On my life

It’s August 2014 and it’s been too long since I've written anything here. A lot has been happening in my life. I’m happy, but a lot has happened.

Woodworking. I’m still woodworking. Still loving it. The last thing I've made is to replicate a plastic step-stool I have (because I’m short) so I can have one in my workshop and one inside the house. I've slowed down from buying tools too, but I can’t guarantee how long that will last.

Lego. I’m moving the Lego from the spare bedroom to a large display cabinet I got for my living room. I was hesitant at first to put them in a “fixed” position such a display cabinet or shelf, but now I much prefer to have them within easy view from the couch.

Work. Work is fine, but sometimes things frustrate me. On slow days I get frustrated with the fact that if I don’t see patients then I don’t get paid. On busy days I get frustrated with scheduling issues. Often I get frustrated with certain patients’ expectations of special treatment. More often I get frustrated at myself for allowing these patients’ behaviour, things other doctors or professionals from any other industry would not allow. Most days though something or someone will remind me why I do my job in the first place, and then I am satisfied.

Family. Well, not so much family as religion. I am still very dissatisfied with the way the religious group I belong to operates. My mother has to remain distant from me in order for me to protect her. And yet the threat isn't me; I am the one that loves her! The threat is posed by the religious group we belong too. I will admit that after my last blog, somebody confused a post I made on my facebook with the post I made about the things I love in life and told my mother some very vicious and hurtful lies about what I post online (she, of course, does not even use the internet to check things out herself). This resulted in my mother telling me she has never felt more ashamed of me in her life, and she is embarrassed of me because of the things I post online. Ashamed of me, of her daughter! Regretful of the fact I was born and the way I am. Yes, of me, and it’s not the first time she’s ever said that to me. And yet I love her and I know that in reality she loves me, but those words are the result of the religious group we belong too. That is sad. And there is nothing I can do to change anything. I can only love my mother, accept that she hasn't yet realised what I have (that we belong to a cult), and keep going about my life.

The last month. Gosh, I don’t feel I own this story wholly so I will try to remain respectful of other’s privacy and intimacies. In this last month I have at times felt so alone, at other times it was the closest I've ever felt to any other human being, so intrinsically-linked, so unbelievably happy, and then so terribly disappointed and angry. And yet, somehow, and definitely helped along because I know I am not alone, I remain hopeful. I feel I have this undercurrent of general positivity. I am strong because I am not alone. I feel strong because I choose to remain positive and optimistic despite some hell of an emotional roller-coaster. I feel like a soldier, but not a soldier on their own, but one that is part of an army. My army, our army, and though we may not win every battle, we are not beaten. I am so not done.

On keeping quite

I've noted myself that I haven’t being writing as much as I used to, and I think that now I know why. I was trying to convince myself that it was because of lack of ideas, but that’s not the real (or at least not the whole) truth. I have been censoring myself. I know, it’s embarrassing but that is exactly what I have been doing for at least the last year.

It’s interesting that I started this blog to put down some of my rants, to share some of my stories, and essentially to say the things that I lack verbal finesse to say adequately. It was meant to be to express myself and my personal opinions. So what happened? I've been scared. It’s true, I have been.

It started because at one point I was asked by someone to not share stories about my romantic relationships because they felt that reflected badly on them. So I held back my feelings (which I am finally realising are solely my property) and tried to eliminate even commenting that I may or may not at a particular time be in a relationship. Then I was dissatisfied with the circumstances of a couple of the last few places I've worked, and yet too scared to lose my job (and suffer financially) for saying what I really think and what I think is wrong. Later I became scared to even comment about any social or political situations that I have opinions on, for fear that my opinions may unfortunately be seen as not simply my opinion but those of “a doctor”. I was at the time reading stories about people who happened to be doctors and also bloggers who were posting opinion pieces, and who later received attention or reprimand from medical registration boards because apparently doctors can only ever be doctors and never just be everyday human beings with opinions. I was scaring myself into thinking that I just wasn't allowed to have an opinion that may not ‘reasonably be expected of a medical practitioner by the public’ or that may not ‘reasonably be shared by my peers’. Yes, I was thinking in medico-legal terms. And I was afraid to post about things that concerned or bothered me about the religious group I attended for fear of it affecting my or my family’s standing and reputation within the congregation.

So what does Vanessa discuss if she can’t talk about love, medicine, socio-political commentary, or theology? Not much. Because those are the things that affect my life the most, the things that I want to talk about. So I almost came to a complete halt of this blog. But I've been feeling very frustrated and very tired in the last year, and I've come to the conclusion that there may be a correlation between my lack of self-expression and the ongoing frustration and exhaustion in my life. So my plan this year is to allow myself to regain my passion for self-expression, and to lose some of the frustration that comes from my self-imposed censorship.

Thank you for your support.

Nothing should come between a woman and her love for... mangoes.
This picture was meant to be an analogy for writing, but mangoes will do :)

On my religion

For many many years people have been telling me that I belong to a cult. My response has always been the same: an emphatic “It’s NOT a cult!” But in the last few weeks, someone else's reasoning has really lead me to question myself if I truly do belong to a cult. Now, I had always prior to this maintained that I could not possibly belong to a cult given that so many people belong to my religion, and besides, even if my religion is not perfect, it is not as bad as others out there (e.g. it does not force me to hand over 10% of my wages to “the church” out of every paycheck; or it doesn't ask that I call another random human being in a robe “father” in direct opposition to biblical scripture, etc. etc.) This kind of reasoning may not be enough, though, after what I've been challenged to think about.

I thought I knew pretty well what a cult was but just for the sake of being well-informed, I looked it up in the dictionary: “a small religious group that is not part of a larger and more accepted religion and that has beliefs regarded by many people as extreme or dangerous”. Well, my religion is certainly not a small group, it has over 7 million members (though small perhaps in comparison to Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam). Are the beliefs of my religion extreme or dangerous, though? No, I always told myself, other religions believe and practice even crazier things!... Well, I think they do. However, if I am honest here, there are many times I have suffered due to the doctrines of my own religion. I have suffered and hurt as a result of some doctrines that I personally find it hard to fathom are truly anything more than man-derived rules rather than true Godly-inspired interpretations of the scriptures. If I am honest - and I want to be - I have to share some of these incidents. Here is a list of some of the things that have come of my religion that have hurt me personally:

• As a kid, after the first few bible meetings, I was told that there was a code on how I should dress to attend meetings. Men must dress “like men”, and women like women. That’s not based on bible principles, I believe, but on what’s tradition. That meant not wearing what I felt most comfortable in (didn't God want me to be me or feel comfortable while rendering him worship?), but wearing what is “traditional”. Tradition? That’s exactly one of the issues I had with my catholic upbringing, doing things for tradition and not because you understand them. So, ever since I have been unable to relax in any meeting or feel like myself. Is that what God’s wants? Does he want my sincere heart and sincere prayer or does he want me distracted by my discomfort while I am meant to be worshiping him in a group? Well, I comply for “tradition”, but one day it would be great to be free of such absurdity again. 

• When I was a teenager and had been attending bible meetings for a few years, I was asked by the elders of the congregation to abstain from doing some things that seemed kind of “wrong”, let’s say. And you know what these ungodly things were? Holding my mother’s hand during prayer and putting my arm around her in an embrace during hymn-time or while we read the scriptures. My whole life I have been very affectionate towards the people I love and I had come to the conclusion that love was a good thing, especially love for your family. No, I was told this was not the case, that I was setting a bad example as my behaviour towards my own mother could be perceived as homosexual… I let that clearly twisted and perverted judgement go because of a scripture that was read to me about not (deliberately) causing other people to think badly of the people in God’s service.

• The most soul-shaking thing to have happened to me within my religion came shortly after that first incident, when I committed what I was told was a very very serious violation of God’s law. I cut my hair short. I am not exaggerating, that was the extent of my “sin”. Again I was pulled up by the elders of the congregation (though I still was not a baptized member of the congregation) and told that I had done wrong. I thought it was a joke and I initially laughed. No, no, this was extremely serious, I was told. The tone changed completely in a few seconds when I was told that (not asked whether) cutting my hair was a vanity-driven act of rebelliousness. Me vain? Me rebellious? Never in my life have those been things that have motivated anything in me. In fact, my whole life is quite the opposite as I am a very shy person. And as one of the elders spoke to me about my evil sin, I must have sat there with my mouth wide open in disbelief since his wife had shorter hair than me! I didn't at the time know what the word hypocrisy even meant, but injustice I was becoming familiar with. Again, I let this slide because at the time I wasn't yet baptized and I was told that had I been, I would most likely have been ex-communicated from the church. I took comfort in this; I thought at least they’re not kicking me out so things could be worse.

