Opened Eyes

Have you ever woken in the night and just felt gratitude for all that you have, all that you've lived and all that you know?

The System

“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned” Fast Eddie Felson, pool hustler, The Colour of Money, 1986.

There was a time in my life when I was a professional gambler, or sorts. I followed a system. There are two reactions to hearing these words. Some look wide eyed and slightly feverish at the sound of them, and others look with a glassy scepticism and waxwork complexion. They are words you will usually hear spoken in hushed voice, you’ll probably have to lean in a little to hear them. Then you’ll either lean in deeper or start trying to make your escape. But you’ll be one or the other.

Horse racing was my sport. I could have looked at blood lines, or physique and temperament, or form to choose my winners. Then there are the tipster, the whispers and rumours about newcomers and outsiders, and the sure things…at short odds. But I didn’t. I used a very simple system based on one simple idea: Favourites are favourites because from time to time, they win.

In these winter months the exciting National Hunt with its fences and jumps warms the heart of the more dedicated punter. Compared to the money and pomp of the Flats season, whose warm summer months bring out the glamour and wealth we associate with Royal Ascot, the National Hunt is by contrast associated with fingerless gloves, hot cups of coffee laced with something warming, and a cigarette to take the edge of things. This is a season for the professional and addicts, nobody else could justify exposing themselves to these temperatures and it can be hard to distinguish one from the other.

I had a simple little thing I’d created to calculate how much I’d need to bet. I say need to because I took this all rather seriously. I earned a second wage from it, had an earnings target and ‘worked’ until I had met it. Race meeting typically have between five and eight races. The odds for each runner is published in advance and as the market places its money those odds shift and usually shorten. Favourites fall in and out of favour as the race start nears. Sometimes a favourite wouldn’t emerge until seconds before the race got underway, but there was and always is a favourite.

From the comfort of my laptop, I calculated the value of each meeting to decide which I could afford. You see my system was simple enough. A favourite will eventually win, so I bet on the favourite in each race at a meeting until it did in fact win. This requires a great deal of nerve and money, because in the worst case scenario I would lose the first six races and have to place a very large bet on the seventh race to both recoup my loses and make my margin. There is nothing certain about the seventh horse coming in, but eventually a favourite will win.

Needless to say, it worked and I made a very healthy second income from it for some months. But I am inescapably human and felt the thrill and rush of each race, of each win and the lure of greed. Human emotion had no place in this system, the fear one has when placing a large bet after a series of losses, the feeling of being lucky or unlucky, the temptation to place bets outside the system, the sheer enjoyment and excitement of it all… they are all just feelings and impulses associated with gambling, a mugs game. If I could resist all that then I was, in effect, not gambling. Or at least no more gambling that the bankers in the City of London. For another person that might have been easy. For me though, it was too difficult and I closed the door on that chapter of my life.

For some time I had carried around in my wallet a pass to the enclosure at Brighton Race Course. It somehow was tied up with who I was and said something about how I lived, what sorts of choices I made. There is, as with all stories, so much more I could say, but I won’t for now.

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Six Shots or Five?

I wonder if others out there feel like things come together in waves of good and bad luck. Luck is something that I hear people talk about as though one can own it, have it or not have it. People talk about luck as though it is the very cause of our good fortune… good things are happening because we are lucky. It’s perverse, in a way, that we do this, because luck isn’t cause… it does not exist in any kind of chain of events as one dominoes in a line amongst others, generating fortuitous consequences.  Luck is not a force amongst other forces that we can posses and wield like superheroes. Luck is just the word we use to describe events when they have gone our way, especially when the outcome was against the odds. Luck didn’t bring the event about, it is just the way we interpreted it after it happened.

So when yesterday I faced a dull ache in my mouth from an infection, pain in my eyes and temples from an out of date sight prescription, an email from Paypal declaring that they would be holding funds in my account for 21 days before could withdraw them, an aggressive email from an Ebayer who is trying to fleece me, and discovered that the car MOT had actually run out at the start of the month… it was very, very tempting to feel like some external force was at play, raining on my parade.

Luck is something that we humans have certainly invested a lot of energy in; many cultures and religions have some sort of numerology at play, lucky and unlucky numbers, and preferential numbers. I, like may others, have worn pendants and rings in the past with the purpose of bringing me luck, owned a lucky pair of socks, exercise good luck rituals connected with the sequence I do things in. I guess in there is the superstitious creature that inhabits us all. A human search for cause and effect that sometimes leads us down cul de sacs of understanding. Somewhere in there, when the hourglass of luck was inverted in our understanding to be cause rather than effect, luck became interchangeable with hope and a means for controlling fear and managing stress. A soothing tool (we all need those). And soothing tools are no bad thing… usually.

But does ‘believing in luck’ necessitate believing too in bad luck? Just as luck gives us hope, when the grey clouds gather overhead are we robbed of hope? If that is the case then when things don’t go our way, against the odds, I for one start to feel a bit helpless. The uneasy feeling of not being able to touch the bottom of the ocean with my toes, left to the will of tides and the wind curled waves. When you are convinced things are not going your way, that ocean is not a good place to be. Worse still, worse than feeling things are out of control, is that I stop trying. The inevitability of bad luck extinguishes hope and the energy it gives us.

Luck then, as a way of describing events that happen to us, seems harmless enough. But to invest in luck, to store it up in charms and rituals and to bathe in its warmth when we are ‘feeling lucky’ and look to take more risks with the expectancy that things will go our way, that sound a little dangerous. That is to invite luck in to be the friend of hope, precious hope. I could live without luck, but to live without hope, no way. Luck is a fair-weather friend, whilst hope will see me though the good and the bad. When luck is running low, it will press hope to leave too. Inviting in luck is a dangerous thing.

Every Man an Island

He wasn’t really what I expected when I arrived. Over the phone he had mentioned that he had worked in law for many years, it was a strange thing to throw into the conversation – I took it to mean he might be a bit strange, strange or just a little drunk. I would learn that he had been a senior barrister’s clerk to a London based chamber, a very well paid job indeed, and something that clearly meant a lot to him.

He sat with me on a bench beside the window as I cut out the old putty from around the broken glass. You can usually tell when people want to take part in a little conversation, so I asked him the usual: renting or purchased; been here long; where did you move from; what do you do for a living; do you enjoy it… I’m not good at small talk so these stock questions seem to serve me well in situations like this. He reciprocated with similar questions and seemed genuinely interested, even a little intrigued. I could see him edging down the bench as I worked, looking up at me with puzzled eyes and an approving smile.

What seemed to have him so mystified was how it came to be that an architecture graduate was happily repairing his broken window. I think it’s the happiness part that he had the most difficulty with. I learned a little about his life as a barrister’s clerk, and how that came to be a story from his past. It was a past he was proud of and he still hadn’t come to terms with their decision to let him go, despite the passing years.

I tend to notice where I am, it is the architectural eye, and his spacious Victorian flat had the feel of faded wealth; it was starting to make sense. Something else I had noticed was the small white box marked Mirtazapine on the bureau. It just caught my eye, the familiar proportions of that little white box with its coloured banding. I might never have noticed it if I hadn’t known it so well.

