On punches

One thing that has really been irking me in the last few weeks is the negative stereotype that is getting peddled about the men who (accidentally) kill or seriously injure other men with one punch. I mean, I know, the media is telling us that it's only the other guy's story matters and the guy who threw the punch is a "coward", a monster, someone who should have known better. They call the punches that result in such grave injuries a "king hit", a "coward punch". Now, I believe, that had these punches not resulted in these grave injuries, they would have been called an "awesome hit", a "hero punch", a "champion move" or something positive like that. Why do I say that? Because the truth is so often we do glorify violence and displays of machismo like that. It's literally like that saying, 'it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt'.

Now is about the point where people tell me I've got it all wrong, that the men punching other men like this are thugs and demons and simply bad people. They're not people like us, they're different. You know, because the rest of us apparently don't delight in violence in movies, we don't cheer on contact competitive sports, and we haven't been responsible for making "ultimate fighting" so popular on television that we now want to enroll our children into mixed martial arts lessons so they can be the next cage-fighting champion. I know, I know, witnessing violence doesn't make people violent, right? Probably not, but the case is often that art imitates life and not the other way around. It's not that things magically appear on television and we want to do exactly like it; I think its more that television executives observe what the rest of us like and want to put that in television so we can relate and watch their shows (and buy advertised products, etc). Generally, we like to watch what we already like. But I digress... What I'm meaning to say is that the people punching other people are often regular people like us who make very poor decisions,and those decisions lead to poor consequences. These decisions themselves are often predisposed by (usually) alcohol and/or other drugs, peer pressure, and the other unique social pressures men in our society face.

I once heard a woman praising her child for having punched another boy in the abdomen. She was proud of him for having demanded his own respect via violence. She was proud of him because by his behaviour this boy had shown he was becoming a "man". And she was proud of him because  that other child was not her child. Now, this woman is an otherwise very well-intentioned human being and mother, but she has learnt to have the same expectations a lot of us have of how men ought to behave. Men do not sit down and talk about their indifferences, they should fight them out physically. Men should show their superiority and demand their pride be respected by physical displays of strength. Men need to consume as much alcohol as their bodies will tolerate so they are not thought of as "wimps" by their peers. Men should be muscular. Muscular and strong men have a right to pick on less muscular and physically less-strong men. Men in the company of others must always seek to be seen to be the stronger one. These are the kind of pressures men face most days. Even the female partners of men often demand this behaviour of them. For example, how many of us have seen a man who disrespects another man's partner, and then this partner demands that he "be a man" and confront the other man (usually verbally, but with the expectation that use of physical violence is acceptable too). And that's just it, we've created a society where people are taught that violence sometimes is an option, and that option is higher up in the hierarchy of options if you're a man.

The reality is that a lot of us have felt angry at times - and a lot of us have wanted to react violently at times when we were angry. A lot of people have also faced the situation where they were so intoxicated that their usual inhibitions were lowered, where they're more susceptible to make bad choices. Hey, some of these people sometimes punch others too. I'd say more often than not, they are barely thinking of the potential consequences of their actions. I mean, these are normal people making bad choices that are tainted as the big bad demons when one of their punches cause another person a serious injury. There is no point in ruining their reputation either or calling them a coward. But here is where I do lay some blame on the media.

The media knows what we like, what human beings are used to and expect. And we all love stories of villains and victims, of good guys and bad guys, of heroes and cowards. So that is what the media feeds us: a poor young innocent man being a model citizen who is randomly targeted by a devil who attacks him with superhuman strength and intending to cause maximum damage. I'd say that if a person gets punched while they're in church with their eyes closed praying, or while alone in a library, lost in thought, reading a book, then that's pretty cowardly - and, yes, that's exactly like the kind of the story the media sell to us... but it's not usually the whole one.There is never mention that these kinds of things actually usually happen in areas filled with intoxicated persons, in the late hours of night, and what other combustants for social disorder are about. I'm certainly not saying that you deserve to get punched in the head if you happen to want to have some fun out in the town at the early hours of the morning where others are consuming drugs or alcohol, I'm simply saying some situations are inherently more dangerous. This is why our parents warned us about these situations. It's not all about inherently-bad people and inherently-innocent people.

How about if instead of negatively-labeling certain men who get caught up in bad situations, we do something a little more productive?  I don't have the answers, but perhaps we need to start asking better questions. Something like what role does alcohol play in violence? what other factors contribute to violence? how can we better educate men about avoiding violence rather than retroactively calling them 'cowards' and 'thugs'? what would be some alternative/healthier measures of masculinity we can inculcate into our young men to aspire to? These are just my opinions and suggestions, but maybe it needs to be something more of us think about.

On mothers and caring

I’ve had to bite my tongue in the last few weeks not to comment on some of the injustices I see happen in this world, especially when it comes to family – and especially our mothers. But I’ve seen a TV program recently about child carers of ill parents and my faith in humanity has again been restored! It felt to me so amazing to hear such grateful and selfless adolescents speak of the help they render to their parent and the sacrifices they make in their lives – and yet they are able realise that these things are to help a fellow human being and that the universe isn’t all about them. How refreshing! How amazing and admirable and such mature behaviour from these young souls. These young people spoke not about themselves and not about chores or burdens, but about something that seemed natural and dutiful to them – the way our parents didn’t whinge or throw a tantrum whenever we needed to be fed or clothed as babies, it was just a fact of life that the stronger person looks after the weaker one.

One of the most truthful quotes I have heard in the last week from a patient of mine was that “some parents have great children, and some have children that stay children”. Most of us grow out of the belief that the world revolves around us and we are the most important creature in the universe, but it may take other people up to the day that they have their own children to realise this (if they ever do).

In the last week my older patients have been telling me the stories of how their children did this or that for them or gave them presents in whatever form for mother’s day celebrations. And it’s great to hear. And yet I can’t help but also think of this as a sad thing that a lot of these parents have had to wait 12 months to get this kind of attention from the people for whom they have sacrificed so much time, efforts, money, and opportunities. On days when I feel particularly pessimistic, I think that for some of us offspring out there Mother’s Day should be renamed Hypocrite’s Day. Now, I use that particularly strong word purposely because I believe it is wrong to neglect or ignore a person except for one day a year when the media and commercial entities force us to remember them. I mean, sometimes our parents may have no need for flowers or chocolates, but they would be absolutely grateful if only we brought them a bit of food when they’re sick and are unable to meet their needs alone. When we were younger, every day was ‘Our Day’ and our parents fussed over us.  I wish so much that for those of our family (at least) we can be bothered to fuss over them when they’re in need – even if it doesn’t fall on a “special day”, and even if their problem isn’t cured by just flowers, chocolates, or material gifts.

You know what most of these mothers tell me they wish more than anything they get on Mother’s Day? That every day was like it so they would get to see their children more; that their children called them more often and asked how they are and how they may help;  and that their children showed appreciation and love for them more often.