• Things did get worse. When I had first become interested in learning more about what I believed to be “true Christianity” and left the catholic faith, I had asked this member of the congregation to help me learn more about the bible and its message. I regarded this girl very highly and eventually (I studied the bible with her some years) I came to think of her as my confidante and friend. What happened was that that same week that I was told that I was evil for cutting my hair short (‘like a man, and unbefitting of a female Christian’), the girl who I thought was my friend came and told me that she would no longer be helping me study the bible anymore. I felt betrayed and like I was kicked in the guts while I was down. I asked why. She said that it was because I essentially was a lost cause. Yes, the blows kept coming. I imagined Jesus was incapable to do this to anyone, even the greatest of murderers and sinners, and yet here I was being judged and told by other humans that I was too far gone. This whole incident triggered what was my first and still most severe episode of depression yet. I was about 19 and I wanted to die.

• Now, eventually after some time, an older lady from the congregation took pity on me and spoke to me again about the bible. I studied with her for some years and she taught me that God’s people may not be perfect and they don’t always get it right but that sometimes you just have to believe, accept, and try to do better. She said it’s not like “blind faith”, though to me it sure did sound a lot like it. I guess I was just very grateful to no longer be so ostracized from people I thought to be good and nice people. I tried even harder this time to things exactly as I was told and not let my own thoughts and questions get the better of me. I did as I was told and not what I truly believed. I really did hesitate for many years on whether to become a baptized member of the congregation (since I had had so little luck even as an un-committed one) but I eventually took the plunge. I convinced myself by this reasoning (which at the time I thought was great): God doesn't care what religion I belong to or whether I am a “full” member or not, he will still judge me if I refrain from doing what is good or knowingly break one of his commandments. It was a literal case of ‘you’re dammed if you do; you’re damned if you don’t’! So I did… I am ashamed now to admit that I "joined up" not because of the benefits I thought having a loving God in my life would bring me, but out of fear of not pleasing this scary God who would just me harshly and punish me by withholding grace from me. And now I wish things I dare not express.

• You’d think that as a full member of my Christian congregation, I would have felt finally like I was in the in-crowd. In fact, the opposite happened. I soon learnt that it’s not judgement by God that I must fear (after all he’s a very forgiving and understanding being), but rather that of my so-called Christian brothers and sisters. When I still attended meetings regularly and strove really hard to do all the things that a good Christian apparently should do, I had managed to make what I thought was a good friend within the congregation. I would visit this girl, hang out and do things together with her, talk all sorts of things, and I’d even spend time with her family, especially her mum who is also a member of the congregation. I thought of this girl as a friend and both she and her mum would encourage me to do more Christian things. I liked this interaction and I thought of it as really uplifting… until they tried to encourage me and instruct me in other ways too.

 I can’t even remember how our conversations started but I figured that as a 20-something year old, one day you will talk about relationships and such. However I started to receive advice I did not ask for and that was delivered not in the most tactful of manners. One particular day, my friend and I had been out on a walk by a lake and were talking about relationships. Then my friend started to say that I don’t dress like someone who is serious about looking for a relationship (well, I actually also wasn't wanting one, but that’s beside the point). I said, well, I thought with this sort of thing, shouldn't you look for someone with whom you share similar ways of thinking etc? No, she said, I needed to wear “prettier” clothes and pants that fit better and a bra that doesn't make my ‘tits look like you’re fifty’. Wow! If she wasn't my friend, she would have made a very hurtful enemy. I felt offended by her comment, and in my mind the question popped up “is this girl really my friend or does she just like driving to the city and bringing her kids to my pool?” I was uneasy the rest of the walk to her house. When we arrived at her house, as if by relay, my alleged-friend’s mother brought a bottle of perfume out to me and sprayed it. She said I should wear it to get men’s attention. She said I should wear make-up too. And wear pants to make my bum stick out so that men get aroused. Really? That’s what I thought, ‘Really? I should wear clothes to make men think about fucking me like the good little Christian we’re all pretending we are here?’ I gave a very polite thank you for all the (unwanted) advice on how to seduce a male member of my congregation. Then I drove home knowing I never could think the same of these people ever again and that I’d never so much as waste a word on them. I must say, I have been so much happier since I got rid of all my so-called Christian “friends”.

• The most recent turn of events was receiving some very nice text messages from another of my Christian “friends”. Gee, she had some very nice and uplifting words to say. She was glad I was OK, that my family was well, that I still attended bible meetings (though only every now and again), and that I was healthy. She in turn was well and she thought it was such a shame that we couldn't hang out anymore because she had moved interstate, etc. etc. It was a very pleasant back-and-forth text conversation. Then to say goodbye she told me explicitly that she had contacted me ONLY to do her Christian duty of encouraging me to go to bible meetings regularly. I said she shouldn't have bothered. I meant that. I have decided after all these years, that I have no patience and no tolerance left for hypocrisy – and that is also the reason I don’t often go to bible meetings anymore.

Back to my original thought of 'do I belong to a cult?' Well, it’s certainly not a small religious group I belong to. However, my religion’s beliefs have been extreme at times, and dangerous and hurtful to me personally too. But the final clincher of the discussion with a (non-Christian) fried on whether I belong to a cult or not came when she asked me “how easy is it to get out?” Wow, that took me aback! I know typically so-called cults are difficult to get out of – well, to put it one way, my religion isn't one that is easy to leave. Don’t get me wrong, I mean it is extremely easy to get yourself kicked out of it, all you have to do is cut your hair short or talk to someone you’re not supposed to, and you’re out. But leaving voluntarily by any other way is extremely difficult. Let me take you through a scenario; let’s all pretend it’s hypothetical too:

There’s a very nice and devoted lady who loves God and loves her family. She is in an emotionally abusive marriage to a man who is not a member of her religion. She, naturally, wants to leave him. Her religion, however, says that it is a sin to divorce her husband unless he has been unfaithful to her with someone else. In other words, emotional abuse is not a valid reason to leave a marriage; and if she were to leave for this reason, she is deemed to be sinning. As a result of her sin, she would be ex-communicated from the church. She doesn't want to be ex-communicated from her church as she believes that she would then forfeit out of benefiting from eternal afterlife in a paradise. Losing this would shatter her life and crush her. She really does not want to lose this. So she stays in her emotionally-abusive marriage suffering every day. She’s trapped!

Now, this lady has five adult children. One of her children is a member of the same church as her mother, but the other four aren't. The lady loves all her children and treats them all with love and kindness, which comes naturally to her. Now, the child who is a member of her church also, her daughter, really wants to have a child of her own. The problem is that the daughter doesn't have and doesn't want a husband to have her child with, as their church mandates. The church says that if the daughter has a child on her own, she will be deemed to have sinned and subsequently will be ex-communicated from the church. The daughter doesn't really care about this. The daughter is at peace with and wants God’s approval only, not those of imperfect men who are elders of the church and at times act as if they were God to pass judgement as if they truly understood the mind and heart of God.  However, the mother doesn't want her daughter to be ex-communicated. You’d think why would she care? Because if this lady’s daughter is ex-communicated, the church will either 1) ex-communicate her also and call her an accomplice to the daughter (you know, for that sin of wanting to have a child), or 2) forbid the mother for life from interacting with her daughter (or that child she may one day have). The daughter does not want to “lose” her mother, she does not want to lose the great relationship they have and that beautiful warm feeling of being loved by a mother. She is petrified to lose this. And she is so regretful to have joined a church that dictates to her mother that if she were to leave, the daughter does not become again like the lady's other 4 children who never were members of the church - but that demands she treat specifically as the worst of the worst sinners. No one wants to be thought of that way to her own mother. The daughter is trapped!

And here I realise I've just described two people trapped in this religion of mine. It’s not small. It has been very hurtful to me. And it has people trapped inside it, trapped by fear of ‘missing out’ or invoking punishment from God. Maybe I do belong to a cult. Maybe God does not approve of this wholly. Maybe God wishes it was better. Maybe what God actually wants is for people to be happy and knows this oppressive religious doctrine is not the way to go about it.