He wanted to know how I it was that I had broken with a white collar career to become a handyman - how I had managed to start all over again. His curiosity stemmed from his own need to start again, to overcome the wounds and make a new living. Our conversation reminded me a lot about the emotional and financial trappings of our old life. I wonder how many of us, when we look back across our life’s decisions, can attribute the choices we made along the way to the will of others. The choices we made to make others happy, proud, to feel some worth in the eyes of others. He asked me a quite unexpected question; he asked if he and his partner could come to our wedding.

While he was in the bathroom the door bell rang. I answered it to a man with a beard so thick that I could barely understand anything he said. He spoke in mumbles, but somehow managed to get by communicating. He came in and made himself comfortable, taking out his tobacco pouch and cigarette papers. He was warmly welcomed. While I continued working these two men sat in the lounge making stop start conversation, seemingly eager for me to finish up. When it came time to present the bill he drew out his cheque book and very carefully touched his fountain pen to the page. What he the tore out and gave to me looked like the doodles of a three year old; it was anyone’s guess if the bank would accept this cheque. Actually they didn’t, and I wasted no time in returning to the flat to ask him to draw up another.

The bearded friend answered the door and ushered me in mumbling some more. The barrister’s clerk lay asleep across the sofa… a deep sleep. When does falling asleep become passing out? It took some time to wake him, and longer still to explain why I was there again. In the brief time that I had been away, he had downed a few drinks and passed out. When he woke he was disorientated, and then he began talking about his job again, only this time he broke down into tears. He sat there, apologising and sobbing and angry at it all, grimacing through the tears, hugging me.

He wasn’t coping, and what I was glimpsing were his habits, the daily routine that involved self medicating around 11am and the anesthetised day that followed. He wasn’t talking to anyone professionally, he wasn’t taking his medication, and his difficulties were compounded by alcohol. Wow, if I knew the hole that I had scrambled up from to get to where I am, then this was a man who had further to climb. For everything I know about my own journey, I realised then I knew nothing about the challenge that he faced or about where to start in helping him. Alcohol makes everything so complicated.

New Glasses

When I started working for myself I chose to take a fairly big drop in my salary, so from the outset Alicia and I were thinking about how we were going to make ends meet. I’ve never had any trouble spending what I earn. To be brutally honest, I’ve always spent more than I earn. Sometimes you hear people talk about what they would do if they won the lottery. There is usually a fairly crafted shopping list. People rarely say ‘Oh I don’t know’ in the way that they might if you asked them what their favourite movie is. The shopping list seems to be written, prepared, regularly redrafted, and ready for that lottery win. It is a conversation that seems, in itself, to bring people genuine pleasure. I see friends faces light up as they reel through the purchases and carve up the fictional winnings amongst friends, family and charities.

Earlier this year Chris Weir, a psychiatric nurse, and her husband Colin, a camera man, netted £161m (around $262m) in a European wide lottery. The prize was Europe’s biggest ever. The couple made public appearances, giddy, excited, energized, unable to sleep, endearing themselves by telling the British public that they were ‘tickled pink’. When the UK lottery was launched the basic idea was for the sale of lottery tickets to support ‘good causes’ as well as give players the chance to win a life changing sum of money. Just over a quarter of the money raised from the lottery ticket sales goes towards ‘good causes’. What constitutes a ‘good cause’ is decided by one of the thirteen distribution bodies. Six of these concern sport, five relate to the arts, one deals with heritage grants and one, a distributor called the Big Lottery Fund, provides funding to community groups and to projects that improve health, education and the environment.

What constitutes a ‘life changing sum of money’ is anyone’s guess. In the UK, chances are your everyday household with personal loans and credit cards is going to owe somewhere in the region of £15,000 (around $24,000), and that isn’t counting the money we owe on our mortgage. Certainly, before the credit crunch, banks and credit card companies were willing to offer me a total of £35,000 (around $57,000) of credit in the form of plastic, personal loans and overdrafts. It was for me, and I’m guessing many others, our very own lottery win. When did it become ok to dangle that sort of money in front of people? When did a ‘life changing sum of money’ become the £15K we need to clear our debts? And what on earth did we all spend it on? The total UK personal debt at the end of June 2011 stood at £1,451billion! That is £1,451billion we have spent before we’ve earned it! £1,451billion we have spent on ‘stuff’ that we told ourselves we wanted and needed. So when we compare our developed world to the developing world, is what we are so proud of, our ability to access and spend money that isn’t ours to spend? And we can’t afford it. Every 14 minutes a home in this country is being repossessed.

So the banks said we could have the money, and the seductive adverts, fashions and fads told us we needed the money, but what about us? The middle men in this exchange of borrowings for ‘stuff’ and services (stuff would sometimes be referred to here as ‘goods’ - now there is a loaded word if ever I heard it). Why didn’t we put the brakes on? Why are we still out there shopping like our lives depend on it? It is as if all those old instincts and drives to seek out food and shelter, to survive, to belong, to achieve and have worth in our belonging, have been played, taken advantage of, substituted. As though ‘stuff’ has become administered like methadone to substitute the heroin we usually call ‘striving’.

I’m not name calling here. I’m at the meeting too, just recognising I’m an addict and trying to come off the dependency. We are what we are, human beings with brains that make us both of the animal kingdom and other than it. Both virtuous and flawed. Saying we are to blame is just nuts to me. We just are… this is what it is to be a human being… it’s tricky… our old instincts and drives are not of this seductive modern world, but they have to get along just the same. Sometimes we seem to elevate ourselves too far above the rest of animal kingdom, and forget we are just another primate with a few extras and some unique ways of using what we have.

Teaching in schools I saw increasingly how school just felt so old fashioned. Despite the ever flowing technology and the new building programmes, it was what schools did with it all that just felt old fashioned. The comment we’d hear with increasing frequency was ‘why do we have to be here’, and ‘why do I have to learn this’. Educationalists and parents alike try and steer a path through these very pointed questions, caught in the headlights of a youth that are ready to start buying, and feeling held on the bit by their inability to earn. And we were right to resist, and stutter out our arguments about the power of knowledge, the value of an education… but I’m not sure even we didn’t feel like our arguments were somehow being hollowed out from within. Nowhere else was belonging and worth and identity so tied up with what you had; nowhere else was the curse of the self more evident. And not surprisingly either, after all adolescence is a time in our lives when our identity is thrown open as part of everyday brain maturation.

I digress, and how difficult it is not to, and how much I want to. So whilst I’m spending like it is the last day of my life every day, along with all the other shoppers… I start wondering where all this ‘stuff’ comes from, where it all ends up. I watch The Story Of Stuff and it’s a good starting point. The prices we pay for ‘stuff’ are determined by the raw materials, the costs of manufacture, distribution and sales, and then the mysterious profit margin… which we are to understand is determined in effect by us…. by how much we are willing to pay… by the worth we place on ‘stuff’. And then there are those things which the price doesn’t reflect: the air and water pollution, the depletion of natural resources, the people whose health, education and futures are jeopardised by the need to keep production flowing and cheap. Isn’t it a strange world where in one country we protect environments and workers from exploitation, and then across the water it happens without restriction.

So I’m spending money I don’t own, to buy things I don’t need, made by people who can’t escape, on a planet that can’t give anymore. I’m not trying to make a political point here, this is personal. This is just one family’s realisation that in so many ways, and for so many reasons, we can’t keep living like this. We can’t live with our consciences if we are perpetuating and contributing to keeping communities enslaved. And we can’t afford to keep spending beyond our means. So we have taken a long hard look at what we buy and who we buy from. We are just starting out, starting out for the first time again. It isn’t about making ourselves endure some kind of suffering… it has more to do with finding happiness in pursuits other than ownership and competitiveness. It is another piece of the jigsaw that we found on the slip road as we left the rat race.