But let me tell you also about a question I was asked recently too: Do I believe in Karma? Well, I guess I call it differently as I don’t have a traditionally Buddhist or Hindu belief system, but aside from my theo-philosophical beliefs, there are my social psychology beliefs. I once heard the story of a woman from my family who had several children but in her elderly years lived alone and was left to fend for herself for food, money, and all basic needs. But where were her children? Well, when these children were very young, this now-elderly woman abandoned her young family and left them to fend for their own. Now you ask why are her children not looking after their elderly mother? Well, because she is to them just another person whom they barely know but happen to share 50% of their DNA with. It’s hard to feel sorry or help a stranger who many many years ago only taught you that those that are weaker don’t deserve your help. I don’t call that karma but setting an example, reaping what we sow. It’s sad, but sometimes the truth is also sad.

What is wrong with this world? I don’t know. All I know is that nothing changes if nothing changes. I know that if you want to see different then you have to do things differently, and not wait for them to happen. I want there to be mothers out there that are loved and appreciated by their children. I want there also to be children out there who are shown by their mothers how to love, how to care, and what things are right and how to do them right. I want to set a good example. I want to have good rewards for my deeds. I want one day to be both a good daughter and a good mother.

On "the disabled", and on limitations

In Spanish they changed the common usage of the term inválido (invalid) to the term minusválido (less-valid, or less-abled). This came about as politically-correct gesture to acknowledge that people with physical/intellectual/mental disabilities aren’t completely invalid –or useless– human beings; they simply are lacking of some standard human abilities. Of course, an aside issue that I won’t be going into is what is “standard” in humans. We all know of the concept of normality but none of us have run into a guy called Normal who has perfect stature, weight, skin tone, intelligence, emotional sensitivity, body symmetry, etc. etc. But back to the point about the change in terminology for certain people with markedly different limitations in their day-to-day functioning. An unexpected result of the lifting of labels off people is the new empowerment given back to them.

There are two stories that come to mind when I think of limitations. The first story is about 100 meter sprinters around 1968. See, prior to this year, everybody believed that no human being could run 100m in less than 10 seconds. I know I mention this now and we can chuckle or laugh at this as we’re all familiar with many athletes who have achieved this. In fact, running 100m in 10 seconds or just a few milliseconds over that in an international competition these days is almost considered a failure; but not so prior to 1968. Prior to then, humanity had come to believe –and accept– that no person could possibly ever run 100m in under 10 seconds. It was impossible! Right? God must have built into human beings an inability to run faster than this. Who questions God? Who would challenge this? No one did. Nobody could even pinpoint whether it was God’s law that no person should run faster than this or whether it was some athletics coach that decided this. Then one day one man decided he wanted to try. 

Jim Hines decided he didn’t care why somebody had said a person can’t run faster than 100m in 10 seconds; he wanted to do it. The first person he had to beat in competition was himself: his previous beliefs and his previous “personal best” (since that would have been over 10 seconds). Well, he must have tried over and over again (because no one is born at their peak ability) and he must have “failed” at his goal (running 100m in less than 10 seconds) many times. I guess he kept trying, though. Jim Hines proved God, someone, and everyone wrong at the 1968 summer Olympics when he ran 100m in 9.9 seconds. But more amazing than that feat was that Jim Hines didn’t just break a world record in running, but he busted a myth because of his refusal to believe it. And what was even more surprising and a feat more worthy than a simple gold medal was that Jim Hines’ achievement empowered others around him. That same night that Jim Hines broke the 10 second barrier in the 100m sprint, that feat that changed what we believed about human ability, that history-changing night, two other men were suddenly liberated from that limitation that somebody had said about human beings. Ronnie Ray Smith and Charles Greene ran the 100m in under 10 seconds that same night! How quickly can we change history, human ability, and overcome limitations once we allow ourselves to believe that we can rise above it.

The second story I think of regarding human limitations is about Dr. Temple Grandin, who I have spoken about in my blog before. Dr. Grandin was diagnosed with autism at age 2, this means it would have been in 1949. In 1949 society, children like Temple Grandin were thought of as mentally retarded and with little potential to be a useful or even meaningful part of society. Most “disabled” children would have been put in an institution with other children like her and left there for the remainder of their lives. No one would have tried to educate them or teach them any skills needed for daily living. Dr. Grandin’s parents were a bit different, though. Temple Grandin herself, if you had evaluated her back in 1949 and the early 1950s, would not have convinced you she had any particular potential that other children diagnosed with autism didn't have: she had a severe speech delay and she did not interact with others as a “normal” human being should have. But unlike the parents of other children with autism, Dr. Grandin’s parents didn’t believe Temple had yet reached her full potential, and they wanted to push her to it. I guess they wanted to believe that their girl was different, that she could be as close to normal despite this label of autism. So instead of accepting that Temple Grandin couldn’t talk, they sent her for hours and hours of intense speech therapy. They forced her to interact with other children and to learn what came “naturally” (or you could say easier) to other children: how to take turns, how to share, how to pick up on the emotional/non-verbal content of speech, what to say when others’ faces appear sad, how to control and self-regulate her behaviour when upset, angry, happy, etc. And you know what happened to Temple Grandin? You probably do; a lot of people do. She went on to graduate high school, she has a university bachelor’s degree in psychology, and she then went on to get a masters and then a doctoral degree in animal science. She runs her own business and designs large farm-scale machinery. She writes books and has had both books and films written about her. I suspect none of us would ever have heard of her story or that she would have even had the same successful story had her parents not refused to believe that a child with autism is an invalid human being, one without potential, and one that is unteachable.

Are there “invalids” in this life, though? Or should we push all people with physical and/or intellectual disabilities more so they can learn and change and be more like “normal”? The first question, I believe, is perhaps easier to answer. Are there people in this planet who have no benefit to themselves or to anyone in existing? I believe there aren’t. Don’t get me wrong, in our world there probably are people who exist only so their paid carers can claim a wage. Even they aren’t useless in this life; they aren’t invalids – their lives do have validity (even if only for this monetary reason). Of course, I’m talking about a worst case scenario here; the usual scenario is that people with physical and/or emotional disabilities have people around them that love them and care about them. Yet in this world the worst case scenario is not that uncommon either. We have terms like “wrongful birth”, and the termination of pregnancies due to social and medical reasons are seen as equally valid. I’m not trying to make a political or ethical point here, I’m simply pointing out that we all recognize that raising or living with a person with a physical/intellectual handicap is going to be more challenging, and not everyone wants to voluntarily submit to that challenge if there is a way to avoid it. The truth is that we as human beings have created a world that is easiest to interact with if you have an IQ of over 70, if you can walk with your own two feet, if you can use both of your upper limbs to interact with objects, if you can use your voice for verbal communication, if you can use both your eyes to orientate yourself visually in our environment, if you can perceive verbal communication and sounds through your own two ears, if you can control both bladder and bowels voluntarily, and the whole gamut of activities of daily living we associate with fully-abled human beings. So what if we want to avoid disability? There’s nothing wrong with that.

