar’s death. Many others like him continue to suffer in silence. I feel that I go on banging my head against the walls completely in vain.

He wrote back:
“Saagar, has somehow had a profound effect on me, even though I never met him.

I have a young woman whose humerus I plated last week, and in clinic yesterday I could see her whole life starting to come unravelled: can’t exercise yet, not at work, not concentrating. All the things she used to give her self-worth are not available. Not despair, but the beginnings. So we talked about the dangers, and she agreed to see our psychologist.

You and Saagar have made that change in me, so keep doing what you do: it works.”