I admit, I never really cared about the planet, but I’ve always cared about people and now I realise that the two are interconnected. When I buy something that impacted on an environment, it also impacted on a community’s way of life and their ability to sustain themselves. I can’t spend money now without knowing a bit more. And the internet has changed that, because I don’t have to take the advertisers’ word for it any more. I don’t buy clothes often but when I do, I can seek out clothing that pays the cotton growers a fair price and that doesn’t use sweat shops. It will cost what it costs and I’ll either be able to afford it or I’ll go without. But I can’t live with myself buying something that brought harm to my fellow human beings, however much they are hidden out of sight, and I won’t be duped into buying something because it appeals to my need to fit in, be accepted and add to my self worth. It is a simple life we are travelling towards and we are learning as we go.

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Epiphany, But Slower

Life for us has changed and is continuing to change in so many ways. As I grew up, being taught to believe that there was a God, now and then life would bump up against those beliefs and things wouldn’t make sense. I borrowed my belief in God, rather than owning it for myself. When I was trying to put the pieces together after another major depression, I looked into following a religion. The internet and discussion threads are full with people who recommend God to others at times of illness. My father certainly seemed to think it would do me good.

For many, many years I have been a non-practising Muslim, and therefore in my eyes… not a Muslim at all; only one by birth, if such a thing exists. One by one, each of the rituals and laws fell away from my life… except the one about eating pork. I still don’t do that, although I offer no rational explanation for why I still avoid this meat and I place no importance on this fact. I’ve always been uneasy about not believing in God though. I suppose I’ve always hedged my bets, so that if one day it turned out there was a God I might still be able to argue my way into heaven. I wouldn’t even allow myself to quietly think that there was no God for fear that God would be listening. I’ve declared myself an agnostic in the past… which is a posh word for sitting on the fence. A word no doubt invented for boys to impress girls with.

Recently, and for the first time, I’ve have accepted and I am easy with the view that there is no God. I say this without any wish to influence others and without any delusion that I might be capable of doing so. I’m ok with the idea that there is no God. I am an atheist. I can say that now without looking over my shoulder. I am not any the poorer for living life as an atheist… I like still to make sense of the world and I do so the best I can. Along the way I get stuck sometimes because our knowledge and understanding is limited. But I’m open to ‘not knowing’ and not having all the answers, and feel no pressure to substitute ‘not knowing’ with anything else.

When Alicia was pregnant with Xavier, Alicia and I had discussion over a meal about how we would approach the subject of religion as parents. My parents are Muslims, Alicia believes in God but does not follow any one religion, and I was, at the time, not sure how to characterise myself. I’ve seen others take to religion when they had children, almost out of a necessity to gem up before turning teachers to their children. Having children does bring into sharp focus questions about what is right and wrong and many people find themselves dusting off their moral compass in readiness for parenthood. We decided then and there that for Xavier, religion was part of his cultural identify and we would welcome any religious instruction from all grandparents. That said, Alicia and I would just be ourselves with Xavier, and he would come to know our uncertainties and our own personal beliefs over time. It is easy to think that this is something that can be put off and won’t apply until he is much older, but life is rich with beliefs and ritual and celebration and remembrance. As much as I want him to one day find his own path, he will be impressionable and under the influence of religious belief for a long time before he chooses for himself.

Alicia and I do our best to make sure Xavier feels loved unconditionally, and feels safe and secure through the care, affection and protection we offer him. He is a confident and happy boy and a great companion. It is possible to be a good person without religion, and it is possible to establish a bedrock of feeling loved, safe an secure without religion. We do this through our relationship with him.

Without religious belief, or what people call spiritual belief, I take time to understand better what it is to be human. We are at once falling angels and rising primates. It is why I write and read so much about our unique human brains. Why I learn about biochemistry and neuroscience and psychology. Why I see human behaviour, and struggles and delights through this understanding. I want to learn about our sameness, our unique qualities, our beauty and our flaws. I’m interested in the way we have gone about constructing societies, where these societies originate, how they shape us and how we shape them. I feel like I’m lifting my head, like I’ve been trying to lift my head many times before and not quite made it. I feel prejudice and ignorance substituted with understanding and compassion. I’m sometimes very uneasy about what I see and the temptation is to once again keep one’s head down. But like a bite of the apple, there is no going back. We look… try and better our understanding, and try to steer a path that we can live with. Life for us has changed and is continuing to change in so many ways.

London's Burning

For three nights London has experienced rioting. The news reports and images portray a widening war zone, characterised by violence, looting and arson. There are the usual angles emerging from the media, lawless hooded youths, the lack of a police response, the destruction of local businesses.

Looking to explain why our capital city, and other cities around the country have become battle grounds, some have searched for the chain of events that led to this civil unrest. Four days ago, Mark Duggan was shot in Tottenham in north London. I could say any number of things now that would characterise Mark Duggan in our minds. If I tell you he was only 29 you might think what a young age to end a life. If I tell you he was a father you might picture his young family and think of their loss. If I tell you that he was known to the police you might believe he lived on the wrong side of the law.

But actually, I don’t know who Mark Duggan was, most of us don’t. I can’t discern his character from our plethora of British media houses. I can’t make sense of the conflicting reports about the circumstances surrounding his shooting by police. There seems to be a keenness to arrive at pantomime characterisations of people and events. I guess it might take some time for the facts to emerge somewhere down the line.

It would appear there was a police operation involving armed officers, that Mark Duggan’s minicab was surrounded, that shots were heard. Exactly who fired, how many shots were fired and why police opened fire remain questions without definitive answers. Claims that Mark Duggan was carrying a firearm seem to be confirmed. We are very much in the hands of the investigators to learn more about the incident, and in the hands of political leaders who will no doubt decide what, how and when information is released against the context of a city in melt down.

Somewhere along the line, the peaceful protest that then ensued outside Tottenham Police Station deteriorated and ballooned unexpectedly into the images we have now witnessed over the last three nights across London and other major cities. Does what is happening on our streets have anything to do with Mark Duggan now. Probably not. So what is it all about?

Well, the pundits are not short on analysis and theories. Is it the bad behaviour of unruly teenagers, the product of poor parenting, the uprising of the have-nots, the frustrations of an unemployed youth, the consequence of conservative government austerity measures, the consequence of the labour government’s nationalisation of childhood, the dysfunction of a godless society, lacking cohesion and community, the abdication of parental responsibility? May be it is all and none of these things. Maybe this is not a community united by a single cause, but instead a collection of individuals and small groups united by opportunity to do whatever it is they have each fixed their sights on.

It is terrifying, and the fires have lit up more than just the street of London, they have ignited a conversation in this country.

Kindness

The nurses at St. Thomas’ took good care of me and cleaned me up. Moments after my feet hit the pavement a stranger kindly gave me a polo shirt to put on, and later that day I picked up a pair of standard issue black pumps whilst at Southwark police station. These, together with the jeans I escaped with, would be my worldly possessions. After the fire, the pub cook let me camp on her floor for a month or so, a lovely lady full of east end life and a heart the size of a bowling ball. She was a mother to me whilst I was in London.