So should we be trying to make all “the disabled” into “normal people”? How many Temple Grandins can we create? Is it ethical? Is it doable? There’s a Spanish movie called Mar Adentro, about the life of Ramón Sampedro, a man who became quadriplegic from a spinal cord injury when he was young. Ramón Sampedro was a right-to-die activist who wanted nothing more than to be allowed to die because he considered his quadriplegic state, and what it turned him into, unworthy of living with. This statement caused an uproar, especially amongst other people who were paraplegic. Are the paraplegic unworthy of life?! Really? No, no; that is not what Mr. Sampedro was saying. He wasn’t making a statement about paraplegics; he was making a statement about himself. And that’s the point I’m trying to get at with this story, it is up to each human being to decide what we are willing to accept about ourselves as human beings and about our own limitations. The labels we adopt should be those we give ourselves. The abilities and limitations we set for ourselves should be those we decide. We may not all be able to learn to run 100m in under 10 seconds, and perhaps not every person diagnosed with autism will become like Dr. Grandin, but if we perhaps stop blaming the labels others have given us for our difficulties, we can start advancing.

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 courageous conversations

Last week I attended an education session on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural awareness. The intent was to help health professionals engage better with this subset of the Australian population, and as such “close the gap” between the health of non-indigenous and indigenous peoples (who fair terribly worse in morbidity and mortality). The session was run by a man who identified himself as an aboriginal man and he explained various aspects of what is culture from a psychosocial and semantic perspective. It was interesting and he spoke of a thing called “courageous conversations” – you know, all those touchy subjects on elements of our society which if we comment on we’ll be called racist or bigoted or misogynist or otherwise prejudiced. Racism and the history of Australia (or the U.S.A or South Africa or so many other nations) is one of those touchy subjects. So we all listened to the discussion he presented and he played Professor Michael McDaniel’sreconciliation speech and made passing reference to Kevin Rudd’s “Sorry”speech. The things spoken by these two men are along the same vein, but stated quite differently.

On the 13th of February, 2008, Kevin Rudd, the then Prime Minister of Australia gave a speech to acknowledge the past evils that had been afflicted systematically on the indigenous peoples of this nation. The other purpose of the speech was to apologize to aboriginal peoples of past, present, and future who had been (or will be) disadvantaged or hurt as a consequence of the shameful government policies that existed to purposely suppress aboriginal peoples. The speech was symbolic and groundbreaking, intent on paving the way to improving things in future and learning from past mistakes. This very loud gesture was meant to benefit not only the Australian indigenous people who for decades had had their history and rights suppressed, but also of benefit non-indigenous peoples by empowering them with knowledge and freeing them from the guilt of knowing that their ancestors had done something wrong but they now had the chance to right their wrongs. It was by all accounts a very admirable gesture by the leader of a nation.

Professor Michael McDaniel, an aboriginal man who is also Dean of Indigenous education at the University of Western Sydney, also gave a speech related to the reconciliation process that was occurring in Australia. He told one story of a non-indigenous solicitor who met some elders of an indigenous community and tried to tell them that he was aware of the unfairness and mistreatment indigenous peoples had suffered and he had a plan to propose some “reconciliation”, in this case something akin to acknowledging the land rights of the indigenous first occupants of that land. The aboriginal elders when he had finished his courteous and respectful talk, retold him the history of the Aboriginal people. They told him how his ancestors had raped, stolen, killed, desecrated, abused, and hurt their people in previous generations and how the current generation of their people is still suffering because of his people. The young solicitor was taken aback, surprised, and feeling blamed! What do you say to that? You say sorry. And when you say sorry the better man forgives, right? Right. That’s what we do in our culture, but not everyone’s culture is apparently the same in this respect.

Now, I have varying notions of what a sense of responsibility is, but for a while you have to consider yourself in the young solicitor’s shoes also. Prof. McDaniel explains that to the elders they were simply telling their story in their way, that they needed to do this, to vent, if you will. And at that second when the elders meet this young successful non-indigenous man, “For that moment you are Captain Cook. You are Arthur Phillip. You are the Mission Manager. You are the representative of everyone who did those things”. But you may wonder, why should he be designated the “representative of everyone who did these things”? The logic goes that it is because it is as an acknowledgement that the system and society we currently live in was built to ensure the success, exactly as he has, of a non-indigenous person like him and not of an indigenous person like the elders. So is he at fault because he is successful? Prof. McDaniel doesn’t state it quite like this, but he states that the systems that exist are at fault, they’re the “bad” ones. And yet in the middle of all this is a young man trying to do the right thing given what he has. Prof. McDaniel states he just has to “cop it, because it’s part of the healing process”. I know, I was outraged at his logic too. But you know what? Apparently it's hard for us to understand, he says, because (and I am paraphrasing here) ‘as a young non-Indigenous person, we’ve never had a sense of belonging to a society. We’ve never had “a collective sense of responsibility”’.

Honestly, I liked Kevin Rudd’s speech better. I liked it better for two reasons. As a Christian I always remember that scripture in Ezekiel 18:20 that says, “The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them”. Acknowledging our ancestors sins is one thing, we can even apologize for them and regret it on their behalf, but as for being “punished” or held accountable for it, I believe is a bit rich. My second reason can be summarised in this quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “To be a man is to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world”. Guilt is a useless thing unless it motivates forward action. It is honourable to take responsibility for righting wrongs even if they weren’t committed by us. It is not honourable to use punishment unless your aim is for retraining. If your camel is already walking to where you want it to go, it is only cruel to continue to beat it.

On teen suicide... and living

A few months ago when Declan Crouch, a 13 year old boy, went missing, his disappearance was likened to Daniel Morcombe’s. However, after some time it proved that the age of the boys and the fact that they were reported as missing persons may have been all they shared in similarity. The fate of both boys have become more clarified in the recent months and it’s not my intention here to rehash the news. But I do want to rehash a thought I once had on teenage suicide.

I read a book by Udo Grashoff called ‘Let me Finish’. It’s a copy of and study on a series of suicide letters. One of the interesting findings is that the suicide letters written by teenagers are the most mysterious, confusing, and give the least detail on motive. They're often very profound philosophically and spiritually. They list their motives not in terms of their personal struggles, but rather about the plight of humanity in general. For example, a child who is being bullied or is being subject to abuse from their carers actually rarely writes about their personal experience and their circumstance. Their suicide letters tend more to be filled with their insights into humanity, the negative aspects of our society in general, and they often conclude with a wish for us who remain alive to be well. To an external party looking at their case we may see a child who was suffering due to abuse and become so stressed that they choose to end it all. What the children themselves tell us is that it is not dissatisfaction with their own circumstance, but rather with our society and our world in general.

One of the things often said of suicide is that it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and in the case of adolescents you could even argue that their decisions are made on generalizations about the rest of the world based just on their personal negative experience of it in their microcosm, for the short time of their lives that they’ve had to experience it. However, having said that, isn’t it true that our world is, in fact, a lot like a typical adolescent’s microcosm? The ‘popular kids’ with money and power (corporate types and politicians) set the trend for the majority of us. The majority of us are here just to do what they’re meant to do to survive (the ‘working class’), and trying to behave so as not to piss off the popular kids or those in power, like our parents and teachers (law and government). And no-one really wants to get in trouble with these people (jail-time, fines, oppression, getting fired, etc.)! When teens suicide, we as adults think, 'but they have so much more to lose by dying', but it's almost as if they leave us saying 'we have so much more to gain via death'. And compared to more mature adults, their decision to die seem to be more definitive. They hesitate less.

