Dis - Ease

I am not infected with a disease. I am infected with Dis - Ease. 

There is so much happening in my world & the wider world that I do not understand & cannot tolerate. I cannot sit back & ignore it all. I cannot be at ease. 

I have little to complain about in my current life. I am really fortunate. I can afford the cost of living & I have a comfortable home, a lovely family & good friends. 

In a wider sense there are events in the UK that concern me & make me question if my birthplace bears any resemblance to the place I remember from my teens & twenties. Politics & politicians are not respected in the way they were, for good reason. Respect has to be earned through action in the best interests of the country & it's people. 

We seem to have had years of poor decision making in the interests of anyone but the people who vote. Currently I am incensed at our stance on the Israeli war. Keir Starmer defended Israel's "right" to totally cut power and water supplies to Palestinians in Gaza. He didn't explain how collective punishment methods, such as the withdrawal of water & aid supplies to a large urban area, could be done within international law - Completely indefensible collective punishment. I'm also appalled at the whole privatisation mess we are in with the Water companies, Justice system, NHS, Transport.....There has been profligate waste of public money & now the public are literally paying the price. So many special enquiries into lying & obfuscation over the years. So much compensation due to people who were completely let down & deceived.

I'm really not sure I'm proud to be British. However there are worse places to live. Syria for one. The latest in a long line of countries devastated by despotic, greedy, rulers who killed & maimed their own populations & who we failed. Failed because we did not speak out enough & we certainly didn't do much to stop the killing & devastation - Mealy mouthed words & not enough action. There are so many countries where the populations live in dreadful conditions & unsurprisingly want to escape. Our record on refugees & migrants isn't edifying. Suella Braverman called them an "invasion". Where is our humanity?

We don't have effective international organisations to deal with the complex & universal threats to peace & stability. We certainly don't have international organisations to deal with the existential threat of the Climate Emergency. Consensus is prevented by self interested vetos. Compromise is the name of the game.

The only way forward  is to mobilise the power of the people to do the right thing & force good decision making. I'm just not sure that we are able to do that. Human beings are inherently selfish.

Culture & Cultures

Culture - 

the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement collectively.

Cultures -

the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.

I enjoy the arts - music, literature, paintings & crafts, drama. I love opera & reading & going to exhibitions. So I suppose I am cultured, but have never thought of myself in that way before. I just know these things give me immense enjoyment & develop my thinking. They broaden my horzons & make me realise how varied, creative & talented people are.

When my husband & I retired we travelled a lot to most continents & some very far flung places. My views on holidays & travel have changed now we are in a climate emergency, but I think we did it in a way that actually benefitted local communities rather than big tour companies. I gained a lot from seeing that there are different ways of living & thinking. We were lucky in that we got to interact with local people & listen to their beliefs & opinions. I learned that our way of living, our culture, is not the only one or even the best one.

Human beings are very diverse in every way, but most countries have some sort of code of belief & behaviour that recognises the sanctity of human life & allows for great individual divergence. For some that comes through religion, for others it is a simple moral code. 

For a minority they have no such guiding principle. I am truly glad that Assad has been overthrown. It is such a shame that the world stood by knowing what he was doing & did nothing to stop him. I hope that the Syrian people can rebuild the country that I visited 24 years ago. It was a country that was very tolerant of all religions. A country of history, wonderful buildings & fascinating landscapes. Assad & his father are responsible for destroying much of that. I hope that we will remember what went before, rather than the last years under criminal tyrants & their followers.

 

Ummayad mosque Damascus

Ummayad mosque Alleppo before & after

The destruction of buildings & culture is awful, but the destruction of human lives is simply dreadful. Yet again we failed. We should have done more. 

Memories

I'm a bit ambivalent about the value of memories.I'm not sure that their impact on what we do or say is entirely beneficial. Even more importantly how they can make us feel is not necessarily good. 

I've never been very good at remembering things that have happened. Friends & family can remember times we shared far better than I can. I have very few memories of my childhood & they are not very clear. I can remember a place in the countryside I could walk to & really enjoy being in very well, even how I got there. I can remember a time in primary school when I was very upset, but not why or what happened afterwards. I can remember playing in the street with other children. I can remember a huge argument about me going to the Ideal Home exhibition with a friend. I can remember practicing the piano in a very cold front room. My childhood is little random vignettes. Even having hypnotherapy didn't help me recall more.

For some reason I don't understand my mind seems to have erased a lot. It isn't a new thing, I've always had a problem with it. 