There were a few weeks to go before the end of the summer term, and the end of my degree. Everything rested on a final project that had gone up in the fire. I’d have to start again. The university gave me the summer break to put it together. A good friend, MD, gave me an old drawing board of his so that I could get back to work. AK loaned me her boyfriend’s apartment to work in over the summer whilst he was out of the country. JH provided some company and even pitched in with my drawings. This amazing show of kindness came together like a wind behind me. I did my bit too, and I graduated alongside everybody else that year.

The days after the fire, walking about with nothing but the clothes I wore… without so much as a piece of paper with my name on it, those were strange days. It was a long time before I went back to ‘owning things’ again… but I still don’t care about ‘stuff’ like I used to. I’ve lost sentimentality.

The landlords cried; they blamed themselves for cutting corners: no fire alarms or means of escape; the bars on the windows; the drunk and unconscious bar manager that had slept in the bar whilst the events of that morning unfolded; the loss of somebody’s precious daughter. The bar, ironically, had escaped the fire. The arsonist had posted his petrol bomb through the side door and the fire wound its way up the three flights of staircase in search of fresh oxygen, tearing through the accommodation. The arsonist was later identified from camera footage purchasing the fuel from a near by petrol station. He and his accomplice stood trial and served a few years. The pub was refurbished but never really recovered, and I believe it now stands empty.

I graduated into the recession of the early 1990’s and after several hundred rejection letters from sympathetic architectural offices I took up a couple of jobs at local retail stores. So many people did little and big things to help me get a foothold after the fire. “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” Maya Angelou. Well, I remember it all and I’ll never forget your kindness.

White Noise

On Wednesday night we had dinner and drinks with friends over at their place. I’ve not been taking Fluoxetine for that long so I’m still trying to figure out how it gets on with alcohol. Experiences with other antidepressants have been enough to put me off alcohol for many years now. Every now and again I take a chance and have a few drinks but it leaves me regretting the decision for several days afterwards as my mood plummets.

On our recent trip to London we had generous quantities of rosé with our meals without any unpleasant consequences. I was amazed. I used to say a house without wine is not a home, and the fridge usually had a bottle of champagne in it. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not suggesting I had a trust fund to dispense with at the local wine merchants. But it is fair to say that a significant portion of my student loan whilst studying architecture went towards supporting my friend, Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. I think much of the rest fed the pool tables of south east London.

In conversation over dinner that night Alicia mentioned the fire. It’s been in and out of my mind since then. I used to live on the Old Kent Road… a road well known to players of Monopoly, the cheapest property on the board, and the training ground of boxer, Sir Henry Cooper. A man who was robbed of his chance to take down an unsuspecting Cassius Clay with his trademark left hook. How different history might have been if that day, Cassis hadn’t had his fall broken by the ropes, or his corner man hadn’t illegally treated him with smelling salts, or ripped his gloves to buy him recovery time.

It was a busy place to live, an artery into Central London, home to dubious night clubs hosting the occasional shooting, public houses with security, and side streets rife with petty theft. I had a room above a well known public house. A small room on the top floor, made smaller by the folding of the pitched roof and the intrusion of a set of wooden steps that led up to the tiny window, providing a primitive means of escape onto a small parapet wall four floors above the pavement. It was a place to sleep and a place to draw, all I really needed whilst I studied in London. That and clubs. Looking for student digs in London was a minor nightmare, made worse by the need to accommodate an A0 drawing board on a stand, something of an awkward room mate and travel companion.

One night I fell asleep like any other night, only unusually the black and white portable TV was switched on playing the soothing sounds of white noise to mark the end of the evening’s transmission. That exceptional circumstance would save my life. As the first broadcasts of breakfast television broke the early morning silence, I’d look up and see the black threads of smoke rising from behind the screen. What followed was my confused and sleepy attempts to make sense of what was happening. Not the TV, the bottom of the door, that is where the smoke was coming from. I opened the bedroom door and filled with fear from the confusion. Where was the window off the landing? It wasn’t there, nothing was there. It took a moment to understand what I was looking at. A new, live wall of impenetrable black smoke.

I flung the door closed… and shouted ‘fire’ as they do in the movies. My thoughts turned to the others in the building, friends. I opened the door again… I’d never seen anything like it. There was nothing but dense smoke, visibility zero. I could taste it. I couldn’t make it out there.

I had just enough time to put my jeans on, but that’s all. The smoked had filled the bedroom… and those funny little steps… that I used as a bookshelf… those funny little wooden steps that invaded my floor space and no other… provided a route onto that small parapet wall. I was terrified of heights, ordinarily. It didn’t seem to matter that day. I ran along the ledge to see what had happened to P, I called out for him and leaned round the corner of the building… and there he was… clinging to his third floor window frame with his big hands and just enough room for his toes on the ledge. And his first words “are you alright Med?” In the other direction M, I moved to his window and banged on the glass… my fist broke through. I remember at that moment worrying that the landlord would be angry at the broken window, I guess I hadn’t quite realised how serious the situation was. He woke and joined me on the parapet wall. Below people could hear us shouting for help. I shouted. I shouted as loud as I could… I realised afterwards that others mistook this for panic… I looked like I might have jumped… but I wanted to be heard. C was on the other side of the building, and her window had bars… how do you get other people to understand that in a hurry… I shouted.

When the fire crews arrived the frustration just grew. They refused to go in and look for her, insisting on getting us down first. I understand that… I don’t blame them at all… but I can’t help wondering if it could have turned out differently.

At St. Thomas’s Hospital, and at Southwark police station… I asked over and over if she made it. I should have guessed that what they weren’t telling me - told me everything I needed to know.

I look at that wall of smoke and wonder why I didn’t have the courage to go and get her. I wonder how different things could have been. I know people will say all sorts of things to reassure me, and they have… but I was the only one there. Nobody can know what I know. We all have things we have to live with.

Black is White

I was wondering if any of you fellow bloggers have any had any experience of 5-HTP (5-Hydroxytryptophan also known as oxitriptan). I read a newspaper article the other day where the author mentioned that this amino acid is sold over the counter as a dietary supplement, used to treat depression. She claimed it was nature’s antidepressant; that it raised levels of serotonin without the need for antidepressants. So I was surprised I had never heard of it before and decided to take a closer look.

“5-HTP is derived from an African plant called griffonia, and has been called 'nature's Prozac', because it works on the brain to boost serotonin, though without the side effects."

Stephanie Merritt, The Observer.

I find that you can use Google searches to find evidence to pretty much prove or disprove anything. I can type in 5-HTP miracle cure I’m led to personal testimonials on health and holistic remedy web sites, all very interesting. Alternatively, if I search 5-HTP myth, I learn about warnings, concern and bad science. Still interesting.

I’ve used this to great effect when my son was born. Alicia and I liked the name Xavier, and so we went for it… knowing that my parents were quite keen (understatement) on Islamic names. I think my mother’s main concern was that if we were to call our son John or something like that, she wouldn’t know what to say to the rest of the family. Oh just think of it! So to put her at ease I Googled Xavier, Islam and hey presto… up popped a website linking the two. Press print. Present the hard copy to my mother and disaster averted. Pathetic on my part, I know… but sometimes a quite life is all I ask. Funny thing was, when we sat opposite my parents and told them for the first time he’d be called Xavier, my mother almost burst into tears and my father unleashed an enormous grin on us. At first I though we had won 50% of the vote, but then my dad elbowed my mother boisterously and said “come on, don’t wind your mother up, what are you really going to call him?” It was a moment scripted for sitcom. Only it really did happen. And it felt a whole heap longer than a moment.