Is there something adolescents see about our society that makes them so sure? Before I get onto that, I just want to acknowledge that we already know that the human brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is tasked with making our ‘mature’ and ‘rational’ decisions, isn’t fully developed until about the age of 21 years. Of course, people “mature” at different rates and it is said that females will reach this stage before males do. It is also not a yes-no type of separation between maturity and immaturity. Possibly since before the age of 2 years a child can make decisions based on preference (of colour, taste, texture), etc. Gradually, as a child matures, different aspects of a particular choice creeps into their decision-making process (e.g. immediate and long-term consequences, cost, effect on self and others). So what I am trying to say is that I acknowledge that an adolescent is not ‘fully mature’, but taking a look into their thought process is definitely worthwhile, especially given that a teen who suicides is making a very significant and conscious choice.

What, in signing off ‘I have so much more to gain via death’ does a teen aim to achieve? An older adult may see in the teen potential in terms of years of life remaining, in abilities that can be developed, and in knowledge to be gained. But it's almost as if the teen turns around and says, 'I can see where this is going and I'm not interested'. What exactly about our world are they seeing? I suggest that a teen may be rejecting a world they perceive as being unjust or incoherent. Now, I already mentioned that they may be overgeneralizing their particular situation to the whole of the future and the whole of society, but let’s pose for a second that they aren’t exaggerating in their perception. Let’s consider. for example, what the “adult world”, the “real” world is like.

As a child when I didn’t get my way, I cried and threw a tantrum. As I grew older I learnt to hold back the tears and the rage (things I instinctively want to do when I don’t get my way), to accept that things aren’t always going to go my way. Now I was considered mature. Yet the same reality was still true: I lost! As adults we always have a choice, though not all options necessarily produce equally ego-syntonic results: to accept things as they are, or to act so as to change them. The truth, however, is that most people live in stagnation, we get too used to accepting injustice; trying to change things is too hard. That’s the reality and cowardice a lot of people live/exist in. A lot of adults in our society become docile little cogwheels, indifferent, accepting of injustice (to ourselves and other human beings), dampening our true feelings and passions, working the jobs we have rather than the ones we want – always at the bequest of the ‘popular kids’ and in fear of punishment. How is that living? Really? What really is the difference in between an existence like that and death? I can see how to the teen this inaction may look remarkably close to death already.

And yet having said all this, you’d think I’d be petitioning for us all to suicide! In fact I’m petitioning that we all instead start living, deciding our own fates. Every revolution is fought by individuals, and we are all qualified. No-one ever asked permission to start a revolution. So why not start living as if we were actually alive?

On poor us

I’ll start by acknowledging that I’ve recently finished reading the book ‘Affluenza’ by Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss and so I’m not even trying to pass off any of these ideas as things I’ve discovered myself. One aspect of the book I found particularly interesting is not so much the “outing” of our obsession with ourselves and with money, but rather the way we see ourselves as deprived.

I wasn’t raised in a wealthy family (or in a rich country, for that matter). When my family moved to Australia (and my mum still describes it this way), it was like entering paradise. There was no immediate threat of death from warfare, no real struggle to put food on the table or pay the rent, nothing but encouragement to pursue our education, and besides readjusting to a new culture, a new language, and missing friends and relatives, there basically was nothing to complain about. My family was one of the very lucky ones where a large proportion of our family immigrated to Australia also, so in fact after the first year or so there were few of us to miss. We soon learnt the language (we were actively taught it!) and we made new friends. To describe some aspects of our lives in Australia to people back in El Salvador for them is incomprehensible. Things like, for example, free (and high-standard) basic healthcare, housing assistance, and government co-payments for students, disabled persons, the unemployed, single parents, etc. We are fortunate amongst our family and amongst other peoples born in third world countries; and not just my family, but Australians amongst the world’s citizens are so extremely fortunate.

What’s my point? Well, the truth is that if you ask most people in affluent countries like Australia if they are content with their financial situation, the things they have, their jobs, their houses -their lives- they’ll say no!.... But wait, aren’t we so wealthy and well-off and living in ‘the lucky country’? Yes, but that’s other people, not us. We have bills we struggle to pay, things we wish we could own but can’t afford, thankless jobs that consume all our time and energy, and family and friends we have lost touch with. Collectively we are the lucky people in the lucky country, but as individuals we feel deprived. Feeling deprived and being deprived are two different things, though. The reality of it is that if you look at the pure facts, the numbers, the truth of it is the vast majority of Australians are not homeless, are not going without food, are employed, are managing to pay their bills, and most households own at least one car. You can look around you and immediately you know this is not a third world country. That is the reality of it!

What is it that we are deprived of then? We are deprived of satisfaction! And you know what the most intriguing reason of why we are so dissatisfied is? Because if we weren’t dissatisfied, then why would we keep working jobs we don’t like, for the long hours that hurt us in so many ways, just to buy the things we don’t really need? The question then becomes, well, then who is it that is keeping us dissatisfied, who makes us believe we are struggling, that we are a deprived people? In short, industry and government.

The advertising industry , the entertainment industry, the manufacturing industry, the pharmaceutical industry, etc, are all trying to sell us things. To sell us any product, you first have to convince the consumer that they are better off with it than without it. Even if there is nothing wrong with you, you could still be better off. Never mind you already having a functional car, a comfortable house, and practical clothes; no, that’s not good enough. They want us to believe that what we should have is a bigger more luxurious house, a luxury car, and the newest clothes of this season. Why? “Because you’re worth it.” There’s another thing that has been marketed heavily by industry: our deity. We deserve everything, just like the celebrities have. When you see yourself as being unable to afford the newest and most expensive of everything, of course you’ll feel deprived! And that’s good news for industry because then you’ll keep slaving away at your job to buy more and more of these things, which only keep getting more and more and newer and newer. Of course, if it all gets too much, then it’s time to make the poor pharmaceutical industry some money and invest in their pills that cure the human soul.

A people who are deprived is a woeful thing; thank God for politicians who can make it all better for us! That’s right, the other group of people interested in perpetuating the myth that we are all struggling are our governments. The benefit to them is that if we believe ourselves to be struggling and they promise to provide for ‘the battlers’, then they can secure our votes. I can’t recall a politician stating as his election plea that he will ensure that wealthy people can afford to buy a newer luxury car. He would be scorned! Instead we would rather vote for the guy who wants to help poor folks like us (who are “poor” only in the sense that our lives aren’t like those on those fictional films or because we don’t own the things that celebrities seem to).

We are sold the idea of deprivation from various levels and multiple interested parties. They sell it so well that we are unwilling then to recognize what is so clearly around us. I wish there were interested parties who thrived instead in helping us see truth, building up our self-worth and self-esteem, someone that would remind us that we are poor only when we rely on material things to define ourselves. I once read about a different sort of dissatisfaction, one I would like now to share:

On religion and on being open-minded

A tourist attraction - or a place of worship.