I can remember far more of my life as an adult, but even then there are lots of events that other people remember & I don't. Mostly what sticks in my mind is polarised, either very pleasurable experiences & places I've been, or the complete opposite. I can remember emotions & feelings. I can remember faces.

My feeling is that it is important to know what has gone before in our lives, but dwelling in the past isn't helpful. It's gone & can't be changed. Everyones memories will be a melange of good & bad. Few of us will sail through life on a rosy cloud. I think that we should try to live in the moment & really value where we are now, what we are doing & who we are with. Life passes by so quickly, it's easy to become a slave to routine & not take chances that are offered.  

I know people who hold grudges, who misguidedly think that everything was better in the past, who hold onto sadness & anger. Lives filled with those sort of memories are not happy. We all need joy in our lives & we need to actively try to create good new memories. 

Now is what is important & what we do with it. 

Memory

Here I sit at my PC losing my mind & minding my loss. As I think I have mentioned before, there is plenty of data in my brain, it's retrieval that's the problem. 

I have just realised that I completely forgot to do my volunteer stint at the community centre last week. Normally it would be on the wipe clean weekly calendar on my fridge, in the paper calendar on my desk & in the calendar on my smart phone. Alexa would then remind me becase she is synched to my phone, as is my computer calendar. None of that happened, so I blithely went on with my day - in the wrong place.

The good side of that is no one needs to worry about me repeating gossip, I won't remember it. I may well not remember that I have told you something though & repeat it. (Please do tell me if I do). I may also completely forget that you have asked me to do something, so you may wait a long time to see it done. 

I am a compulsive note maker in my smartphone - but it isn't infallible because I may forget to look at Notes. Even more likely I won't remember what the cryptic note means!

In common with a lot of my friends I can set off to do something & be distracted & completely forget what it was I was going to do. I can almost feel a thought drifting out of my head. It's no good trying to remember what it was, but it might creep up on me if I ignore it.

All of this can be a bit frustrating, but there is nothing more I can do to counteract the loss of short term memory. I have known several people who had Alzheimers or vascular dementia & I'm reasonably sure I haven't got that, thank goodness. I'm just a bit unreliable. But I know I am & actually it really doesn't worry me much. I don't feel any compulsion to be perfectly reliable & organised anymore.

I think that along with so many physical & mental changes that take place in old age you have to go with the flow. Acceptance is a blessing. 

Just so long as you don't give up or bang on about it!

Christmas Waste

My book club had a clothes swap last night. Great fun & a really good way to recycle unloved clothes, especially when it's the Christmas season & we all need a nice outfit for Christmas day. Fast fashion comes into it's own at this time of year. I know people who buy a new outfit for Christmas every year. Often the clothes will only be worn a handful of times. Nothing I will be wearing is less than a few years old & some items have been in my wardrobe over a decade. I love them & I'm comfortable wearing them.

Christmas must be the worst period for food waste. Sprouts & Christmas pudding are probably the most "marmite" foods we eat at Christmas. I love both, but lots of people don't & a great deal ends up in the green food waste bin. I tried making sprout soup one year, but it wasn't a success. How many people actually use all the left over bits of turkey to make a fricassee for example? Even less people I imagine use the turkey bones to make a wonderful soup. The art of cooking from scratch & not wasting good food has been replaced by the big 5 supermarkets Christmas food.

Then there are the Christmas cards. I stopped sending them years ago & send email greetings & give the money saved on the cards & stamps to charity. I see little point in sending cards to people I can actually wish Happy Christmas to in person. The waste of paper, whatever the source including trees, or even if it's recycled paper, really isn't acceptable to me. My time is valuable, so I send the cards electronically in batches to different groups. Writing individual cards by hand just isn't a good use of my time. If I get cards I do cut up appropriate ones to make gift tags, but I still think it's a waste of finite resources.

Wrapping paper is even worse. I am rubbish at wrapping gifts & doing it causes me repetetive strain pain. I try to take wrapping paper off carefully to re use it, but actually it rarely works. When you see the over loaded recycling bins after Christmas it gives you a small idea of how much waste there is.

The decorations & Christmas tree take quite a lot of effort & money. Goodness knows how many real trees are chopped down every year & growing them must take up land that could be used for food production or re-foresting with deciduous trees. It has become fashionable to change your christmas tree decorations on a regular basis according to the current fashion. I'm pleased to say that my daughter has all my tree decorations & some were her grandmothers. I gave her my artificial tree too. The sales, often starting before Christmas are full of reduced christmas decorations , wreaths & lights. 