Anyway, on this occasion I am none the wiser. So I’m not going to waste anyone’s time by going into the scientific arguments for and against 5-HTP working on depression here. It would seem that there is a real lack of quality study on this so basically, the jury is out, or maybe the jury hasn’t even heard the case yet.

What I’m left with, in the absence of science… it a bit of good old gossip. So, have you had any experiences with this supplement? For the record, I do not use 5-HTP and I’m led to believe I should avoid it if taking an SSRI antidepressant. So there you go.

Have You Got a Minute?

I hate to put you on the spot by asking… and I don’t want to scare you away… but I just wanted to ask why? I have to admit that I like the conversation… and just talking is only half the pleasure. I like to know what you think… even if you think it is all a load of bollocks. Not what you think… that is too vague. Your opinion. No, that is too vague too. You could easily mistake that word for meaning critique. I don’t mean that. I mean… when I write it’s only about life from my perspective and I don’t really know what it’s like to be you. And I end up wondering if it is the same, or different, and different how? That’s the bit of the conversation I want to get at.

I’m rubbish at small talk. Yesterday I was painting a porch and I don’t know why… but so many people kept stopping and chatting with me… beaming smiles and complimenting me on the work. It was nice. It felt good. But as I say, I’m rubbish at small talk and I always try and wrap things up really quickly. I just have no idea about it. I envy all you out there that can just chat away to the person at the bus stop or the lady at the checkout. I often think of something amusing to say to people at checkouts… but then I play it out in my head. They will laugh, and then I won’t have any small talk to follow up, so then we will stop talking, abruptly. And it will be awkward. So most times I back out of striking up conversation.

So here I am, chatting away here like I never ever do. And you are there. And I am here. And you are quiet. So I just wanted to ask you why?

The Truth, My Truth and Nothing But My Truth

This is my truth, I don’t know if it is true for anyone else. Before I write anything more I could have one of those disclaimers that I see on other blogs, but I hope it is obvious that I am writing a personal blog and nothing more. We are all experts when it comes to ourselves aren’t we?

When I wrote Everything I Know (Almost)…about depression, it was true to say that was pretty much all I felt confident about. Since writing that page, about 40 posts ago, I have asked many questions, talked to many people, and listened… more than anything I have listened.

In my last post, I shared a link to the following You Tube film, which has a running time of about an hour and features Professor Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist, giving a lecture on the subject of depression at Stanford University: Stanford's Sapolsky on Depression in the US (Full Lecture). For me, it provided an unparalleled insight into depression. I wish someone had sat me down and introduced me to this lecture years ago. Fortunately I have science in my background, and in my blood, so I found the lecture fairly easy to follow; Sapolsky is skilled at pitching it just right. But I appreciate that isn’t going to be the case for everybody; after all science wasn’t everybody’s favourite subject at school.

I imagine that others out there have found themselves questing as I have. I have depression; I live in a world where our popular understanding of this condition is clouded by ignorance and prejudice (understandably); and where the fragments of understanding I have collected from health professionals have felt like pieces of a jigsaw… only they don’t seem to come from the same box. I am serious about getting better, and I know I am fortunate in that attitude because my motivation for getting better stems from my relationships with other people. Not everybody is so fortunate to have the company of a supportive family – my broad family of choice. But I have said it before and I say it again now… a powerful ingredient in overcoming depression is ‘other people’, not because of the advice the can offer or what they can do for you, but because we are all the same just enough to feel compassion for each other and show each other kindness, and kindness is healing, not just in a poetic sense but in a biochemical sense.

A word about where I’m coming from. I don’t believe in science. Science is not a belief system. It is a way of understanding the world and explaining the way it works based on what we know and understand so far, given the tools we have to explore that world. However... scientific knowledge and understanding is but a dot on a very long time line hurtling towards the future… and as we travel that way, we learn more, we learn differently and our understanding shifts and improves. I accept this. Science is not faith, it should not be followed as people follow faiths… it thrives on being questioned and challenged, it does not seek to preserve itself, it evolves and it is hungry to one day arrive at a holistic picture of the world, some way to explain everything without its own internal contradictions. It is a long way from achieving this. There are good faiths with helpful messages, as there is good science too, and both worlds are susceptible to human flaws - in particular … ego. So when I form opinions on both, I try and separate out the body of knowledge and understanding from the people and the inevitable trappings of being human. History is full of stories about good faiths corrupted by our human flaws. We have done much harm in the name of religion… but I don’t blame religion… we are at once amazing human beings and only human at the same time. So for me, science is not itself a culprit for past tragedies either.

Major depression is not the ups and downs of daily life, and unfortunately taking that experience and extrapolating it… magnifying it… does not provide a better sense of what major depression feels like. So those of us with depression can feel frustrated that others seem to misunderstand and underplay the difficulties we are experiencing. And sometimes we see that others are frustrated by us, because we depressives don’t seem to bounce back and ‘cope’ like other people do.

It is clear though that there are several different components to depression. There is a reason why the jigsaw pieces seem to come from different boxes.

Of the many chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) used by our brains to communicate from one neurone to the next… a few are presently known to be implicated in depression. In simple terms, lacking in these particular neurotransmitters inhibits our ability to experience pleasure, brings on strong feelings of guilt and grief, and slows down our thinking and our movements. Unpack that, and for me this meant I could no longer feel the warmth of other people’s love; my mood was no longer instantly lifted by the things I used to enjoy like the dawning of a warm sunny day and a Monet sky; I couldn’t hear the sweet uplifting sound of my 3 year old’s laughter or feel the presence of my adoring dogs. Without willing it and unable to stop it I relived every misfortunate memory of failure and loss, every conversation, every awkward moment, and in doing so I felt utterly hopeless and responsible. I cried; felt an intense sadness that made the muscles hang from by bones, and withdrew into an impenetrable silence. The mundane activities of daily life like taking a shower, putting on clothes, grooming, preparing food, brushing teeth and exercising all became difficult, sometimes even impossible. I’d get confused easily, squint with concentration as I tried to follow conversations, seize up at the challenge of having to make even simple decisions. I felt stupid and self conscious around other people, especially at work.

So lacking certain neurotransmitters seems to have a pretty serious and noticeable effect on day to day life, so much so that it left me feeling like I was barely living at all. There are those that quite rightly argue that we cannot actually measure the quantities of these neurotransmitters in the brain before, during or after treatment. However it doesn’t then follow that the science about neurotransmitters is all nonsense. Antidepressants are big business and that often attracts conspiracy theorists, which is no bad thing… but I have yet to hear anyone argue against the way that Cocaine acts on our neural pathways in the way that I hear arguments against antidepressants.

There were times I wished I had cancer instead. I know that isn’t a good thing to say, but it is how I felt at the time. Even cancer sufferers seem to be able to know pleasure through the pain of their illness and in doing so are able to summon up the fight in themselves. Depression left me without the capacity to feel ‘fight’, and then like so many others, without the will to live.