On what I (still) believe

I have been missing a lot more of my religious meetings than not and people have asking me whether I still "believe". Yes, the people who ask me are usually members of my congregation; and, yes, I do suspect they ask me only to know whether I'm still an 'acceptable' person for them to talk to and not an evil ex-member. I'm still classified as a member, albeit what in my religion is called an "inactive" member, for reasons I won't go into just now. But do I still "believe"? Well, yes, I believe many things...

I am a person learned in science, medicine, and theology. I love all of these as subject matter immensely and I'm a nerd who finds these subjects of study very interesting. Yes, I still consider myself a Christian as much as I am a scientist and a doctor. There are beliefs I choose to have; things I choose believe based on what I've read, studied, seen, and some just based on hunches. That's how I practice medicine and that's how I act in the rest of my life too. Well, of course, the practice of medicine is and has to be less based on hunches and more on reproducible evidence that has a higher standard of proof than religious beliefs do, but both are a combination of both hunches and "evidence". Fortunately, however, I am never asked if my belief in science has lapsed because as we all know and expect, scientific knowledge is meant to grow, change, and new knowledge must replace old one. My religious beliefs can only grow within a confine before it's considered irreligious by some, though. But what do I (still) believe?

I believe that God has given us an intelligent mind with the ability not only to accept, but also to ask questions and learn. I believe curiosity is a great learning tool, and learning is a gift. I believe learning only grows us as respectable human beings. I believe we all have a conscience and an inbuilt system to determine whether new knowledge is good or bad for us; whether or when to apply it. I believe knowledge enlightens us.

I believe that in a bad situation I can pray to God to ask for his help. And I don't know how God does it, but I will pray for it anyway.

I believe that in good or stable situations, I will pray to God to express my gratitude for allowing me either to experience that or for bringing it about. I don't know which one is the right way it happened, but I will pray with gratitude anyway.

I believe that God is the only one with a right to judge me and any of my actions, and not any member of my religion (regardless how "high up" they are).

I believe that God evaluates us in much more complex ways than meeting-attendance.

I believe that being a member of my religion doesn't automatically classify you as a good person, and that lack of membership doesn't necessarily mean a person is unworthy or bad.

I believe that one of the greatest aspects tarnishing my religion is the fact that former members are shunned and association with them is actively discouraged. I believe that is cruel and inhumane. Further, I believe God would frown upon this practice.

I believe that the members of my religion really do try their best. That is not to say that they are well-guided in all their beliefs, but they believe with purity that what they are doing is right - and that is why I cannot judge any of them negatively.

I believe God loves me. And I believe God is not offended or even blinks an eye at the fact of my believing what I believe. I believe he sees my intentions and my background and knows why and how I am who I am and forgives me for what I err in.

I believe God does not expect from us anymore than a particular individual can give.

And my overwhelming belief is that God's intention/purpose is summarized in this: "love your neighbour as you love yourself". I believe God (or the concept of God) does not exist to cause division, to instigate guilt and prosecution, or to punish or reward us for our behaviour and thoughts, but rather only to promote that each human being treat each other with respect and as our equals.

On being religious

You know, I’ve always described myself not only a spiritual person, but also a religious person. Which is not to say that I am a divisive person of the view that ‘my religion is right and all others are wrong’ but a person who thinks that religion and theology are fascinating topics of intellectual consideration! But it is hard being religious. It is hard for so many reasons and on so many levels.

You know what I consider the single greatest detriment to the standing of religion in our world? Humans; other members of our religions. I don’t believe it is extremism or the varying beliefs, not the names of our Gods, not our values, but our fellow worshippers. Those other things may turn off a great many people off religion, but it is our co-worshippers who turn off those of us who are already believers. People often ask me if I am Christian because my mother is and she’s forced it on me or because my culture almost demands it. And my answer is I am Christian despite my mother and despite my culture and despite a lot of other Christians I have known.

It is incredibly difficult to remain a Christian, or a member of any other religion for that matter, without feeling an element of shame in admitting that part of our identity because of the negative connotations of some religious people’s acts. We live in a very well-informed society, in a very scientifically-advanced society, in a society where knowledge on almost everything is easily accessible to everyone. The “sins” of our religious co-worshippers and of our leaders are exposed and become common knowledge – and yet how do we maintain dignity in acknowledging association with such people, with certain practices, with unusual or seemingly illogical beliefs? In my case it isn’t “blind faith” or ignorance but rather a choice.

And what makes it particularly hard for me to call myself a Christian? The judging attitudes of my co-worshippers. For some reason a lot of members of organized religion consider that they become holier the more they judge others, like digging up and speaking of others’ faults somehow bleaches their own soul of sin. I don’t remember reading about that in the bible! I do remember reading all those verses about judgement belonging only to God, that our duty was only to love our fellow humans and not to pass judgement on them, and about the hypocrisy of any imperfect human judging others since we are all sinners. It always strengthened my faith to know that God is a loving God, that he knows our deep intentions, and that he knows we are imperfect and does not ask of us any more than we are able to give. Yes, God has great qualities – but, oh boy, our fellow worshippers are a lot harsher! They often judge those outside of our belief system and those within our religion with a wrath that is all so ungodly! In fact I believe it is so ungodly that it is evil.

I remember one of the first accounts in the Bible being about Adam, Eve, and the serpent. The serpent’s deal was that he thought, ‘hey, how come this God dude gets to be boss? Why can’t I be boss? Why should only he get the worship from these humans and angels and such?’ He wanted to be God. And you know what our religious co-worshippers are really good at? Trying to do the same thing: to rob God of his unique role of being the rightful judge of human behaviour since he is the only one who knows our deepest inner thoughts and intentions.

I made the choice some time ago to answer only to God. I made the choice to consider all humans, and not just those that call themselves Christians or belong to my particular denomination, as my equals. I made the choice to place my trust in only one God and accept that those who claim to represent him here on Earth are still only my equals and are not interchangeable with God.

On levels of evidence

A patient asked me the other day if I thought she was a crazy person for telling me she was going to disregard my advice on managing her high cholesterol and high blood pressure and go have a chat to her naturopath instead. I said no, that doesn’t offend me at all. Actually, it has nothing to do with me. I had explained to her the risks of untreated hypertension and hyperlipidemia and about how medications can help those, etc. etc. I had disclosed sufficient information for her to make an informed decision on her own health. She has a right to refuse treatment just as I had a duty to provide that information to her as her treating doctor. Medico-legally, I was in a defensible/safe area. Aside from that, though, did I think she was crazy for refusing well-advised medical opinion? Well, no. And this is what I told her.

You know, I believe in God. I believe in the Judeo-Christian version of God and in creationism. I’m comfortable in believing these stories that if you applied the scientific level of “proof” are actually quite laughable. So how do I get around holding such preposterous beliefs and still having some sort of pride in calling myself both a Christian and a scientist? I don’t apply the same level of proof or set of rules to all my beliefs. And yet, why do I believe the Christian and not the Islamic or Mosaic or Taoist or any other version of life philosophy? A whole heap of reasons! Probably because the country I grew up in had 99% of its population listed as catholic. Probably because my family is Christian. Probably because Christianity was all around me and the stories were told to me since I was very young. I was told from very early on also that the people who lived in my house were my siblings, my mum, etc. and I believed it. Even now I do not see the need to demand DNA-evidence to “prove” the story that these people are related to me. Similarly, I was told stories about God and Jesus and prophets, etc., and I am happy still to believe them. But what has all this got to do with my initial story about the lady who wanted to see the naturopath?

I’ve been trained in Western Medicine. I have a system in my mind with which I approach illness and human functioning. Briefly, I studied anatomy and physiology and pathophysiology so I believe 1) The body has these organ systems working together to make the body function in the environment, 2) The body is trying to stay “alive” and function properly as it’s default, 3) When the body is failing at functioning, it is because of an illness, 5) Illness is brought about by microscopic processes, be it errors in naturally-occurring processes or external microscopic organisms bringing about this change. That’s it. That’s essentially the Western Medicine model of disease. When we approach illness, we are trying to restore the body’s function to its default. We give medications or we perform surgery to try to restore this balance somehow. We may also advise modifications in diet, physical activities, exposure to the external environment, etc. The “treatments” we recommend are based on scientific evidence that they have some effect on illness.