One of the criticisms you’ll often here about “religious people” or of “religion” is that these are people that are not very open minded. It’s funny, in a way, to see how religion has become the new Satan, this thing to be despised, to be frowned upon, to be avoided. The other reasons you’ll here as to why religion is the devil is it brainwashes people, its leaders often abuse their power for financial and/or sexual gains, that members are forced into a particular lifestyle, and that religion is the cause of war. The same could be said of almost any social group in this world: a race, a linguistic group, a nation of people, a socioeconomic group, etc. What is the difference? That religious groups are often seen as the perpetrator of all sorts of evils; a social group with almost no positive value to the greater humanity.

But let me come back to the point of how people of religious groups are perceived as not being open-minded, often by people who claim to be open-minded themselves. Firstly, allow me to define a little further what a religious group is. Religion can be thought of a system of belief as to certain ‘spirituality-related topics’ such as the afterlife, the purpose of life, etc. As an extension of this belief system is a system of governance and justice. Often a particular religious denomination has particular rules of what is deemed right and just behaviour and also criteria for things that are considered wrong. Of course, the particulars of each denomination’s spiritual belief and justice systems are different. For example one group of people may believe God has one or another name, another may belief that there are certain foods which must not be eaten, etc. Now, why do people even join religions? Because they either identify with a particular religion’s beliefs (and don’t we all like to gather with like-minded people), or they find a particular religion’s creeds appealing (and usually strive to approximate their behaviour to that which is the groups norm).

The question asked by so many “open-minded” people is not why do people join religions, however, but rather, why are people in religions when: 1) differences in religion beliefs have led to many wars, 2) when science has “disproven” creationism, 3) when religious peoples are hypocrites who don’t practice what they teach (because we all know one or another dissident from his belief), etc. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with any of these questions, except that they are large generalizations of a group of people that are extended to the individuals who belong to this group as if they are and must be true of each and every member. This is called a stereotype. This leads to prejudice and discrimination. This leads to the concept of ‘I am right, and you are wrong’, which is the first step towards the ‘I am right and you are wrong, therefore I have a right to punish you’. This is also what gets wars started. I regret to say that this is not a statement an open-minded person would say.

But a lot, many, perhaps the majority, of wars have been fought between groups of different religions. This is a historic fact, no doubt. But is it really “religion” that is the evil factor here? You could say that, but would you also dare to say that all members of any social group are responsible for the actions of some of its members? Recently you would have heard of extremists in certain religious groups being responsible for armed attacks on members of other groups. There are extremists in every social group. There are people in any group that will convince themselves that their duty is not only to be in the right but to punish others who they believe are in the wrong. Most commonly the fundamental spiritual beliefs of the group to which these extremists belong have mandates against harm to others, etc. What am I trying to get at? Yes, many wars have been fought by people over differences in religious ideologies; but no, that doesn’t make “religion” the culprit. It reminds me of an argument that was common in the early 1980s when AIDS was first documented. Yes, homosexual men were most often affected, but it didn’t mean that “homosexuality” per se was responsible for the disease. Certain beliefs and actions put us at greater risk of being involved in a negative thing (e.g. war or disease), but each individual is only “good” or “bad” based on their individual actions not those of a correlation with the group to which one belongs.

Another reason religion is often frowned upon by the non-religious is because it is perceived to be a belief system formulated by desperate, “empty” people who want to find reason to justify their existence. Or they believe it is outdated as science or some other philosophy has already answered the questions religion was previously thought to answer. There is no scientific evidence to particular religious beliefs or creationism, they’ll tell you. Now, religious people may believe that their purpose on Earth is to please some invisible god and do things so as to please him because gaining his favour will lead to further good things in this lifetime and in the afterlife. What do the rest of us believe is the purpose of human existence? Aren’t they also arbitrary things like creating a better environment for our descendants, to protect or promote one some randomly chosen cause that appeals to us, to enjoy pleasurable things and activities, etc. etc. You could just as easily say we are all empty people killing time until the day of our deaths and a return to the carbon cycle as a corpse. That is true also, and what we choose to do or believe to kill this time should not be up for judgement by anyone else as no-one is born knowing the “true” purpose of life, as if it was one definite thing. Could time be better spent saving endangered animal species than prayer? Maybe, depending on the belief system you elect. You could just as readily believe that movements to protect animal species during this lifetime are redundant, but that certain religious practices will lead you to an eternal wordly kingdom where there will be an abundance of animals that will exist in harmony with all other creatures. They are both equally valid, and albeit arbitrary, ideologies about human life.

I, despite my hatred of labels, will readily identify (and label myself) as Christian. This disclosure has led me to meet a lot of people who express to me their belief that religion is wrong and religious people are not open-minded enough…  Now isn’t this a massive generalization? Sounds not very open-minded to me, but I could be wrong.  I think a key to remaining open-minded is to admit that there is even a minuscule possibility that we are wrong, that the “others” may be right, or maybe even that there is no right or wrong answer.

On god, nature, and spirituality

Recently I was doing a bit of reading about Australian indigenous identity, and one of the things I found very interesting is this culture's view of spirituality. In fact, the interesting thing is that a lot of indigenous cultures from vastly different places seem to have a similar belief system: sharing a deep spiritual connection to the land.

Now, I live in Australia, a westernized and largely Christian (if not by majority agnostic or atheist) country. To say that a culture has a deep connection to the land conjures up images of politics, of land ownership laws, and of a broad concept we’ll called ‘justice’. No, no, what I’m trying to discuss here is not those socio-political issues, but rather one of spirituality and culture. I admit that this new understanding is only new to me as a result of my natural curiosity and some research I had to do as part of coursework for a developmental psychology class. I would, however, like to share what I have come to comprehend from this – which may in fact be completely off track - but is probably closer to the true track to understanding these concepts.

I, like a lot of Judaeo-Christian adherents, couldn't understand before much about how a connection to the land equalled a spiritual connection. And in the Andes region, for the Incas for example, connection to the mountains meant a spiritual connection. The conclusion I’ve reached as to the reason it's hard for the traditional Jewish/Christian person to understand a connection to a land and equate it to a connection to God is because our tradition teaches us that God is in heaven, or “out there”.

So a common belief in Western culture is that God, who is creator of man and earth and everything, is in heaven, above us, in the sky somewhere. When we worship we direct our spiritual attention to this ether out there where God is. Now, the aboriginal man, for example, believes that all life comes from the earth, the soil and the ground on which we're all dependent on. And science will tell you that this is true: life on this planet requires air, water, sunlight, and nutrient and sustenance from the ground. Eukaryotic life, of which mammals and other animals like us are, depend on plants for nutrients. Plants emanate from the earth. Therefore it’s not a huge leap to assume that what keeps us alive is in the earth, or IS the earth. This is not a new observation, thousands of years ago, before pastoral times, and before mass colonization, the indigenous peoples of the land saw this basic relationship. He would see the plants and trees grow out of the soil, which fed the animals, which fed us, which kept us alive.

Keeping this in mind, consider now the human concept of god or creation. Until very recently, most traditional cultures had a basic belief that life, the universe, human beings and every other thing above, on, and below the earth, including the substance that is earth, was created by one if not many other external being/s or forces. For brevity, let’s call these beings or forces God. Extrapolate the line of thinking previously established, that if all life essentially originates from the earth, and God is creator of everything, then earth must be this being we decided to call God. It is now also easier to understand why so many native cultures speak of a 'Mother Earth' or Pachamama.