It is common these days to be prescribed an antidepressant known as a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). As the name suggests, these work by inhibiting the reuptake of one particular neurotransmitters, serotonin, and so raising levels of this chemical messenger in the brain. SSRIs became popular amongst health professionals because they carried fewer side effects than their predecessors, and perhaps more significantly are safer in overdose than traditional antidepressants. It is well known that antidepressants carry a warning of “the symptoms of depression may worsen before the antidepressant can take effect. For some people, this may include thoughts of suicide or self-harm.” I think this creates confusion and takes away from the credibility of antidepressants to treat depressive symptoms. After all, if antidepressants are supposed to make you feel better, why might they increase your risk of suicide? However, I certainly recall that in those darkest of days that whilst I wanted to take my life I had little mental or physical energy to do so. It was only when I started to improve under the influence of antidepressants, and regained motivation and thinking that I could start to become serious about suicide. Recovery periods pose a greater risk of suicide that those days when we are confined to our bed sleeping the days away.

So SSRIs work by raising the levels of available serotonin reaching our receptors at the synapses, where one neuron meets another. However, serotonin, albeit a very major player and a workhorse amongst neurotransmitters, is only one such chemical messenger implicated in depression. Older classes of antidepressants increased levels of three different neurotransmitters, serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. All three are known to be implicated in depressive symptoms. Whilst raising levels of serotonin would alleviate feelings of grief and guilt, working on dopamine would reawaken our feelings of pleasure and motivation, aid with sleep, attention and memory, whilst norepinephrine would help restore physical activity. Understanding this goes some way towards understanding why for many of us, SSRIs like Fluoxetine do not provide the magic bullet we might hope for.

Then we have to consider a psychological component, as I have many times before in this blog, given difficulties that arise from the design of our human brain. To understand these difficulties is to begin to understand why it can be so difficult to be human at times, and also appreciate why we are so spectacularly different to the rest of the animal kingdom. Human beings have evolved sophisticated ‘new’ brains, the regions we refer to as the cortex, involved in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness, that have to work alongside some much ‘older’ areas of the brain that do more mundane and functional things. We have old animal instincts and drives, developed to survive a harsher world of food scarcity and hungry predators; systems that respond quickly to a world of potential threats. The flip side is that our mechanical responses to the world can be triggered by, not just real world threats, but by ‘imagined’ threats. I like the way Sapolsky describes it when he says that “our cortex whispers into the ear of our middle brain and triggers a stress response as thought we were about to be gorged by an elephant”.

I came to learn about the psychological component in more depth through therapy. I learned that my unmanaged thoughts are capable of activating responses in equal measure to real world threats. I learned that some of my childhood experiences, lived out in those impressionable years left their imprint on the design of my brain along with the genetic blueprints I inherited… and together they sowed the seeds of negative thinking that would hijack me in later life. It is possible, when we are moulding our young brains, to turn these old and useful survival mechanisms inwards and onto ourselves so we feel unsafe, insecure and in doing so destroy our self worth.

Through cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), I slowly learnt about how my childhood experiences were connected to the deep feelings of worthlessness that I had spent a lifetime trying to conceal from others. I began to see why perfectionisms was so important to me, and why I would need to break with this forceful habit. I had developed a whole life around protecting myself and hiding from others my dark truth that I was, underneath it all, nothing. Simplistically, perfectionism had been a way of elevating myself above the criticisms of others and in doing so, escaping detection.

Like an alcoholic having to look in the mirror at their own troubled face and say to that person “I have a problem”, I realised I needed help. With Judy, I learnt to tap into the negative automatic thoughts. At first it was very hard… the new brain, the cortex, would conjure its negative thoughts and whisper to midbrain with it powers for emotion, and it would respond … and just as quickly the ‘old’ hind brain would shape a physical response. In reality, I would only really be aware of the feelings like fear or embarrassment at first. Later I would learn to see how they were affecting me physically, notice the way my body crumpled from the impact with these emotions or how I would flee the scene. Later still I would learn to reflect on these events to identify the negative automatic thought, the mean things that my cortex was whispering much of the time to make me feel so emotionally battered. It would take more time still to learn how to catch these negative automatic thoughts as they popped into existence, rather than let them flow unfiltered into my midbrain and shape my emotions. Catching negative thoughts turned into challenging them… and eventually I would learn to reject them quickly. I might then feel an emotional falter, as my mean thoughts shot there way into the emotion centres of the brain… but I was now able to pull things back into shape quickly, in the blink of an eye and more importantly, behind the scenes without others realising the inner struggle. What would once have triggered a response that had the potential to send me into another depressive episode now became little more than a cognitive stumble.

When a major depression hit again, I was surprised. I understood the links between childhood experiences, my own unhelpful beliefs about myself (core beliefs) and they way these connected with my negative automatic thoughts. So why was I now experiencing another depression. I had overcome perfectionism with remarkable success. So what was this unhelpful habit that now shaped my daily life in unhealthy ways? More looking in the mirror and eventually I had the courage to see it; my dependence on others for approval. Perfectionism was not cause, it was symptom, and underlying it was this pulped self-esteem still fighting to conceal itself. My question to Judy, can I change my core beliefs… is it possible to trade in the feeling that I am worthless for something else? Judy’s reply, that isn’t certain… but what is possible is to change our ‘rules for living’.

As I understand it, once I had at my core some unhelpful beliefs about myself… I also constructed a life that allowed me to ‘cope’ with these beliefs. If I was worthless, I would need to conceal it, I would need to better and out perform others, I would need to work hard at being interesting, I would need to work harder than other people. The rules I had for myself were forming at some point in my past, in my subconscious. They propelled me through life, the hard boss in my head that saw me through achievement after achievement. I was usually the youngest on the team, the youngest consultant, the youngest assistant principal… it was a drive that others would have found unfathomable and maybe even a little bit frightening.

As life gets more complicated and the circles I moved in changed, living by my private rules became more difficult. It isn’t something I could realise at the time. I wasn’t conscious of any of these processes… I was just victim to them. Being infallible, and the best, having the highest standards… would become impossible to maintain. And as I failed to be these things, as the rules I had for myself were broken one by one, the cortex would start whispering its dissatisfaction to the middle brain, starting an emotional uprising and triggering a stress response in the old brain as thought my life itself was in danger.

The head teacher at a school I worked at didn’t believe in stress…that makes her a bit of a dinosaur. Stress, is our bodies’ biochemical and subsequently physical response to something in our environment that might pose a threat…don’t think paperwork… think big hungry mouths ready to turn you into a meal. It’s a reaction characterized by a release of adrenaline preparing you to either fight the threat or run from it, and a release of the hormone cortisol to up your blood sugar (muscle fuel), turn on access to other reserves of energy like fats, and almost shut down your immune system to divert your efforts into reacting. Stress is a brilliant reaction used by other mammals to great effect when faced with the threat of a predator, or some other immediate danger. The old and direct wiring of the hind brain wastes no time in responding to threats… saving vital seconds and possibly the difference between survival and death. We are designed to have a stress response… it is no bad thing in itself. When we take an exhilarating ride on a roller coaster or jump with nothing but a bungee cord between us and death, we are tapping into that stress response and enjoying the rush of chemicals it brings. When we are expecting a rush and get it… it is a pleasure. Feeling a stress response when we are not expecting it, by contrast can cause anxiety, panic maybe anger and all those uncomfortable feelings I’m sure you know only too well.