I am comfortable with the model of medicine I have been trained in. I am comfortable with the level of scientific evidence it demands. Because I’m both comfortable in this system and believe in the scientific method and the stringency demanded of the “treatments” in Western Medicine, I find it hard to accept other models of medicine. Is that a bad thing? That is akin to asking ‘Is it bad that I’m a Christian and not a Jew?’ No; it isn’t a bad thing. It’s what I’m comfortable with, what I know and understand, and the alternative is unknown to me. Alternative models of medicine are to me as foreign as Zoroastrianism. Because these things are largely unknown to me, I lack knowledge and exposure to them, and –importantly– I lack belief in them, it’s better that I stick to the kind of medicine and the kind of religion I know and believe.

Now, back to the point of scientific evidence. The model of medicine I practice in, Western Medicine, what I simply call medicine, has a few postulates that to me are important. For example, it demands that the positive effect of treatments be reproducible, that side-effects are minimal and predictable, that treatment is better than no treatment (and by a significant margin), and that the treatment has been tested many times over for safety. The treatments supported by other models of medicine may lack some of these stringent criteria in favour for other priorities (e.g. that it is derived from ‘natural’ products, etc.). As I said, to me (and for the majority of my patients), the level of scientific evidence that Western Medicine demands is all-important. But if others are happy with an alternative model of medicine and alternative levels of evidence that they demand of their treatment, then I can only respect that in the same way I see it as my duty to respect other people’s religious, cultural, and other beliefs.

For example, I have patients who tell me, against widely-accepted scientific evidence, that they don’t believe that smoking is bad because their relative smoked until the age of 100 and died of causes unrelated to smoking. This person requires a study of only one person who is significant to them to make their conclusions. Or they may tell me that their friend down the road told them that sunscreen causes skin cancer, and that is why they refuse to wear it. This person, again, requires only anecdotal “evidence”. Or they may tell me that blood-pressure-lowering or cholesterol-lowering drugs cause more harm than good, but the arsenic-containing but “natural” compound sold by their naturopath is the best thing for it. This person believes that a product being “natural” means it’s automatically safer and more beneficial than one that has been rigorously scientifically tested. What can I say to these people? Well, usually nothing that will change their minds if they don’t believe in the model of medicine I have been instructed in. But what I usually do is explain to them in Western Medicine and scientific terms why I believe the treatment Western Medicine suggests is appropriate, what the risks are of not treating it this way, and then ask them what else they wish to know about this particular treatment. After that, it’s up to the individual patient to make their own choices. And no, I don’t think of them as crazy for ignoring my advice :)

On my religious and spiritual journey - Part 3/3

When I started re-evaluating my concept of God and what his will was, I went back to basics. I remembered a scripture in the bible of when Jesus was explaining the purpose of what Mosaic law meant. The law given to Moses had hundreds of commandments of what the Jews had to do and not to and when, etc. The purpose of it all was to ensure that the Jews worshipped God in a certain manner and also that they be protected from harm. Then Jesus implied that after his death, Mosaic law was to be abolished and he said that the whole of God's will can be summarized in only two commandments (not the hundreds given to Moses): 1) Love only God as god, and 2) Love each other as God loves you. That was it.

I concluded that God's will had nothing to do with guilt, and guilt was not a virtue to God! Sure, the bible still has those commandments about how to practice his worship and no idolatry, no fornication, etc, but also it tells me that God does not ask of me any more than I can give and that He will be the only one to judge my sins, errors, behaviors etc. I am not God; I have no place trying to judge other's sins or punishing myself for my own. God who knows what is in my heart, my intentions, why I do the things I do, why I desire the things I do, I believe is the only person fit to pass judgement on me. And that is my "new" thinking. That is how I came to stop feeling depressed about having to make religious sacrifice and how I overcame my guilt for just being human. If I had to do it all over again, I don't think I'd pick a different faith, I'd hope I just merely came to this conclusion faster.

So what is my philosophy? As I’ve discussed previously, my personal values are my family, participating in and enjoying life while I am alive, and not making a world a worse place for anyone or anything. I believe in God, but I also believe in humanity. I believe human's greatest quality is our ability to think and reason for ourselves. I sometimes meet with a religious group whose ideology I mostly share and I call myself a Christian because I do believe in the Bible being a holy book and I aim to follow the guidance provided in it by Jesus Christ. I worship God because I am grateful to him for all I believe he has been responsible in my life. I follow the things the Bible says because I believe it is wise and its mandates are for my overall good. I’m not scared of God that he will punish me in any way because the God I believe in is understanding, merciful, forgiving, and not vengeful. I believe he is far too grand to be offended or hurt by the actions, words, or thoughts of one little person as I am. I understand also that my belief in God may be mythical, as real as he feels to me. So I hold nothing back from this life that I may experience it in an afterlife that I am not 100% guaranteed will actually happen. Once upon a time perhaps my faith was stronger, but for now this is the God and the rules and the values I believe in. This is the type of God I respect, and the type of God I want to emulate.

I love God. My God. I love the type of God that lets me love him and not at the exclusion of also loving myself.

On my religious and spiritual journey - Part 2/3

If it weren't because of the lack of contact with other believers and an ever deeper instruction in them, I would have joined a Jewish or Buddhist religious organization. I did wish that Judaism had reached out to me further rather than feeling that it was not a religion that encouraged new members from other cultures/ethnic group. So I delved further into going with what was around me, which was for a long time was only Catholicism. I asked a lot of questions and mostly I was shut down because, I was told, some things I just had to accept and believe rather than understand.

Only one religious group welcomed my questions and actively sought to reason with me using a holy book (the bible), "logical" deduction methodology, and my own knowledge of the world and science, etc. This group's philosophy and people welcomed me and I welcomed all their doctrines into my life too. The fact that I welcomed it too shaped the next few years of my life. Many of these group's ideals had been my pre-existing ideals also so that certainly helped to adopt this new religion. It interpreted the bible's New and Old Testaments largely literally - and it even tried to show with historical and scientific correlation how this text / prophecy was a true document that should inspire my belief and obedience. And I still to this day believe it is so, either in spite of or because of my academic background in science.

I came to believe that the bible was a document worthy of my respect and belief, and I believed then that I must do the things it says that I do and don't do in this life. Obeying bible advice was at times instinctive, but often contradictory to what I wanted and desired. No other aspect I think was more pronounced for me than its concept of "fornication" or sex outside of a traditional marriage. That was certainly not instinctive! Yet for very many years I bared my stake/cross and sacrificed my desire for sexual intimacy for the sake of not displeasing the God I had learnt about in the bible. I still don't feel that this sacrifice was in vain or bear resentment of it, but rather I am still proud (and amazed) that I was capable of such dedication, commitment, and self-control for all those many years.

If you asked my why I joined the religion I did (and I'm not talking about Catholicism, which I inherited and never chose), I would say it was because it was the one that to me seemed to have a concept of God and practice that I thought would most resemble a God that I could respect. This God (and this religion) encouraged my questions and helped me find the answers in a book believed to be inspired by God. He was also a God that had many good qualities, that encouraged new followers, and that gave commandments that were meant to benefit me and not merely fill me with guilt. I liked this God, and I liked what he stood for.

Over time I found myself becoming more and more unhappy, depressed, feeling guilty all the time. This was because I was finding it increasingly harder to do what God asked of me and it was really weighing me down. The more I tried to be a good Christian, the more it hurt. I became depressed. There were many reasons that culminated in my depression, but my spiritual beliefs should have been my saviour not the lead weighing me down further. Then I finally put the pieces together to my inescapable depression: one of the main characteristics of depression is undue guilt; and yet one of the tenets/virtues of Christianity is to feel guilt!

In Christianity it is believed that Adam and Eve were guilty of the the original sin (disobedience) and from them all human beings have inherited both the tendency to sin and guilt for this sin of theirs. Do you know how hard it is to overcome depression when you continue to feel guilty? I can see the futility of my thinking now, but for a long time I had no idea why so many of my other co-worshippers were suffering depression too. Guilt will eat you alive! Now, I'm certainly not saying that all cases of depression are due to undue religious guilt, but taking to this concept of Christianity as passionately as I once did does push you further down into a black hole. Luckily, I did not stop learning or thirsting for more knowledge and wisdom once I had become a full member of my new religion.

