On friendship / giving and receiving

You know what is a good friend? A friend that is always giving (of their time, attention, efforts, etc). You know what is a bad friend? One who always seems to be taking and taking and never giving anything (usually material things) in return. What do you call a person who sometimes gives, but just doesn’t seem to take anything at all from you? I don’t know, but they’re not usually called a friend. 

I used to wonder some time ago why I was never the kind of friend my ‘friends’ called on to help get them out of a tight spot, to lend them money, or just to vent  when everything crashed to pieces. Often I would hear through other mutual friends about how their relationships had broken up, they had won an award, or they’d been in a minor car accident, etc. I was often left with this little numb wondering of ‘why didn’t they tell me?’ or ‘why didn’t they call me?’ And I would feel a little rejected and sad to have been left out of a kind of major life event. I would recede into myself and wonder: 'am I such a bad person that they wouldn’t think to tell me?, to ask for my help?; or do they not like me?, am I considered of no use?' As you can see, I was aiming these comments toward myself mostly rather than the other person. And as I thought about these things, I began to distance myself from these ‘friends’ of mine. I questioned our whole relationship, and the feeling of rejection did not do my self-esteem any good.

Still, I could never figure out why I was never the friend people sought for when people I considered friends needed “a friend”. Until one day I figured it out: I never called any of my alleged friends when things, semi-major events, happened in my life. I either receded into myself and put up the fight (or celebration) on my own, or I spoke only to my mother about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t find my friends worthy of the knowledge or of sharing my victories or defeats, it was more to do with pride, I guess. "You want to have nothing in life that you’re proud of? Let yourself be guided by your pride." Pride is like a fear of falling, so it stops you from reaching too high. Healthy pride, good pride, is probably better called gratitude and self-efficacy. Good pride is an after-the-fact quality; that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean more the pride/fear to be seen as vulnerable, as needing, as wanting, as human. One day I read that to have good friends, you have to be a good friend. I always thought I was a good friend, willing to give to others when they were in need, listening when they needed to be heard, sharing some advice, looking out for their wellbeing, etc. But my friends were never there when I needed something not because they were bad people, but because I was too proud to let them in.

There’s a bible verse that says that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving. Sure, but we all know that there is also something very pleasant in receiving!  That’s right, there is happiness in both. And what any good relationship, any friendship or partnership, needs is both giving and receiving. Sometimes we give our friends a present, something to cheer them up or make them feel good. We feel good in return, right? A happy friend means a happy me, means a healthy relationship. But how about sometime letting our friend also share in the happiness of giving, allowing them give us a gift, being grateful for their effort, validating their efforts and gesture of camaraderie? Of course, I am not talking just about material gifts. I mean allowing ourselves to be human, to admit our need and desire of friendship, of companionship, of another human being to share our load and cheers with. Trust me, if you know anything about human pride, this is actually very hard! We become proud, stern, often as a result of being hurt in the past, or disappointed. We want to convince ourselves and others that we can’t be hurt again. We want to block out the bad – and we end up blocking out the good too. We punish ourselves and others by creating a wall of perceived invincibility. But it’s actually easier to be invincible if you have an army of comrades rather than take the world on by yourself.

So what more can I say to encourage you to be a little more vulnerable, a slightly better friend? You are human, don’t be scared to be mistaken for one. And there’s a paradoxical rule with love: it’s the only known substance that the more of it you give away, the more you end up having.

On "that" year

Kingaroy, QLD

2006. I was 24 still. I was a child still. But before I tell you about that year, I’ll give you a speedy run-down on my life until then. Age -9 months: my mummy meets my daddy. Age -6 months: my mummy finds out the father of her daughter is also father to 14 other children before her. Ages 0-9 years: growing up in El Salvador, a country with low literacy amongst those of my social class, and in a single-parent family where no-one has ever finished high school even. Age 6: I “decide” to become a doctor like the “cool” guy my mum works for as a cleaner/nurse. Ages 6-22: still stubborn about wanting to be like that cool guy. Age 23: finally start medical school. Ages 23-24: study, study, study. And then 2006 came along…