Finally, the presents. Many will end up in landfill, charity shops or the "present drawer". I have come to the conclusion that really presents are only appropriate for children. I'm not a scrooge or a grump, but the time spent trying to think of & find presents people will actually want or need is often wasted. I do really enjoy seeing someone open a present that it's obvious they are delighted with, but that isn't easy to achieve. Much of the time people feign pleasure & to be honest what is wonderful about socks, ties, jumpers, nightwear or slippers. Surely we all buy those for ourselves?

https://www.asustainablelife.co.uk/12-not-so-fun-festive-facts/

It's a mad repetetive cycle. We consume & consume & in doing so waste so much. It's completely unsustainable. What are we thinking?

Obviously we aren't!

 

Having a Voice

Old people, especially women, often say that they feel they are invisible. They can feel like unwanted outsiders in society, and may withdraw into isolation, in reality it's possible that we oldies collude in that. It's a form of ageism.

According to research by the Mather Institute the UK had the most negative ageist attitude, followed by a cluster of India, Bangladesh, Canada, the US, and Kenya. The most positive were Sri Lanka, followed by Ghana and Tanzania. "They found that ageism was not related to the proportion of older adults in the population or speed of ageing population growth. However, greater long-term orientation and greater masculine cultural dimensions were associated with greater ageism". "Ageism may be greater in these societies because they favour strength and competition, characteristics that are generally not associated with older adults". Conversely countries influenced by Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, such as Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam all value wisdom imparted by elders and treat them with a high degree of respect.

Fridays debate in the UK Parliament gave a voice to politicians on the issue of assisted dying. For once, it was a debate worth listening to. As a free vote there was no party affiliation & cross bench "yah booing". People actually listened to the points being well made. The voices on both sides were heard. I wish that happened all the time. 

We all have a voice, whatever our age, position in society, education & condition. The trouble is some voices are louder than others, some out shout more moderate voices. Some people even feel that their opinion is actually more important than others because of their intellect, education or status. These things may be important, but I think that experience matters more. 

We need to listen to people who know first hand what a situation is like. That is why we do need to listen to the voices of the elderly. They have years of experience of a huge variety of situations. They see repeating patterns & cycles & learn from them. 

On the other hand, we oldies really shouldn't "bang on" about our lives repetetively & boringly. We shouldn't be trapped in the past, it really wasn't necessarily that brilliant. We should be selective & just pass on the real nuggets of experience that might help in our current very complex world. 

We need to earn respect. It isn't a right.

 

A time to Die

I don't sit around wondering if I'm going to wake up tomorrow. I do know that my body is a complex system of interlinked parts that has been working more or less efficiently for nearly 80 years. Therefore, I know intellectually it is wearing out. My sell by date is approaching. That is logical & entirely acceptable.

In the meantime I am going to enjoy the life I have. I'm going to do the things that give me pleasure. I'm going to decline to do the things that don't. I'm also going to spend as little time as I can with people who are negative & self absorbed because they drain the joy out of life. I want to enjoy being with people I actually like. If you know you have a finite time remaining, then why waste it?

I do however spend a little time thinking about the "how" of dying. There have been people in my life who have had a "good" death. There are also those who haven't. I don't have a problem with dying, but I am a little concerned about the "how". I've lived alone for 15 years & am happy with that. But I really don't fancy being incapacitated & unable to look after myself. I would not want to have a fall or heart attack on my own without being able to summon help. The idea of lying in my house slowly dying or in pain until someone realised they hadn't seen me in a while isn't appealing. It is a reality however because there are quite often days when I don't speak to anyone.

I know I'm a bit of a control freak. So I have a house I designed to be future proof for my old age. I wear a personal alarm linked to the phone. I have quite a wide circle of friends. I have an on line presence to keep in touch with people I don't see.

There is a time to die for all of us. It can come at any age, any time, or place. We often have little or no warning. In reality we are dying from the moment we are born. All of that is acceptable & part of the natural order. 

The big change in my lifetime is that we are living longer & as a consequence there seems to be far more dis-ease. More people seem to have chronic conditions that involve pain, fatigue & disability. Much of that is probably bearable. The situation I cannot accept is that a proportion of people will have a very poor experience of death, involving great pain & disability, which are not properly controlled. There is a lack of good hospice care & what there is is dependent on donations.

I understand the complex issues around assisted dying, but I really hope that I will live long enough to have the choice if I get to that stage. I do not want to suffer. I want to have some agency over my death.

We are watching people dying in their hundreds of thousands around the world in places like Palestine, Yemen & Sudan & we are doing little or nothing to help. If we can tolerate that, surely we can make a conscious decision to help people who really want to die for very good reasons & have safeguards for those who shouldn't be helped. Or are our  lives more important than theirs?