Sadly, for us human beings, the whisperings of the cortex can trigger a stress response too. When my rules for living were broken, when I believed I had fallen short or exposed a weakness, I’d tell myself how I’d failed… beat myself mentally. A stress response that was designed to react in a moment to immediate threats can be kept in play unnaturally by the constant whisperings of the cortex. Prolonged stress, what is called chronic stress, a prolonged biological response, not to a hungry lion, but the threats that originated from the way I viewed the world, and myself in it. It is like a madness isn’t it; well at least if lions could talk I think that’s what they would say.

The ingredients for major depression were present. A family history with undiagnosed depression, early childhood stressors, some unhelpful core beliefs, some hard rules for living, and all they needed to blend them was an activator… a stressor… I had started to live a life where being the ‘me’ I had constructed became impossible, and the flaws I saw in myself were becoming difficult to conceal. As I failed, and each day felt myself failing a little more… the stress was building and being sustained. I have since come to learn that for me, stress, be it from an external or internal stressor, can leave the door open for depression.

Stress was to become another component of depression that I had never considered before. Just beneath the surface I was becoming aware of the link between stress and depression. In this most recent episode of depression I chose to withdraw from work and other responsibilities. It wasn’t that I was working and decided to stop whilst I got better. It was that even though I couldn’t work, mentally I gave myself a hard time about it. When I did choose to take a break and told myself ‘it’s ok, I’m not expecting you to be anywhere or to do anything’ the mental punishment stopped and I could start to concentrate on getting better. It made a huge difference and was key to speeding up my recovery. Doctors will often sign off patients in the midst of a major depression, but it took me a long time to understand how to use that time to get better. I remember previous episodes where being away from work was mental torture, endless feelings of guilt and failure revolving around not being at work. Had I given myself permission to be away, as my GP had done, I suspect I would have healed much sooner. Instead I was generating and sustaining a stress response that made it impossible for my health to improve.

I realised that if I could manage stress more effectively, I could also manage and maybe even avert future episodes of depression. Clearly, the way I lived my life was not the only way to live. This is a big planet, and there are many ways to live out our time on it. It is easy to get caught up with the way people do things on our little square of the Earth and think that that is how life is to be lived, but that just isn’t so. The big decisions I had made like leaving my career in education, I didn’t realise until later, had been attempts to control and manage stress in my life. I started to look deep into myself and figure out my own values, because I was realising that the bit of the world I occupied was full of stress and played to the drives and dissatisfactions of the old brain. Fine if you are not me with my baggage, but not fine for me.

In fact, I started to realise that internal and external stressors were two separate components that could contribute to depression. It isn’t like this all over the planet, but certainly in my part of the world people are encouraged to be driven by a few things. There is the God drive to work, the belief that God wants us to work, work hard and frowns upon idleness (which is anything that isn’t working). That somehow working is bound to our morals. There is the illusion that employers everywhere use to make employees feel like they belong and that company values have brought meaning and purpose to their lives. That we are taking part in some bigger project for the good of humanity. That we should be passionate about our work. There is the drive to avoid going hungry, and more commonly there is the drive to just buy more stuff. I’m not even sure it’s about owning any of it anymore… it is more about the buying. I think many of us recognise this world, and it is a relentless and persuasive world. If I am to make decisions for the good of my health, I had better learn how to tell myself I don’t really need that second TV. Managing stress would involve more than just managing my self critical thinking: it would involve keeping this world at arms length and inviting it in on my own terms.

Suddenly, I was starting to realise why some people turned to meditation and other such devices to control their relationship with the wider world and its stresses.

Through a fellow blogger, I became interested in a study carried out by Professor Robert Sapolsky on the subject of stress. For more than 30 years he visited a group of baboons and studied them, using extracted blood samples to investigate their individual levels of stress. Baboons organise themselves into hierarchical troops and his study of these baboons showed that the higher your position in the troop, the lower your levels of stress. Another quite separate study looked at stress levels in another hierarchical system, the British Civil Service. It came to the same conclusions. So for whatever reason, those at the top of the hierarchy experienced lower levels of stress.

Now, if you take your average person off the street and suddenly tell them they are in charge, I imagine there will be some that leap at the chance, and there will be some that freeze with panic… in other words experience a stress response at the very thought. The difference, I think, would be in people’s attitudes. It isn’t that you are at the top and therefore feel less stressed. It is because you feel you are at the top and so feel less stressed. Alicia tells me she read an interview with comedian Eddie Izzard recently and the story fits here so I’ll tell it. Eddie is often asked what it is like to be a transvestite and how other people react. I gather he finds this line of questioning a little bit dull, but anyway he plays along and says that well, if you walk into a room dressed as a woman and say ‘can I have a cup of tea please’ they’ll think, right, well, he wants a cup of tea… let’s get him a cup of tea then. If instead I walk in dressed as a woman feeling a little bit sheepish and standing there not know what to say or do, they will look and think ‘oh my God he is dressed as a woman, what should we do, where should we look?’ The point he makes to the interviewer is it is all about being comfortable with yourself, and others will feel comfortable around you.

Hearing about the studies of hierarchical social groups and about Alicia’s Eddie Izzard anecdote reminded me about a little trick I had back at school. When I had some engagement to attend that made me nervous and anxious, I would pretend to myself, say to myself before I walked through the door ‘you are the President of the United States of America’, and with that thought I would enter the room confident and at ease with myself. Attitude is an amazing thing. A little world for the way we interact with the world.

Lately I’ve been trying to start the day a little bit differently. It is the reason I can’t really blog in the morning. I wake up and take myself somewhere relatively calm, and then I meditate. I use the word loosely. I have no training in meditation and I’m not trying to achieve anything with religious motives. But I’ve read about a few techniques and I’ve found them easy to put into practice. One such technique involves just closing my eyes, and concentrating on the feeling of the air moving in and out through my nostrils as I breathe naturally. What happens at first is it gets quite noisy in my head… thoughts start crashing about. I read that this is to be expected, that our minds are ordinarily so busy that when we stop and focus the first thing we become aware of is all their activity.

After a little while my mind quietens and then it seems sort of blank, a blank page that I can write on. Through CBT I learnt to manage negative thoughts, but what I would rather do is not have negative thoughts in the first place. ‘You can change your rules for living’ - that is what Judy said. So with a quietened mind I start to think all sorts of positive things about me. I tell myself about all my good qualities… I am whispering to the middle brain and I feel it starts to flush with a powerful, soothing feeling. I tell myself ‘you are the boss’ and what I mean is that I am indeed the boss of my own life. It is as though I have come full circle from those youthful days reading Nausea and realising that our purpose in life is not predestined, and the greatest secret and biggest fear is that actually we have choice, freedom… to decide our life’s purpose for ourselves. I tell myself, in this calm meditative state, that I am the boss of my life and then rest there, enjoying the feeling of a smile upon my cheeks.

When I start the day like this, devoting around 15 minutes or so to this small mediation… the rest of the day runs differently, by new rules. I no longer become anxious about what others think, or panic about making it to some place on time, or wonder if I should be doing something else. Instead, I feel an entirely different attitude washing through me. I will get there when I get there. I’ll communicate the situation and they can take it or leave it. I’ll get finished when I get finished, it will take as long as it has too. I decide what I do, and when I do it, it is without the old feelings of pressure, responsibility and guilt. It isn’t that I don’t act responsibly; it is that I do what I do because I want to and choose to, rather than because of the old feelings of I have to. More crucially, Alicia has commented on how much calmer and better I seem, and I feel it too. With a different attitude, what Judy called ‘rules for living’, I am able to operate without the old internal stresses.