Things got tough for me in 2006 and my second so-called “depressive” episode happened. I lost the joy in everything, study was a hassle, I became morbidly preoccupied with my own mortality, a great solitude and loneliness came over me, and I wanted nothing because simply wanting anything required effort. The social withdrawal and pathological shyness again set inside me. Then I got into a situation where a false accusation was made against me. I was feeling pressure from my religious peers and my internalized God concept. In essence, I felt deficient. I felt lacking. And I felt dead inside – and then the feeling to externalize what I felt inside came over me. I lacked the motivation, the energy and willpower to do even that. Fearing my own internal monsters, I chose instead to go again in search of Vanessa.

Once I left everything, I felt both a great freedom and a complete hatred and fear of that freedom. There were no friends, no company on my journey, I had some advice but which felt more like orders. I had no allies – and I didn’t want anything or anyone even if there had been such people there. At first the numbness overwhelmed me and I was as a ghost walking around (which I recognized because this was not the first time in my life I have had these “episodes”). Gradually, over the next few weeks, reality and the mundane started to creep in. I needed to eat, pay bills, move, reply to the questions that were being asked of me. I started then to formulate my own questions. Who is Vanessa? And yet, not so much who is she but who does she want to be? Why does she want to be that? Does she really want to be that? What does being that entail, the practicality of it? And what of everything else? What is important? Who is important? Who, if anyone, is my friend? And what do I do with these things I love but won’t make me any income? And what should I do about these things that keep pestering me, these things others call conscience? You’ll often hear me diss and complain about the ‘white man’s stupid concept of “finding themselves”’, but you could say that that is what I set out to do.

Specifically I had some questions to answer and that was my quest in this time without commitment to study to answer. Formulating the questions was the easy part. Even finding the answers while on the quest wasn’t that hard. Finding what you’re looking for is easier when you know what it is you’re looking for. The hardest part was making the decision to take a break from my study, my big commitment at that time, to go on my quest. I risked a lot. I risked losing my friends, my family’s belief in me, jeopardising potentially years and years of prior education (and money), and losing my credibility. But I made the choice and I then had to go exploring my questions, myself, trying out different scenarios and risk finding out that my whole life had been a sham. But sometimes not knowing is as deleterious as finding out an unpleasant truth.

The second part of my task, after walking away from it all, was easy: I had the question that needed to be answered. Did I really want to do medicine as a career or was it a childhood dream of mine that I expressed and no-one ever had the courage to shut me down about it despite all the odds being stacked against me? I was a poor kid in a third world country where tertiary education costs more than entire families need to survive. It was a nice fantasy that they let me believe for a long time – until fate and relocation made my dream a possibility. But I was always a stubborn person, did I want to go into medicine purely as a whim? To prove people wrong and that I could do it? They were questions, and I answered them fairly quickly, actually. I think that giving yourself the space to not feel judged is very empowering. People may still be judging you, and I remember a lot of “friends” and even family members discounting me as a drop-out, as someone with no stamina, as a loser. But me, I gave myself the space I needed, I didn’t need anyone’s permission to explore my own life and motivations.

Like I said, the process of answering my questions took a remarkably quick time after I let go of the restraints I allowed to be placed on me by society, by other people’s expectations, by my own pride, and by my pessimism and distorted view of ‘reality’. And in the process, I learnt not only who I in fact was, but also to no longer despise myself for not being what was ‘expected’ of me. The answer to my questions were:  yes, medicine is what I, Vanessa, want to work in; and this will be a job like any other. I came to this conclusion by considering the things I enjoy (writing, visual arts, and film and theatre) and the things that I could bear to do for income. I could not bear to do anything other than medicine as income, and I’d perhaps do it even without income if something else where somehow feeding me. At the same time I was able to explore many aspects of the medical profession, and I had no grand illusions about it like a lot of people do, illusions of ‘saving’ people or of ‘making a difference’. I came to understand a lot of the industrial and organisational psychology of the business. And I became comfortable with what I learnt.