On my religious and spiritual journey - Part 1/3

I was baptized as a baby into the Catholic Church. This was not my mum's idea and nor did it actually signify anything as to what my life would be as it was purely done out of cultural and family tradition. Growing up my mum taught my siblings and I to be respectful of others, not hurt them physically or verbally, to be respectful of the law, and basically to treat all human beings as equal and as we wanted to be treated in return. She also taught us about this spiritual being called God that we could never see or hear but that we could talk to in prayer to ask for help and guidance in our lives. She taught us about this book called the bible that had all these stories about God and things he had done for other people who were "good" and others who were "bad". As a result of that I concluded that I wanted to be "good" to please this God being and have his blessing and not upset him and have his punishment in the future, which mostly meant after I was dead. She didn't teach us religious rituals or ritualistic prayers like those practiced in the Catholic Church as she herself did not believe they served any purpose.

When I was seven or eight it was decided that it would be nice for me to get to wear a pretty dress, like other girls in our town did, and partake in Catholic communion. Like my baptism as a baby, it was more about tradition than any religious or spiritual symbolism. A few kids and I met for a few weeks with a very nice and respectable member of the church to learn from an illustrated book about Catholic rituals and a bit more about the stories in the bible about angels, Jesus, his mother Mary, and also about how the communion ceremony would proceed in a few weeks. We rehearsed the ceremony and learnt some Catholic prayers and hymns. My mum had a really pretty white dress prepared for me. I still remember some of the songs we sung and the part of the communion ceremony where I forgot everything we had rehearsed for it, specially of what I was supposed to say to the priest the first time I took the Eucharist and he said something about the "body of Christ". I was completely blank standing in front of him and wondering what I was supposed to say back to him so that he would give me that sticky wafer. I remember he kept asking me over and over again, changing the intonation of his voice to a slightly more angry one, and I couldn't think of anything to say back to him. At one point he inflected his voice to sound like it was a question "body of Christ?" and I thought I had finally figured out the answer. "Yes", I said. No, he repeated it again and then asked if I didn't know how to answer properly. I said, "Yes, please". Finally a child standing behind me in line said to me "you have to say Amen". Finally I said it and the priest gave me the Eucharist, but before I walked away he asked who my communion teacher had been. I can laugh at it now but for years I felt guilty that I had gotten Cesar, my teacher, into trouble by forgetting the word "Amen". (Guilt, mea culpa, and penance were some of the catholic "traditions" of christianity that Cesar had also taught me.) At the end of it all, everyone commented on how pretty I looked in my communion dress, and that to myself and my family is all Catholic communion meant: a chance to wear a pretty dress in front of a lot of people. My baptism had been my grandmother's idea (my mother thought it was a waste of time because I was a baby and I would have had no idea about Christianity), and my communion was town tradition mixed in with vanity.

I completed my Catholic "confirmation" when I was about 10 years old or so. This time it was one my aunt's idea for whatever reason that one my brothers, her son, and I all partake in this ceremony. Again, I had to go to catholic Sunday school for a few weeks. We learnt from another illustrated book about angels, catholic rituals, and Jesus. The book was very colorful and I liked the drawings in it. We also had to go to confession where you'd tell the priest bad stuff you've done and, as if he was some sort of authority, he told you that God would forgive you if you repeated some ritualized prayers so many times. I hated going to it as I had to think for ages on what I could possibly have to feel guilty about at 10 or 11 years old so I could feed to the priest at confession. After some weeks, the communion ceremony was held and we got given little certificates, a little badge with a dove on it, and we took heaps of photos in our nice clothes. Our school principal was at the ceremony and participated in it, which I didn't like because he was very mean to everyone at school and often hit the boys' hands (and once mine also) with a wooden ruler for misbehaving. I thought he was a hypocrite and not a good person, even though he was apparently a good Christian. I knew, though, even at an early age, based on what mum and not any of my Catholic teachers had taught me, that it was not my place to judge him.

After arriving in Australia, I attended a catholic primary school (with the principal I spoke about) and then a catholic high school. High school for me was such a massive change from what I had been in primary school. I finally got over my shyness and I started to form my own ideas about life, etc. As any other teenage kid, I started challenging my superiors and rebelling just for the sake of rebelling. At school I wanted to challenge my religion teacher's doctrine, and at home I wanted to challenge mum's. My mum had started to become involved with a Christian group that went very much against idolatry and religious rituals. I began to wear a crucifix I was given at school as a necklace to irritate her. At school, I would question my religion teacher about some of the scriptures I'd overhead mum learning about at her home bible study and other things I had learn at Catholic Church too. I asked my teacher about worshipping a cross or a manmade icon when God had strictly forbidden such behaviour to the Israelites in what is commonly called "the Ten Commandments", or why I had to call the priest "Father" when Jesus had insisted that not even he (allegedly God's son) be called this let alone any other human being, or why had to talk to the priest to ask for forgiveness and not directly to God if God allegedly loved me and was all-powerful and so should be able to hear my prayer directly, etc. etc. I admit most of the time I was just trying to stir people, my religion teachers or my mum and her friends from her new Christian group, but underneath it all, I guess I was also curious about religion and spirituality. Gradually I started to become more and more interested in theology.

By the time I was 17 I was very much into reading about different religions and theological belief systems. I found Christianity particularly fascinating in that so many hundreds of denominations exist with slightly (or very) different focuses, practices or rituals, and interpretations of what is essentially the same story in one book. The common origin of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity seemed so enthralling to me. The more human-oriented philosophy of Buddhism and Eastern traditions inspired me to wonder more about what is "humanity" in humans. And the polytheist religions both inspired disbelief (because it was so foreign to all I'd ever learnt with only one God) and curiosity as to how models of religion and spirituality are constructed by the minds of human beings. By the end of my schooling and soon after starting university, I was sure I'd one day I'd either join Judaism or Buddhism. I was a lot more preoccupied with religion in my teenage years than in what other teenagers were interested in; yet not completely. Sex interested me. It interested me in the normal way, and it interested me in the way it was so closely related to spirituality in most religions.

On religion and mental illness

Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, told us that religion “is the opium of the people”. He meant not that it makes you believe things that aren’t real and see things that aren’t there, but that it has the soothing and calming effects opium has on the human mind in amongst the turbulence of what goes on in the real world. So then the question becomes, what is real? Is God real? Actually, it’s not what I intend on discussing here, but rather an anecdotal relationship I have noted between those with mental illness and their religious beliefs.

I may have discussed it earlier, but there was the story that was told to me by a neuroscience professor: There was once a very devout Christian religious minister who developed a brain tumour. The tumour affected this man’s thinking capacity, his cognitive function, and interestingly it made him unable to understand or believe in a non-physical, abstract, concept such as God. He lost his faith not because he was disappointed in God, but because the part of his brain related to religious faith was damaged! My professor took this as hard evidence that God and religious faith is nothing more than a human cognitive construct and in fact there is no God out there in wherever a person believes he is. Now, that is a pretty good deduction, but perhaps a bit premature. For example, if the antenna broke on my TV and I could no longer receive the signals that transmit my favourite shows, would I be right in concluding that in fact the television channels never existed in the first place or even that they have stopped transmitting the moment my antenna broke?

The opposite to the scenario proposed by my university professor could also happen. Some people with epilepsy and even those with migraines can experience an “aura” before an attack. The aura is different for everyone and some will suddenly experience a particular taste on their tongue, a music in their ears, a vision in their sight, a smell in their nose, etc. – yet these sensations are all originating from brain activity, not the organs they appear to be coming from. There are the rare people who experience very complex auras, things like seeing a halo-like figure of a person who resembles how a religious figure is depicted in art, or who hear a voice like that of a relative who is now dead. Of course, in the medical world we may call them auras or a sign of temporal lobe epilepsy or aberrant brain activity, but then other people may call them religious experiences. I won’t even try to conclude anything from that for anyone, but it is an interesting thought.

A quote often attributed to Robert M. Pirsig, a writer and philosopher, is “When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion”. As a medical student doing a post in a psychiatric ward, I first started to notice how a large number of patients’ delusions revolved around God and other religious concepts. As an example, a person might believe that electricity is controlled by the devil and every time you plug in an appliance to a powerpoint then that lets the devil into your house. Or she may be obsessed with keeping her clothes clean all the time and protects them from being invaded by others and germs and other such things because she has read some scripture in the bible about guarding your heart and wearing the armour (of faith) and has taken her armour to be her clothes and she guards it by standing in the same spot for hours on end watching out that no one or nothing gets to it. Others have believed they are carrying the devil’s child in their pregnant bellies as foretold by some scripture they have read/misread somewhere. Or that the people putting thoughts in their heads are either angels or demons or God himself and that they must heed their ministry of whatever they’re been instructed to do… These people, however, have ended up in mental hospitals because what they’ve done or attempted to do has posed a threat of physical damage to themselves or others. Generally that is why they’re considered “crazy” and not just a founder (or follower) of a religion with those beliefs.