I punctuate and reset each morning with a moment of meditation and a shift in attitude, to keep me on the straight and narrow. I aim to travel each day being at ease with myself, being at one with my circumstances, being distant from modern world stresses and being as much in the moment as I can be. Now… I can live this life, or I can keep writing about it. But I can’t do both at the same time. Thank you for reading.

It's All About You

The support I've gained from others through writing this blog is greater than anything I could have hoped for. I am a great believer in drawing on others to get through depression, and doing all one can to resist the drive to withdraw. I am always blown away by the trouble people take to reach out and be kind to me. To those of you who have been checking in with me from time to time... thank you so much for making me feel like you cared and for showing me such warmth. To those of you who took the time to join me and read the story... thank you for taking the trouble to try and understand. To those of you that shared your stories with me, as I have done with you.... thank you for making me feel like I belong. For those of you that pointed me to new mines of knowledge and understanding, thank you for handing me the torch to shine more light on this depression and this life.

I am fortunate to have watched the following You Tube film, which has a running time of about an hour and features Robert Sapolsky giving a lecture on the subject of depression at Stanford Universtity: Stanford's Sapolsky on Depression in the US (Full Lecture). I can do nothing less than share it with you too. I am indebted to Running Circles for introducing me to this film. A link to the film will remain on the Everything I Know (Almost) page.

As for the future of this blog... I'm uncertain at this time. Stay safe and be together in your struggles.

Yours, Med.

Fighting Talk

When the fog of depression clears, getting back to normal becomes its own challenge. Here is what I would like to be able to do now that I’m feeling quite a bit better: I’d like to be able to answer a telephone; to go back to work; and to answer the door when it knocks unexpectedly. I’d like to be able to have a conversation with Alicia about work without scurrying from the room or reaching for my cigarettes.

What is slowing me up is fear, and not even real world fear, this is just imagined fear that my brain is responding to with a quickened heart beat and a petrified body. I read in an article that the area of the brain responsible for memory may not in fact be designed for this sole purpose. The images we are capable of forming need not be memories… as we know. We are capable too of imagining futures and alternatives and possibilities that do not yet exist. In doing so humans are able to consider difficulties before they arise and plan before acting; a characteristic that has certainly helped with our survival for many thousands of years.

But for each evolutionary advantage, there is typically a draw back, and in this case my imagination is able to create all sorts of negative futures, triggered in response to simple things such as a ringing telephone. In an instant the ring of the telephone sets of a response in my brain that leads to an immediate physical change.

So what am I actually afraid of? Well, I’m afraid that when I arrive I’ll be judged – that people might be confrontational… that there might be someone with an axe to grind on the end of the phone… or that the knock at the door is somebody that ominously wants a ‘word’ with me. How likely are these events… well… not very. They are more than just imagined, they are fantastical!

My GP had an interesting take on fear. When I put it to him that I had to overcome my fear to get back to normal… he challenged me. “Overcome” he said, leaning back into his chair and clasping his hands together. “I’m not sure it is a case of overcoming it. When a soldier is trained in the army to brush his teeth, stand up straight and follow other such orders on command, it because one day the command will come to go over the top and run in the direction that the bullets are coming from. Anyone would have to be a fool not to be fearful in that situation. But the soldier must do it, despite his fear. And that is what his training has been about; teaching him to act despite his fear.” I must have one of the deepest, most reflective GP’s of anyone!

What boxing trainer Cus D'Amato taught Michael Gerard Tyson was the psychology of fighting:

“Cus would watched me … he didn't let me box he would just talk to me for two or three weeks about fighting and then the psychology of fighting, and what fighting was truly about. Fighting was nothing physical, it was all spiritual and he would say if you don't have the spiritual, spiritual warrior in you then you'll never be a good fighter, I don't care how big and strong you are. He explained that to me.”

                                                                        Mike Tyson, Tyson (the movie), 2008

This led to the incredible, unflinching stare that Tyson gave his opponents as he stood in the ring before a fight. He would walk around the ring but never take his eyes off his opponent. And the moment his opponent broke that eye contact, the fight was over, before even the first punch had been thrown.

So… I figure the longer I wait for fear to be ‘overcome’ somehow, the more the fear grows. I’m not going to overcome it; I’m just going to face it instead. After all, it’s just a ringing phone, right?

Forked Path

Several consecutive posts now have charted a steady return to good health. But what does good health actually feel like? I’m wondering if what we imagine as good health, and the reality, actually marry up. I’ve talked before about how we human beings are hard wired for discontentment, how we are striving creatures designed for a harsher world than the one we have created. So as my mood improves and my daily list of engagements starts to look like a fairly regular day, what am I expecting to feel like before I throw off the hospital gown and jump up from my bed shouting “I’m cured!”?

Where does depression end and the human condition begin?

Ups and downs are part of life. I’m not comparing the depths of depression to this ebbing and flowing of mood, but there does come a time when I need to distinguish between the two for myself and say “this is just normal”. Being human isn’t easy, that much is clear. I’ve read and talked about the difficulties that arise from have a ‘new’ brain and ‘old’ brain working alongside each other, how this predicament is fairly unique to humans, and how the old brain instincts and drives find their way into the construction of our societies.

The more I learn about the human brain, its evolution and design, the possibilities it creates and the difficulties it throws up, the more I want to understand. The more I am able to contextualise and understand my behaviours, feelings, drives, the more I am able to choose to go with them, or reject them. This is, I guess, in the absence of scientific knowledge, what our existentialist forefathers were trying to understand. Philosophy, it would appear, is the forerunner for science and it is the destiny of philosophy to be usurped by science. ‘Science’ is a word that generates a reaction in others… as it does in me. I certainly used to think of it as separate to spirituality. I thought science is how we make sense of the ‘hard’ stuff and spirituality is our way of making sense of all the ‘squishy’ stuff that is left over. But the books of science are far from complete, and maybe it is the fault of our education that we see science now as static. Maybe this is why people feel the need to choose between science and spirituality. ‘Knowledge’ is a very concrete word isn’t it, and people feel a bit silly challenging that, or thinking that it might be incomplete. But it is, and that is a good thing.

So, either I am better, or none of us are well. Whichever it is, the world as I see it now presents me with two options. Well, these are the only two options that are visible right now. Maybe you can see others. I can quieten my ‘new’ brain thinking by getting my head down and living a simple life driven by ‘old’ brain animal thinking. Such a life would be close to nature, involve the satisfaction that comes from simpler pleasures, such as surviving, mealtimes and sex to name a few. Such a life would arguably be easier to lead in another country, a less modern country, where living in this way would be in the flow of things. Here, to live like this, would be to swim against the tide. It is easy to understand why some communities feel the need to isolate themselves from the modern world in order to protect their values.

Alternatively, I can accept the tensions that exist, continue to understand them better and use my understanding to steer a path in this life, knowing that I will meet resistance and distraction along the way. Such a life will have me making decisions and life choices that others don’t understand and might even frown upon. It would take integrity and strength to follow such a path, and is made easier when travelled with others.

An option that isn’t open to me is to rejoin the so called ‘rat race’. It is a path that I have tried for a long time and my own personal flaws lead me to self destruct when I travel that way. I’m also not prepared to be a member of the medicated masses, tranquilised into getting by – that is no way to live. So I think I am standing at fork in the road, an interesting place to be, and looking down each path wondering about which one to take…