The rest came easy. The friends elected themselves by being the only ones standing when everyone else had gone. I bit the bullet and made a religious commitment. I got a “money” job because I was already planning for my future and my dream to see the wild condors in the Andes in South America. I in fact spent the remaining months of that year killing time by working and entertaining myself until my return to uni and getting on with my task of achieving the next task on the journey. So guess what I do now for work? Medicine. And guess what I do for passion? Write. And I can now unashamedly say that my name is Vanessa and I know exactly who Vanessa is.

Condor! Colca Canyon - Arequipa, Peru

On animals and food - Part 2

Since I was a child I always found it intriguing how human beings are just animals like the are thousands of other species, but there’s just some things about us that sets us apart. And you know what I focused on as kid on how humans differ from other creatures? Food.

As animals, we can’t photosynthesise so we consume other eukaryotic matter to obtain our nutrients. Every animal, even fungus, does it. Some animals eat grass and vegetation, some eat other animals, some eat both animals and vegetation and anything else they can extract nutrients from. We are, however, perhaps the only species that has self-determination regarding the foods we eat. A person may choose to eat only plant matter to the exclusion of everything else, for example, or plant and animal matter, or even only animal matter, or any other variation in between. As a species we are regarded as omnivores but as individuals we may choose to have diets that are vegan, vegetarian, pescerian, etc.  And what further sets us apart as a species is how we can then interrelate our choice of foods and the act of eating with spirituality.

Not everyone, but a large number of people, have formed a relationship between food and spirituality, ethics, morality, and all these words that are of relevance only to humans. Personally, as part of my religious belief-system, I have few limitations on what I can or should eat. Those I don’t eat are those that if I ate would kill me, those that I find unappetising, and those my religious-belief system prohibits. My particular belief system does not prohibit me from eating animals and has only basic clauses on to how an animal has to be prepared for human consumption. In addition to that, I do also have personal beliefs on the ‘humane’ treatment of animals for science, food, and other industries. They are personal views and unrelated to my religious beliefs.

From an early age I was taught to say a prayer before meals. As a kid I dismissed this together with a lot of “social norms” that served no real purpose but looked ‘nice’ to others. I later found out that some religious belief systems have gone further and have made food preparation and consumption a religious rite in itself. I found this fascinating! Eating was not considered just meeting a basic human need like breathing or obtaining nutrients, but instead an act of religious worship. Some religions, for example, will deem a product only suitable for consumption without violating religious law if it has been prepared a certain way (think, for example, halal and kosher foods). Later when I decided to embrace a religious system of thought and incorporated prayer into my life, I understood the desire to turn every human act a direct act of worship to God.

I found the idea of making food preparation an act of worship very fascinating, but ironically I also found it a little distancing from its purpose. The thing is often adherents to religions that follow religious customs on food preparation also aren’t the same ones that say prayer prior to their meals. What does that matter, right? Well, if you don’t believe in practicing this it makes no difference who (if anyone) says the prayer or who enacts the act of worship; it can be whomever, or it can be no-one. It mattered to me because I, like many other people, who had come to interrelate food with spirituality felt it was in fact delegating my personal worship to God to someone else. I finally understood what my mum was getting at: the prayer was meant to acknowledge my gratitude to God for providing (or not denying me) that which so many other human beings lack. It was a way also to acknowledge that another living creature was being sacrificed for my benefit and its life did not leave in vain or unappreciated. That I do consider my personal duty: that if I care about something, then I must personally support it.

There are two stories Paulo Coelho tells that I find very thought-provoking. The first is about a monk or some other spiritual leader talking to his pupil. The pupil wants to know what food he can eat so as to bring him closer to God, as he is already doing everything else that in his religious system is required to gain God’s approval. His teacher tells him to eat of some grass. The student goes enthusiastically to pick it – then he realises it is a poisonous grass! He is shocked that the teacher has indicated this deadly shrub to him and asks if he realises that if he eats it he will die. The teacher says to him ‘I know of no other way through which eating something will bring you closer to God’. The second story is about a similar man who accuses someone else of being lacking spiritually because he eats a certain food. The man considers that this food is unholy, that it tarnishes the soul, that it is an offense to God to eat it. The teacher then reprimands the student for blaspheming God, for calling one of God’s creations unholy, for assuming that God is so petty as to be offended by what a person eats or doesn’t eat. He reminds him that it is not unholy what enters the mouth, but what from it emerges.