Now, I will very openly admit to being a Christian; one who believes things about God and other divine creatures that neither I or anyone anywhere on Earth currently has ever seen with human eyes. Yet I also remain curious about the relationship between religious belief and mental illness, especially when it comes to psychosis. Consider a person who has never had any religious inclination at all; perhaps someone the opposite of the religious minister of my neuroscience professor’s story. Suddenly, and I mean within a space of a few days, this person starts to believe that he can speak in a language new to him but that isn’t a language of this world or of a fictional book or film and can be understood by no one of this world. To all human ears he appears to just be making sounds with his mouth. Along with this “speaking in tongues”, he believes that God is giving him dreams that have special meaning about the past, present, and future. He also believes that he has been chosen by God and can exert God’s will of healing by merely touching the infirm of body and/or spirit. Unfortunately, due to his unique position before God, he believes that the devil (God’s enemy) is trying to hurt him. To minimize the hurt from the devil, he may engage in ritualistic behaviours such as rocking back and forth in his chair, hitting his head against the wall, or cutting himself to let out the bad energies. His new life revolves around speaking and singing about God and his newfound faith whenever he can and to whomever is around, sometimes even when no one is around… A psychiatrist may diagnose this man with a delusional disorder. Someone else may say ‘here’s a new member of the Pentecostal church who has reached enlightenment’.

Lastly, I will leave you with a comical quote by George Carlin that I found amusing:

“Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.” 

On "the Jews"

I'm on holidays at the moment so here's just a few lines on things I've been thinking about recently.

I just finished reading a book called "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, which I at first thought was about the absolute opposite of what my core beliefs about success are: that everyone has the same innate capacity. And, yes, at first glance it appears to be saying that you can expect to be in low-skill service jobs if you're Latino, you can expect to be good at maths if you're Asian, and you'll probably be a doctor or a lawyer if you're Jewish. And if you're of African descent you'll probably want to kill and physically hurt others for minor slights. Generalizations? Stereotypes? Actually, it deals more on examining the roots of why people turn out to be the way they are based on specific things that happened to the ancestors of their culture, and that for the most part continue to imprint on their futures. An interesting note was made of New York's Jewish community.

In the last week I made my mum visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York with me. Now, she's a very humble woman with a primary school education who can barely pick out the location of countries on a map of the world (e.g. not long ago she was surprised to find out that Spain is in Europe and not in South America like she assumed for a long time). You get my point: she's a humble woman with not a lot of knowledge of what is not essential to her survival. At the Jewish museum while we were looking at concentration camp uniforms and learning about the disgusting things that happened to so many people during WW2, mum asked me, "why did all this happen to the Jews?" I thought it was an excellent question! There's probably no single answer why that did, and there's definitely nothing in this universe to justify it.

What I find even more fascinating, though, is how a great majority of the Jewish community post-WW2 became so prosperous. They were always an oppressed and abused people. They were workers and they had to learn skills. Since thousands of years they've been working (even under slavery conditions) - they had to learn! So the theory goes that around the time of WW2 when dislike of the Jews was quite overt and common, even in the new lands they settled in they were discriminated against for many reasons. So to escape this oppressive environment, Jews after some time used the skills hey had learnt previously, textile and garment industry, for example, and started up their own operations. They hired other Jews. They taught their children the importance of work to better yourself and aiming to equalize opportunity (I maintain that this is the true value of education). The story goes that the children of garment workers went on to become lawyers and doctors and business people at the insistence of their parents - but after they became lawyers (for example) their gentile counterparts still discriminated against them. They ended up working the legal cases nobody wanted, working the medical fields nobody else considered worthy at the time (things like psychiatry and neuroscience, for example). And then, something happened: the Jews had created niches of industry for themselves - which as fate or history would have it, soon became the most sought out niches in industry.

Why did the holocaust happen? I guess there's no valid or all-exhaustive answer to that. But you know what, I believe the best thing the Jewish people ever did was 1) acknowledge their position as others viewed them, and 2) used it not as an excuse to become victims of oppression but to motivate forward action. They were people who once they left the concentration camps, they left the concentration camps. They didn't sit down and feel sorry for themselves for their dreadful pasts and suffering. They began to build instead their prosperous futures. Can't we all learn from that? Once the suffering is done with, let's stop suffering and start building a future we desire.

On what we teach about sex

A few incidents in the last few years of work have made me wonder about the different ways and the different things that parents educate their children about sex. There’s the biological stuff, which is what parents for some reason think is most confronting, but that every single generation in every single country and in fact every sexually-reproducing species since the beginning of animal existence has figured out quite easily. A parent could get away with not ever mentioning to their offspring how babies are made, where they come out of, and the logistics of what sexual intercourse entails, and they’d pick it up anyway. I mean, in most cultures before our grandparents generation such things weren’t discussed by parents with their children – and yet people still had sex and had children, etc. It’s even less of a concern in modern days where there’s television and other media, there’s schools purposely teaching this stuff, and there’s other people (e.g. peers, relatives, health professionals, etc.) who will readily discuss the biology of sex with anyone. So it’s not what we teach children about the physiology of sex that concerns me, but that other stuff we tend to forget about sometimes, the psychosocial aspects of sex in a person’s life.

To go back again to the “olden” days now. Religion used to be a big part in a greater proportion of people’s lives ‘back in the olden days’. That’s a fact, that less people these days than, say, 100 years ago had a religious affiliation, whether that be because they elected to or were expected to by state mandates. In most religions, sex has/had a spiritual connotation and there were rules and consequences described around it. If you had sex before a marriage was confirmed, with someone outside of that marriage agreement, etc. you had “sinned” and would incur a punishment for it. Now, the punishment would be either or both imposed upon you by the church (e.g. been disassociated from the congregation) or by God (e.g. you were lead to believe that God would punish you by disapproval or loss of a post-life privilege, dependant on what the religious creed was). For the non-religious (and of course still applied to the religious) in ‘the olden days’, there was this thing about reputation and social norms.  Of course, social norms and expectations (as does religion) still exist, but modern Western culture places less of an emphasis on it, and more on being your own individual. So our parents and grandparents generation placed greater emphasis on whether others thought or knew that you had been engaging in something as disreputable as having sex with someone you weren’t married to. Sex was a shameful thing. Even for those that were married, it was not a proper thing to discuss or make jokes about or depict in media or entertainment, etc. So, back in the day a parent who educated a child about the psychosocial aspects of sex (the physiology been much too embarrassing to discuss outside of biology classes or by scientists), all you had to do is tell the child not to have sex because they’d either go to hell and die or that the whole town would call them a slut and their life would be miserable.

What are we teaching our children now about sex? Everyone knows about the physiology of sex, even very young children, and parents and their children will share very explicit details about sex. What’s wrong with that? Nothing – except that sex to human beings isn’t just about the biology of it. There’s nothing wrong with having all this knowledge about sex at all! But I’m beginning to believe that we’ve taken too much comfort in only sharing the easy stuff about sex, the stuff every child will eventually figure out even if their parent never tells them about, and have left our children with the hard stuff to figure out on their own.

In my job I’ve met many teenagers having absolutely never considered some of the other consequences of sex, let alone how to deal with them. We teach our children about sex, what it entails, that there’s the possibility of pregnancy and infections, to use condoms to prevent infections, and to use contraception to avoid pregnancy. But where children are missing out on instruction is about romantic relationships, who to have sex with, why or why not to have sex, how is sex related to love, should sex bear any relationship to love at all? These are all questions that increasingly younger people are having to charge through on their own. And I’d like to share with you some examples of questions that I have witnessed some very anxious teenagers try to deal with on their own too:

• How do I tell my parents I’m pregnant? Do they need to know?
• How do I tell my ex-boyfriend that I’m pregnant? Should I tell him?
• Should I tell my parents or my ex-partner/s that I have and STD? How can I tell them?
• Why did I get an STD when I was with a person I loved?
• Should I quit school because the other students won’t stop bullying me about being pregnant in high school?
• Is it ok to be sad about having a miscarriage even though no one else knew I was pregnant?
• What do I do now that I’m pregnant and my parents don’t want me to be and I still haven’t formed a concept on how I feel about abortion?
• How do I tell my girlfriend without hurting her feelings that I think she has a problem ‘down below’ because those warts don’t look normal?
• How can I get an STD when I use a condom all the time except with my regular girlfriend and she isn’t with anyone other than me?
• Is sex always meant to be painful or is it just because I don’t actually want it when it happens?
• Is it normal not to have had sex yet at my age? Does that mean I am lacking something or am sick?