Now, the most common Judeo/Christian/Islamic traditions are monotheist and believe in a god that created the universe and everything in it, and who we in turn worship or have a spiritual connection or relationship with. To worship a creator is mostly a sign of gratitude and sustaining interconnectedness between ourselves and others (including wildlife, the earth, space, etc. as our specific faith dictates). To worship god or gods, a creator or co-creators, is a very ancient concept common to most cultures. Now consider the aboriginal man to whom God is or is in the earth. For an aboriginal man to worship God is to worship the land, to cherish and honour it, to direct his prayers and rituals to it. Christians, Jews, Islamists, etc. do the same: we pay respect to the place we think God inhabits, the heavens. We direct our prayers to this place. As an example of just this concept we have the very old traditional Christian cathedrals with high arched ceilings, ceilings decorated with images of heavenly creatures and the sun, the skies, etc. Going to the temples and cathedrals to offer our prayers and sacrifices we'd contemplate the heavens, conjure them up in mind and spirit to give our worship to God. The indigenous man does the same thing, except he believes God is in the earth. So making physical/skin contact with the soil is very important. The earth is what connects one man to God, and that which connects him to other men and all other creatures in this planet.

When Judaeo-Christians meet in their churches and synagogues and temples, etc, they also seek not only to connect and share with their god but also those whom they consider their spiritual brothers and sisters, co-worshippers in a common belief, people and creatures with whom they believe they share a common origin. It is the same also with the indigenous man, worshipping with those who are related to him via God, Mother Nature, earth. To worship together means often to worship in a specific place on earth, not just with specific people or within a specific but man-made structure such as a temple.

The indigenous man also shares a deep connection with other creatures, animals that also walk or otherwise inhabit the earth, not only with his fellow humans. That's why when the indigenous man speaks of the wolf or the kangaroo he calls him his brother, sharing a common origin and connection with the land. That's why killing animals for nutrition, especially to the aboriginal man who is not of a pastoral nature but hunts only what he will consume and absolutely needs that day, is a sacrifice and a spiritually-filled occasion, as it would be if a person of a Western culture would eat his siblings or friends. In times of crises, humans from non-traditionally cannibalistic cultures have had to do exactly this for survival, and they will tell you of their suffering in making these decisions and going through with them. You could say the indigenous man does this a little less freely, consuming his brother animals because he has acknowledged the sacrifice and has certain rituals by which these activities take place and they are often so ingrained that they are incorporated into the cultural practice itself rather than as a distinct spiritual ceremony.

Western culture’s spiritual worship rituals and our belief as to the location of God, in heaven or some other intangible place, is exactly what (I believe) makes it difficult for so many of us to understand the spiritual connection many indigenous peoples, not just native Australians, have with the land. But understanding this also helps to understand why place and movement, physical relocation, to aboriginal peoples is so important. Imagine it being like kicking someone out of a temple or cathedral, out to the cold and unknown, and asking them to continue about their lives, including their worship, without the places and things they believe to be sacred and secure.

On "coming out"

One of my favourite quotes in the world is one by Gore Vidal that says “There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses, if not practices”. He also said, “Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people”. Okay, so some of this argument is about semantics, but it is also about labels.

If you know me, you would know that I have a hatred of labels— and so comes this ambivalence about the whole concept of “coming out”. I do understand that the whole movement started as a way to counter discrimination against certain people because of their sexual practices, to claim back the respect and human rights owed to every human being. I understand how it is empowering, especially to individuals who have been oppressed, to claim with pride the person they are and their right to be. I understand that identifying with a group, coming together for camaraderie, is a very human thing and it is often the only way to bring about societal change. I understand how it came about, what I don’t like, however, is the expectation that is now placed on many people to “come out”, to label oneself as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or ‘questioning’.

One reason I don’t like the concept of “coming out” is that I find it biased that a person who has sex with a same-sex individual has to tell people about it, yet there is no expectation that a person who only engages in heterosexual acts do so. There are things about the sexual practices of my friends, my family, acquaintances, celebrities, politicians, and many other people that I don’t know about – and quite frankly couldn’t care less about. How old where they when they first had intercourse? What is their favourite sexual position? Are they multi-orgasmic? Do they prefer shaven or hairy genitals on their partner? Do they use toys? These are extremely personal and intimate questions about a person’s sexuality and we rarely are even bothered to know these things about people, so why should we care to know other intimate things like whether they have sex with men, women, or both. Does it change anything? No, it shouldn’t, especially if they’re your friends or family. Seriously, who would like to know all the sexual details of their friends or family? Not me. So why does there need to be this expectation that if you have sex with someone of your same gender that you have to tell the whole world about it? Quite frankly I have friends who are probably virgins, others that may or may not have had same-sex intercourse before, but I just really don’t care to hear about their sexual exploits one way or another. Sexual expression is a very intimate thing, usually only between two people, and that’s the way I am happy for it to stay.

And the other reason I am passionately against declaring your sexual preference is because of my hatred of labels. See, because once you tell the world you’re “gay” or “bisexual” that is all the world tends to see. You in fact lose a lot of your identity and become just a label, often described by a multitude of stereotypes. You may have sex with same-sex persons, but it’s probably not all you do. Maybe you have a job you’re very good at, maybe you follow a certain spiritual belief system, maybe you play an instrument or have a large family; but the moment you label yourself, that to me is like the death of the rest of you. And imagine being known for and described in terms of the things you like to do sexually! We would meet a lot of people, some of them our friends and family members, that were known as masturbators, others dildo-lovers, others anal-lovers, etc. But this is what some of our friends do and yet we think of them as friends, not as “straight” friends or “dildo-loving” friends, just our friends. The things our friends do and enjoy sexually is a personal matter for them and they aren’t and shouldn’t be expected to tell everyone about it, to “come out” as a dildo-lover or anal-bead enthusiast... So to “coming out” as gay or bisexual or transsexual, I say no (unless you consciencelessly choose to label yourself for whatever reason, for whatever secondary gain). To me, labelling isn’t creating equality. Labelling, putting up a division between “us” and “them”, isn’t creating equality between “us” and “them”, it just perpetuates the myth that people who have sex with same-sex individuals are purely defined by the sexual things they do. For me, to say a person is gay is a denial of everything else they are – and they may just be the best human being I know.