On animals and food - Part 1

Some people say we are superior to other creatures because we are “intelligent”. The truth is this intelligence is only of value to us as humans because we possess it and we know how to use it. An elephant could equally believe he is the superior species on this planet because he has a trunk – and all the great things he can do with it! He considers every other trunkless species as inferior, lacking, because we don’t share that one thing that to him his survival is dependent on. Our “intelligence” and interaction style is dependent on the arrangement of our nervous tissue, our phenotypic appearance is genetically-determined, and our behaviour is in the broadest sense survival-driven. Now, we (all animate creates) are carbon-based constructs of eukaryotic cells incapable of photosynthesising to meet our own nutritional needs. We are amazingly adaptable and very different to other species in the way we interact with our environment, but even if we were the superior species, it does not entitle us to haphazardly proceed to abuse our environment and the creatures in it to meet our own needs.

We are truly an amazingly adaptable species. Human beings have developed ways to overcome our deficiency in obtaining and forming our own nutritional needs for survival by consuming other eukaryotic matter. We have even developed systems to make this more efficient and safe for our digestive systems. We, for example, cook our food. Simple biology classes have taught us that cooking our foods, especially those derived from other animals, has effects on the quality of food itself so as to make it suitable for the human digestive tract. Heating denatures protein, makes food stuffs generally easier to transit along the gastrointestinal tract, destroys pathogenic microbes, changes the taste of most foods, and all these other things that are limiting (and thus important) factors to our ability to live off these products. We are also incredibly adaptable on the choice of foods we can live on.

I have always had an omnivorous diet except for a few years where I was a vegetarian purely as a teenage fad. It was interesting in those few years, though, what you do learn about human beings and our need to stereotype others. I openly admit I chose to have a vegetarian diet purely as a choice, not based on my views on animals or religion or anything really.  In fact you could probably say it was almost on a whim similar to any teenager who has ever dyed their hair an “odd” colour or done anything considered outside the norm just because they could. Adolescence is a time of experimentation and trying on different identities until you find one you stick to a little more permanently. My phase was vegetarianism. What I learnt was that people do have a particular relationship to food that is not like that related to fashion or hair dyes or music preferences. People generally relate food to something more akin to spirituality. Now, of course, my choice on diet was on a whim, but it is true that a great majority of people do make their dietary choices based on these things.

I grew up with what you’ll often hear me refer to as “edible pets”. This was what I was exposed to growing up. We had pets in the form of ducks, chickens, rabbits. We raised them and fed them from young and considered them as anyone else does a pet. When they got to a particular size, my mother or grandmother (or sometimes my siblings) would kill them and prepare them as food for all of us. This we all understood as the circle of life. We cared for those animals and treated them without cruelty; in fact we would play with them and be fond of them as our pets. We did not shed tears for them when their time came, though. We had known all along what the fate of these animals were to be – and yet we did not hold back from caring them as we did. To us it seemed similar to the way people love each other, siblings, parents, children, spouses, friends, etc, and don’t hold back even though we know these people will one day sooner or later leave our lives.

Growing up, our family had at one point also a dog or two as a pet that we did not consider “edible” in our culture. We kept this animal purely for company.  And we considered it okay to keep him because we could sustain him without going out of our needs to meet his (he ate scraps, inedible leftovers, and whatever he could fend for himself). Why I mention this is because still to this day I have moments where I consider it unethical to go out of our way to provide for ‘non-edible’ animals when there are starving families in the world, when money could be diverted to help other fellow humans in need… I have those days, but I have also learnt to be a little more open-minded and understand that, particularly in western-culture, people do often equate dogs and cats and whatever other pets, to family and even to being equal to human beings. A view I understand even if I still cannot say I share it.