Can a parent or anything in life prepare you to answer those questions? I don’t know. But it certainly would break your heart to have first considered questions like these when they apply directly to you and the situation you find yourself in. I say, good on us for talking to our children openly about sex and the need for safe sex practices and why they’re important, but it’s now time to do the real hard work: prepare our children to think of the consequences if they do find themselves in situations where the safe sex has simply failed. Encourage the young person to think of their own opinions about abortion, about social discrimination against teen parents, about sexually transmitted infections, about the link between love, sex, and relationships, about the effect on career development and parenthood, etc. We don’t need to mandate our kids to the effect of “don’t have sex or you’ll die”, but we could encourage them to ask themselves “could I deal with any of the consequences of sex? If not, then do I need to delay sex for now?” And do this not because the child will go to hell or society will ostracize him, but because he is an independent being worthy of not suffering the negative consequences of sex.

On how relationships are like Satan

Today I want to talk about Satan. Well, on how Satan reminds me so much about relationships. It’ll come as no surprise that my spiritual teachings have been mostly from the Judaeo-Christian faith, so it’s understandable that I use this analogy. To the uninitiated, the story of Satan is like this: God (the creator of absolutely everything) made this really powerful angel, who later came to be called Satan. He gave him the best of everything and was his favourite son. God said to him that the only person above him was God himself, and so he had to obey and worship God same as the other spiritual creatures God had made. It was a pretty sweet deal for Satan to be the favourite son of God… But then this Satan dude got to thinking ‘hey, why should I have to obey?’, ‘what gives God the right to decide what is good and bad for others? that seems unfair’, and ‘why does he have to get all the worship of others? I want some worship too’, and finally ‘what will happen if someone does disobey God?’… And so he came about to answer some of his questions by some very intelligent means using the newest of God’s creations, whom God claimed were in his image and likeness: humans.

Thinking beyond what is good for you

You know when you first meet someone and become attracted to them and everything they do seems right. You love their smile, what they smile about, how they interact with you and respond to you, how they think, how they behave, how they make you feel, etc.  Awww, it’s all so sweet. And you love spending time together, sharing, enjoying adventures in the present, telling tales of the past, and planning futures together. But then something happens. Maybe it’s that too much of a good thing makes our brains want to find a fault in the reality of things. Satan, our predecessor, had it all but he started to wonder, “is there even more?” Soon he started to want these (supposedly) even better things even though he’d never had them and certainly wasn’t suffering without. I mean, why does the “honeymoon” phase of relationships have to end?

Envy

There are no two equal relationships in the world and no two equal lovers in relationships. Everyone has different backgrounds and different expectations of the future. There is looking forward with desire to the future, and there is looking sideways with desire (and maybe contempt?) to others’ present. The last of these is called envy. Sometimes in relationships, even great romances, the lovers can begin to notice other people who are in love, or even other people who have loved you or whom you loved once, and begin to feel less than these others. But why? Wasn’t the relationship great to begin with? Yes, in the same way Satan already had a pretty awesome life before he decided he’d rather be like God instead. It’s one of the most absurd things on this universe to ignore what you have for the stupidity of wanting to have what others have. What often happens is the same as when you get distracted on the road when you see something “interesting”: you crash your own car for something so insignificant. Satan lost his paradise kingdom for desiring something other than what that paradise had to offer him.

Slander

Christians believe that the first lie told was the lie told to Eve by Satan disguised as a serpent. He said to her, “your God has lied to you”. That, however, was a lie. Eve ran with that lie because we human beings are incredibly good at believing lies - it’s almost as if we crave it! The hardest thing in a relationship isn’t believing a lie, no, that’s the easiest thing; the hardest thing is trusting enough to believe the truth. Losing trust, I believe, is the only thing irreparable in any relationship.

Doubt

There are so many unknowable things in this universe, the most unknowable one to us humans are other human beings’ intentions – and yet it is what we most commonly claim to know so well! There are no proofs, confessions, eyewitness accounts, promises, or alibis that can convince an untrusting mind. Satan could have killed Adam and Eve if he wanted to, he could have attempted to overthrow God’s regime, but instead he did something more subtle that had the same effect: he created doubt. Adam and Eve had all the proof in the universe that this God dude had only good intentions and he’d only ever been good to them by giving them all this really cool stuff (the earth and animals and everything to care for), but Satan made them doubt God’s intention and his word. They didn’t have proof that God was bad, but they came to doubt his “goodness”. How often in relationships do we see conflict created not by proof of wrongdoing but of doubt? We can doubt our partner’s faithfulness, their intentions for the future, the nature of their past, the intentions of their current actions... But why? Why do we do this to ourselves?  I don’t know what the answer to that is. But oh how convinced I could become that relationships are the work of the devil!

J

On me... and turning 30

It’s funny, if you ask some people who have really gotten to know me intimately they’ll tell you that I have several different personalities. These people have at times asked me who is the “real” Vanessa. I can tell you straight out that ALL of them are. If you’d met me some years ago and asked me to list the things that to me are the most important in life I would have told you: family, love, expression, enjoyment, spirituality, and work. If you met me at another point in my life I would have answered exactly the same thing – but in a different order! That is where my “inconsistencies” lie, but actually I am just very average J

The self-hating years

The single most hurtful thing ever said to me was “you’ve had a perfect life”. Yeah, it was hurtful because it was said by someone close to me who obviously didn’t know me much at all. I don’t believe there are such things as perfect lives or perfect childhoods, everyone does the best with what they’re given. I don’t know if I am (or was?) autistic to a degree, but I never really connected with anyone as a child. And it didn’t bother me to have no friends; I was quite happy in my own inner world, my make-believe play, and reading books to learn something that interested me. At age 10 I was faced with circumstances that are actually very common in most cultures but that I would never wish upon anyone. As a result of this I lost the ability to trust, to believe, to feel safe and worthwhile. From then on I started hating more than just my own physical self, but also my future self, believing that I deserved nothing good to ever come to me in my life. It was very draining, and my inner world grew increasingly darker and I became more and more self-deprecating.

At about the age of 20, after I had finished my undergraduate degree in science, the self-loathing and self-denial of my own need to be human finally climaxed. I started psychotherapy for the first time then. What came of it? My single greatest victory was to forgive those that had hurt me and to forgive myself for being hurt. It seems so miniscule and meaningless that I can summarise it in one sentence, but the amount of healing the simple act of swapping the words “sorry” for “thank you” is hardly able to be explained. I finally stopped apologising for being Vanessa, for allowing myself as a child to be hurt, and I stopped apologising for the simple fact of being alive. Instead I started to be grateful to be alive and I allowed myself to have (and not feel guilty about having) human needs of personal fulfilment and achievement. It was a very slow process to accept myself, to disrobe myself of the self-loathing, to finally become and be comfortable in being Vanessa in all my forms.

At 24 my curiosity and interest in spiritual matters brought me to commit to Christianity after having studied several theological and philosophical systems for many years. What lead me to finally make this commitment was that I came to understand that it’s ok to not be perfect, it’s human nature, and that the ability to feel connection to God is not barred to me or anyone else regardless of their past, present, or future. That was spiritual commitment and to some extent also fulfilment. During and after this time I also gradually learnt to not hate or feel ashamed of my physical appearance, of my lack of social skills, of my naivety, and of all these things I had for which I felt I couldn’t be like “normal” people. I guess in all this I may have eventually overshot the mark  :P

The self-loving years

I was around 26 before I could bear the thought of being ok with being seeing as me, as a complete and separate person of my own. I guess by that stage I had allowed people to get to know me, all aspects of me, and to become my friends who I could trust and expect some trust and caring in return. I grew more confident in many things also. I finally was not afraid or concerned to be seen for me. I was nearly 27 before I finally allowed myself to remove my clothes off in front of another human being – someone of my choosing and with my full consent. This part was the hardest step for me, the rest was quite easy. And in fact it probably got to be a bit too easy J

My mistake was that after I learnt to love myself, I probably started to love only myself. I started to consider romantic partners as purely things to increase my own enjoyment and happiness. They say that people with histories of abuse most often become either one of two things in their future relationships: the abuser or the abused. I had decided from when I was 20 and started therapy, that I would never again be a victim of abuse. And so here I was, playing out another role. I had never had a time in my life when I didn’t feel guilty about being alive, but maybe at times it would have been good to at least feel pity for others. Needless to say, several  partners later, I still wasn’t a winner. Despite me finally being able to love myself and form sort of bonds with others, I still hadn’t learnt what it was like to love others. I mean, of course, what it was like to be in love.