On the human factor... and the risks of work

As anyone who has ever done a job that involves interacting with another human being will tell you, it's often the human factor that ruins most things. In fact it can ruin it so much you can start to lose your will to live. Let me describe one scenario that is all too familiar for anyone who’s ever worked a junior doctor job in a hospital:

Say the procedure is: patient is 1 year old and has a tumour, patient needs pre-op MRI, patient needs surgery, patient then needs post-op MRI. The actual procedure becomes: need to talk to the patient’s parents about the surgery, risks, etc. You then have to organise the pre-op MRI, which is absolutely necessary for surgical planning – and everyone knows this – but either way someone will have a go at you about because you’re requesting it be done today or tomorrow because the surgery is to be done tomorrow and the boss only told you about it today and the patient did not ask for their tumour to be diagnosed only yesterday. Then you have to discuss the case with the anaesthetist who tells you that you need to put an IV cannula in this child before he gets to theatre, although you tell him that the only accessible vein in this child is in his neck and it took another consultant anaesthetist 2 hours to get a cannula in him last time. Somehow, he tells you, the patient’s poor venous access is your fault and you’re incompetent for not being able to cannulate the child. Eventually the kid gets the surgery (after the 2 hours it took the anaesthetist to find a vein in the child) and you have to talk to the parents again because they're worried something went wrong, they think someone somewhere stuffed up and it's someone's fault, and they get all unpleasant towards you even though you're trying to explain to them that their child is just post-op and they'll improve or that it was a risk you had discussed with them previously, etc. Then you try to organise a post-op MRI and the radiologist decides to pick this occasion to tell you how surgical teams do too many scans, that they don't plan them right, that they order unnecessary investigations, that you personally are a crap clinician, that you don't understand how the MRI machine works, that you are wrong and your patient doesn't need the scan... but they'll do it anyway. So by this stage everything that needs getting done IS getting done BUT all these people have in the meantime made you feel so negative about yourself that you start to wonder if it was all worth it. Like, really, why must it be you that cops the abuse? Your role could easily be filled by someone else who knows how to fill in the forms and talk to people (aka the majority of the tasks the junior doctor job actually involves). So why must it be you? Why? Seriously. Hopefully the kid gets better, and maybe you had something to do with it, but you'll never think of it that way, and the family or the patient will never thank you, so all you remember from the interaction is the abuse everyone laid on you and how small you felt afterwards. Was it worth it? Was removing that child's tumour worth you self-esteem? Was it worth losing your self-worth? Was it worth losing your passion for your job, the big picture? And maybe, just in some, the question becomes ‘was it worth losing your will to live’?

Okay, so maybe the final statement was a bit of an exaggeration but it is not describing a new phenomenon. I always remember that story from ‘House of God’ about the medical intern that suicides and how every year a certain percentage of doctors do. But the phenomenon, of course, isn’t limited to health professionals. Cliff Baxter, one of the executives of Enron Corporation (the U.S. energy company that went bust in 2001), suicided after he was indicted to court for his role in the Enron bankruptcy case. In his suicide letter he wrote, “where there was once great pride, now it’s gone”. As an executive of a corporation like Enron was, Cliff Baxter wasn’t a weak or stupid man, but to me at least, his story warns about the risk of defining yourself by your job. I find it sad to think that having a wife and children, he saw his life as not worth living because he could no longer live with pride for his work. What about living for his wife or his child? What about living because there are other things in life besides work? I can’t help but feel that if you have to rely on your job to make you feel satisfied, to make your life feel like it is worth living, to make you happy, then you’re probably lacking something very important and beautiful in your life.

They say that doctors are especially prone to what is commonly called “burnout”, in general, for the same reasons that they have chosen to become doctors: they are often perfectionists and have a high sense of responsibility. In the workplace these are exactly the things patients and their relatives appreciate and expect. Other co-workers also expect the same thing from them. And what’s more, eventually the doctor comes to expect this of himself. So then he starts going home late to make sure everything is OK (a.k.a. “stable”) before he leaves. He’ll work all the ridiculous shifts and hours he is told to because he’s expected to and no-one before him has been able to change the system so he just has to submit. Of course, with all the time (and let’s not forget effort) dedicated to work and career progression, he spends less and less time with family, socializing, relaxing, and essentially doing all those things that truly enrich human life. It’s then easy to imagine how with work consuming so much of your life, a person could come to define themselves solely by their work. You start to associate success exclusively with occupational achievements and less with the attainment of personal, family, or social goals. Proverbially, you come to ‘live to work’ not ‘work to live’. And once you come to do that, it is not so far-fetched to imagine guys like Cliff Baxter who, having lost his ability to work, come to believe that he has also lost the ability to live.

On "becoming" beautiful

I recently bought a new camera and I’ve just been taking photos of all sorts of random things and people. One of the things most people will often say to me when I ask to take their photo, though, is “not now, I look horrible”... Now, to myself I think “but this is how these people have chosen to present themselves today, why would that be ‘horrible’?” As I was thinking this, it reminded me of something I noticed a while ago – and maybe it has something to do with self-identity or the human concept of “beauty”. At the same time, I don’t want to be a hypocrite, and I’ll admit I once thought like those people.

Beauty is a very difficult to define concept, of course. You could say a rose is beautiful and say a woman’s face is beautiful, and not mean that the woman’s face looks like a rose. Also, one man’s wife may be beautiful to him but another man who has just met her may think nothing of her. There’s subjectivity involved, history and knowledge of a thing’s other than physical attributes involved, circumstance, and relativity of one thing to another of its kind.

I’ve always liked to take photos of things – just for fun. When I was younger I started to notice how some of the best photos to take are of children. Not all children, but children who are young enough to recognize themselves in a mirror, but not so young as to be too easily distractible when they’re awake. And when I say “the best photos”, I mean those that are most close to reality, the one’s that replicate a moment in time a little closer to the truth. I took so many photos of one of my nieces at one stage because with this childhood innocence came this absolute sincerity that even a camera (in my unskilled hands) could capture. Now, this little girl was just being herself and making it so easy for me to capture that “self”, so I took so many photos because I knew that the day would come where she would ask me if she looked ‘good’ in a photo. In fact what happened was that she then went to school and was taught to smile whenever a camera was in front of her. Don’t get me wrong, she was still beautiful, her appearance evolving with age (as it never ceases to do during our lifespan), but she had lost that sincerity that once came so naturally to her – and all because someone taught her that an attractive – and so photo-worthy face – must have a smile on it. A smile can make any face beautiful, that’s true, but that was probably first said about sincere smiles.

Before this period, though, my niece went through a stage where she figured out that the thing looking back at her in the mirror was herself. She had learnt before that what the general concept of a human face was: two eyes, nose, two nostrils, ears, mouth, hair, and attached to the rest of a body with arms, legs, etc. We first learn by stereotype, it’s essential; the world is just too difficult to comprehend otherwise. The fun times were standing in front of the mirror, her and me, pointing at this little person in the mirror and she realising it was herself because she is standing next to a person that looks exactly like me. Then she would laugh for ages. Most children will do that. They don’t notice that their clothes are all stained from when they spilt food on themselves, that there is things in their hair that came from the grass in the backyard. All these things are inconsequential details, the reality is that there in the mirror are two human beings, one which is herself, and one someone other than herself. This is self-awareness.

To return to photos, though. What is the first thing you notice when you look back at old photos? Yourself! Inevitably that is what you notice, it’s probably instinctual. You disregard the surroundings and the other people in the photo, and it’s not vanity, it’s just constancy to recognize yourself as you once were (because all moments are always in the past). Everybody has a self-image, a physical image and also a cognitive one that would recognize your own style of reasoning or speaking, for example. So the next thing we do with photos is to compare the image in the photo with our internal self-image, but also to this other image about “beautiful” human beings we have been conditioned to believe. So, often the internal thought process goes “does this look like me? does it look like me at my best physical appearance? and, does it look like those models in magazines and film actors?” When we were children the thought process was, “what is it? is it human?” and “who is it?”. Things were much simpler then. So, I won’t go on about how this “beautiful human being” mental image came to be formed because most people can probably guess it already.

My niece grew up, and she still likes photos; she even knows how to pose now. The skill difference between professional models and the rest of us is that the pros know how to look natural in a completely staged environment. That “natural” look and certain biometric features that some scientists with lack of better things to study have found is what we usually define as beauty. But my niece is beautiful too. She is beautiful because she’s my little girl, because she is a child, because there’s this sincerity about her, and because I love her. I’ve said nothing of her appearance, but you get the concept of a beautiful child like the hundreds we’ve all seen before. She is confident in herself and of her appearance. She’ll always let you take her photo, as long as you know she will always smile on cue for you.

But now, as adults, a lot of the people I come across don’t want their photo taken because they don’t look “beautiful” enough. I didn’t want a photo of a “beautiful” person, if I did I’d have cut it out of a magazine; I wanted a photo of the person who I’m asking. Has this image of un-beauty been so deeply ingrained in us or is it a universal lack of self-esteem that makes us shy away?

You know what else I’ve noticed in the last few years also? That the people that make good photos to take of are, other than children, the elderly and indigenous people with little exposure to western society. People of poor countries also have a tendency to view a request from a friend for a photo as a gesture similar to asking for a glass of water: ‘gladly, my friend, if I have enough to give’. And why do they care less than the average person about their appearance? I think because they think of a photo just as that, a thing that eventually will just come to be on a piece of paper as a representation of an event in time. But what about the elderly? Well, then I started thinking that perhaps they have had more time to have also come to this same reasoning, but also to accept their own physical appearance and it’s changing nature.

I was twenty-six by the time I finally stopped feeling ashamed of my own body. My weight has fluctuated since I was young, and since about the age of 12 I was ashamed of it. I’ve always struggled with low self-esteem despite my family thinking that I was OK because I got good grades at school, inside there was this loathing of myself from the core to my very skin. I felt ashamed of my body, to be who I was and how I was, and the last thing I wanted was to look at myself and let alone let anyone else see me. Mirrors were extremely uncomfortable places for me to stand in front of. Having to have a photo taken was almost an offensive gesture made at me. I didn’t want to look at myself. Anyhow, the whole thing made my life not very interactive and lonesome when I was young, though with study commitments I gradually expanded the number of things I became comfortable doing.

When I was 26, in my final year of med school, I finally came to the realisation that this was it, that this was my body, that this is who Vanessa was and I would just have to accept it. I finally realised that the people who spoke to me, who befriended me, or who were otherwise associated with me had chosen to do so despite of what horribleness I thought I looked like. If others could interact with me so easily, accept me as I was, then why should I not? The realisation sounds so simple now, but it had taken me 26, almost 27, years to reach. After that, it made romantic relationships easier to conceive, both in my mind and physically. I felt more at ease with being my true self. And even though 26 (or since) was probably not my best year in terms of physical appearance, I finally also accepted the changing nature of my appearance. And guess what? I finally stopped caring about what I looked like in photos.

On Travelling

There’s a scene in the movie “Motorcycle Diaries” where the characters of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and his friend are travelling through the Atacama desert in Chile on their way to Peru. They meet a couple of peasants in the middle of the desert and they sit down to share stories and a hot drink over a camp fire. The peasants tell them of how they’ve been forced to leave their homeland because of political unrest and bad working conditions. Then it’s Ernesto and his friend’s turn to share their story. Ernesto tells them how they are travelling “just to travel”. A silence takes over the camp. Ernesto and his friend sit there almost in shame, and the peasants in complete disbelief that people can and do this. Finally the female peasant breaks the silence and in acceptance tells them, “Bless you... Blessed be your travels”.

The reason this scene was so significant to me was that when I was younger I never understood why people enjoyed "travelling" just for travelling. Like the peasants in the movie, I was raised in a very different place, where people only travelled when they had to, usually for work or escaping a physically dangerous situation, so unless your job was an explorer, then it didn't make sense to travel.

I couldn’t understand why people would choose to travel unless they had to. Later I came to almost despise it because a lot of the people I knew then described themselves as “travellers” when they meant to say “tourists”, or when they would try to make me believe that because they had travelled they were somehow more “cultured”, more “experienced”, better than average. Travelling to me in these cases always seemed a luxury, something someone did by choice and not for survival. It seemed redundant and I found it offensive that these travellers acted as if their journeys had been some part of a humanitarian mission. Seeing a pretty place or partying with other tourists or eating local food did not seem particularly special to me.

And then came another time of my life I found it very hard to stay in one place—the anxiety was unbearable—so I started “travelling” too. It took me ages to realise that running away doesn't make your problems disappear, because your problems have a tendency to follow you around.

As I grew up I eventually came to have more tolerance of this travelling business and I came to see some places myself which made me feel blessed because nature can be so breathtakingly beautiful. Yet still, travelling to me is still only escapism. But everything that isn't survival-related is escapism—and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Travel

One day she left to travel. I’ve always believed that those who like to travel are running away from something. For a while it seemed as if everyone was travelling. Maybe everyone was running.
One day I travelled and a lot of things happened, others changed, and the rest remained the same.
She left, but she said it wasn’t because of me. I believed her because, well, why wouldn’t I? One day she called me and asked whether I missed her. I wish I hadn’t said anything, but I said I did. (Sometimes it’s less complicated to say nothing at all.) She said she hoped I wouldn’t forget her, nor the things we had lived. After that, we said nothing at all.
When I realised that there is nothing behind travelling other than self-indulgence, I wanted to humiliate her, myself too, and to just tell everyone “the truth”. We wanted to deny it, but how could we?
She ran away from the truth and left. Me, I keep thinking that those who like to travel are running away from something.

One day I left to travel. It was early on since we’d met, but I missed her as if she had been a part of me for centuries and lives before that. She called me to wish me well. I told her that I missed her and that I loved her deeply. She didn’t know what to tell me so she told me that she had missed me too, and wished me well (again). I don’t know what happened to us since then.
One day, without saying a thing, she travelled to the same place where I had been without her. She never told me about that trip and I can only ask myself, “could it be that she forgot about me in the same place I had gone to forget about her?” The secrets that the mountains must hold.

One day, walking alone through life (or the park), I thought I heard something that sounded like my name. I wanted to cry but I kept quite. Sometimes I can get so lost in the silence that I even forget the name God himself has given me.
Lost in the silence one day, I thought I heard my name. It wasn’t anything. My consciousness was shouting at me to wake up. The vice of nostalgia was crying to tell me to let myself go. The stars tried then to tell me something, but who sees celestial things during daylight? (The faithful ones who never wander?) I got myself lost because I listened to those three things that were screaming things that I heard as my name but in reality were probably saying something closer to “No!”.

One day she tried to embarrass me for speaking of God. Who was I? Who am I? God knows who I am, the rest doesn’t matter.

—2005 (I initially wrote this story in Spanish, but I’ve recently started to think about it again because I’m on holidays – and not travelling.)