The loving years

Wait, having sex and making love aren’t the same things?... No. I eventually learnt that too. June 2010, or sometime after that, I fell in love for the first time in my life! How did I know it was different? Because I found myself missing someone else, wanting someone else’s approval, feeling safe and confident to be associated with someone, feeling a part of something very special. It didn’t last long and I was a different kind of sad to what I’d previously known when it ended. But you know what bothered me most about it ending? Because after all those years it had taken me to convince myself that I was a worthy human being, the overwhelming message I was getting was that I wasn’t worthy of another being’s sacrifice to be with me. My partner wouldn’t sacrifice any of the things I would have sacrificed in a heartbeat to be with them. And that hurt me so much. It was like being told all over again that I wasn’t a worthy human being. But this time I didn’t believe it for long, because sometimes all you can do is let go and remember that regardless of what someone may think of me, I am still Vanessa.

And then the unthinkable happened and I fell in love for the second time in my life. Wow! What a blessing it was. It was beyond what I had ever imagined;  my new love met and exceeded every standard I ever had. This was truly the love of my life, the one person you could have sworn was fabricated purely using every guideline for a good person I had in my mind. Words can’t do this story justice. Of course, I was in love with this person so you’d be right in saying I am biased, but I didn’t care what anyone had to say. The only approval I needed in this world was from this one person . Truly, never have I felt so secure, so safe, so myself, so part of something greater than special, than when I was part of this partnership. Then the worst thing happened! The worst thing to have happened to me at this moment in time after what I’ve been through, I mean. There were reasons for it, but I was left alone again. I only wish I had been given a chance to correct my flaws, that whatever good was at first seen in me (what I think I see in myself too) would have been worthy of another chance, of a sacrifice. Or am I really not as worthy as I think I am?

The years of being loved

I hope in future to be loved, but it’s not enough just to be loved here and now. I hope to have someone fall in love with me truly, to want me, to wish to be with me, and that this wish is enough to motivate the things every successful relationship needs: compromise and self-sacrifice. I am worth it, right? I think I am. It’s been 30 years, and I’m ready to be loved the way I eventually learnt to love too. I am ready for so many things. But I am ready mostly to say that only God can judge me for my life.

On special occassions

The last time I celebrated a birthday I was 10 years old. People have since asked me if I miss it, is my life boring, do I not receive or give gifts, how can I live a year without having one day of that year designated as special for me? And I’ll tell you honestly, I have not for one day missed it. I could tell you that I don’t enjoy ‘worldly’ so-called “special occasions” because of my religious beliefs, but that’s not the truth. I have in the last week, the week since turning thirty, further cemented my reasons for disliking these kinds of things.

A few years ago, in the week after the Christmas holidays, I found myself in a very interesting scenario while waiting in line at a bank. The bank had been closed a few days over the holidays so I figure that’s why it was particularly popular when it reopened. Tinsel, Christmas trees, coloured lights, and all sorts of Christmas paraphernalia were still around everywhere. Of course, in the week prior to this event the shops had been full of people buying things for others, songs about gifts and Santa (or Jesus), and huge banners reading things about “peace”, “love”, “goodwill”, “sharing”, the goodness of the human (or Christmas) spirit, etc., etc. The atmosphere had been set to inspire the best of humanity, albeit an atmosphere set up by commercial enterprises under the guise of being just a good concept, a religious tradition, a familial tradition, or a combination of any of those things… but I’m digressing.

So, as I waited in line at the bank, an argument broke out between two of the people waiting in line in front of me. I don’t even recall what the argument was about, but it was between a woman who looked to be in her 40s and a man of around 70. It was clear they were strangers to each others and pretty soon they were shouting, calling each other derogative and obscene names, and threatening violence towards each other. The rest of us in the bank stood stunned watching this scene. It continued until the old man said to the woman “Well, merry christmas to you, too”. His words pierced me very deeply because (to me, at lease) it highlighted the irony and hypocrisy of these special occasions.

You know what we do on special occasions? We give gifts. Gifts of our time, effort, material things, courtesy, respect, congratulation, thoughtful gesture, unselfish sacrifice. It’s wonderful to give these things – and to receive them! But… but, that’s exactly what breaks my heart about it. Is that all I’m worth? One day out of every 365? And it’s often not out of the ‘goodness of anyone’s heart’, but rather only because some external party has decided that a particular day constitutes a special occasion. Don’t get me wrong, though, I appreciate the good wishes as much as anyone else, I just can’t deny that some of it feels like tokenism. And you know what I wish most for in the world for my birthday, for Christmas, for Easter, for labour day, for Monday through to Sunday, January through to December? The essential things we all desire of each other every day: love, attention, respect, a smile, a minute of your time, and to know that I’m actually worthy of these things more than one day a year from those that mean a lot to me.

Thanks for your time, guys.

On the rules

One day I told someone that I was struggling because there was something that I really wanted to do but that I didn’t do simply because it goes against my religious beliefs. And it wasn’t a fleeting desire, either; no, it was actually a very deeply-seated desire that penetrated and marked me to the core of my being. But, yes, I had a system that I lived my life by and it is religion. People often quote this feature of religion as being one of the “bad” things about it. It’s so restrictive. It rules people’s lives and is a great evil. But everyone lives their lives with at least some rules. Some are there to protect the ego, others to protect our survival, others to keep us out of jail, others to protect our conscience, etc. But every rule serves to protect something – and we all, even the most free-spirited ones of us, obey some sort of rule or rule system. My rule system is basically Christianity.

The friend I told how I was struggling with this feeling I had but had to hide because of my religious system gave me some advice: change or leave my religion. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?! In fact I had thought of that, but before I tell you about that, let me tell you about something else I really really wanted to do one day.

I was at a restaurant once and this woman pushed me as she walked past. I was furious! I wanted to pull this lady back and pull her hair, punch her in the face, and kick her in the guts. I felt an energy surge through me, it was so strong. My expression changed to one of absolute spite for this woman, so much so that the people around me noticed my anger. They told me to let it go and move on. Someone moved in between me and the woman so I wouldn’t make a sudden lunge towards her. I thought to myself, “Move on?! Let it go? But I feel this feeling so intensely, so deeply, so in my core.” I let it go, though. Do you know why? Because there are rules in society, and even if I don't agree with them, they still apply to me as a member of society. Of course one can always break the rules and accept the consequences of doing so.

This incident is not the only time I've really wanted to hurt someone, nor am I the only human being who has ever had this desire. We have all wanted to hurt someone for even minor spites like being cut off by another car while you’re driving, being spoken to in a rude and impolite way, seeing someone purposely abuse an animal or someone who is weaker than them, etc. All these things can irritate a person and the human instinct may kick in to react with violence to serve our own ‘justice’. Now, should you? It's something you want so why should you have to resist? Because it's against the law? Because it's against social norms? Because it would be morally “bad”? Because it’s against your religion? But none of these norms and rules were devised by yourself, so why should you comply? Do you see what I’m getting at?

I rejected my friend’s suggestion that I change religions because I don't think everything in life should be solved this way. I think this attitude of always having things your way, if not changing your environment (the physical environment/religion/political party/professional membership, etc.) comes from our society's new rules of the self as deity. Our religions, the object of our worship, have become ourselves. We worship by seeking to maximize our personal pleasure and meeting all our desires – often at the expense of... ‘whatever it takes’. And what is wrong with that religion? Nothing. But our religions are not the only rules we face in our lives. Sure you can punch that guy who pushed in front of you in line at the cinema, or you can steal that item you really want from the shop, etc. but you’ll still have to face the consequences of doing so. That’s just how life is, with every rule comes a consequence.

I’ll tell you now how I overcame my struggle. No, I didn’t change religions just so I could obey my desires. I still believe in everything I ever did about Christianity. I didn’t suddenly lose the burning desires I once had. No. The only thing I changed was I accepted the consequences. There are some things that are worth the consequences.

Only God can judge me.

J