What is the nature of goodness and evil? Do either actually exist in a pure form? Aren't we all capable of both, given particular circumstances? The dreadful events in Norway recently when at least 76 young people were killed in the shooting massacre by Anders Breivik do make one reflect on the subject.
Is he evil personified? He has certainly caused unbelievable pain and sorrow to innumerable people for no apparent reason. Is he mad or bad? I wonder if it actually matters. How can we really know the motivation or workings of the mind of someone who is capable of such horror? Should we spend time trying to understand an act of violence like this? It simply won't change anything that has happened. Doesn't it give him more attention than he deserves?
The Norwegian people seem to have coped with this with immense dignity. Perhaps that is something we should reflect on - the capacity of human beings for empathy, compassion & support for eachother. That is the truly good side of human nature.
It is important what society does with Breivik now. However close we are to the recent abhorrent events, it matters that he is dealt with humanely & within the rule of law. If an evil act results in further wrongs the perpetrator wins again. Fortunately for him, Breivik lives in a very sophisticated & advanced society. The way they are dealing with this tragedy shows clearly that evil does not ultimately triumph over good. Thank goodness, (excuse the pun), for that!
Saturday 30 July 2011
Wednesday 20 July 2011
Secrets & Lies
We all have secrets and we have all told lies. The important thing is what the secrets are, the harm done to others, how culpable we are & the real motives for the things we did or didn't do.
We have now had "financialgate", "expensesgate" & "mediagate". All knowingly committed by people with power & wealth for the basest possible motives. No matter how you "spin" the facts & try to find any justification for all three of these, they are an appalling revelation of the grotesque underbelly of our "civilised" society.
No wonder there is deep cynisism. No wonder there is very little trust in the people & organisations who run our complex 21st century society. But worse still, no wonder this translates into a self seeking & selfish attitude that seems to permeate all strata's of society.
Will the public revelations of all three of these change the way things are done? Maybe - a little. Hopefully there will be ever more vigilance & scrutiny. Will words of apology translate into sustained action to avoid repetition? I doubt it while there is money to be made & power to cling to. I see no signs of the financial institutions changing for the better. Quite the contrary.
The only hope is that I do believe that the vast majority of people basically have good intentions and are rightfully appalled at all of this. Maybe ultimately that will force change. It is very much needed.
We have now had "financialgate", "expensesgate" & "mediagate". All knowingly committed by people with power & wealth for the basest possible motives. No matter how you "spin" the facts & try to find any justification for all three of these, they are an appalling revelation of the grotesque underbelly of our "civilised" society.
No wonder there is deep cynisism. No wonder there is very little trust in the people & organisations who run our complex 21st century society. But worse still, no wonder this translates into a self seeking & selfish attitude that seems to permeate all strata's of society.
Will the public revelations of all three of these change the way things are done? Maybe - a little. Hopefully there will be ever more vigilance & scrutiny. Will words of apology translate into sustained action to avoid repetition? I doubt it while there is money to be made & power to cling to. I see no signs of the financial institutions changing for the better. Quite the contrary.
The only hope is that I do believe that the vast majority of people basically have good intentions and are rightfully appalled at all of this. Maybe ultimately that will force change. It is very much needed.
Saturday 16 July 2011
Philippa Sherrington
Pip died yesterday about 5pm. It was not a quick or easy death. She had been diagnosed with Non Small Cell Lung Cancer last Christmas, with secondaries in the liver, spine & bones. She would have been 43 on the 25th of July.
She was a remarkable woman in many ways, unusually empathetic, kind & loving. Life had never been easy for her. The Cancer which killed her was caused by earlier chemotherapy when she had Non Hodgkins Lymphoma years ago. Obviously life's blows shape our personality, but there was more to Pip than that. She had never become cynical, bitter or distrusting. She supported me through my husband's coma in ITU, subsequent death & funeral. But also continued that support untill she became too ill in the last week & a half. Not many people are capable of that.
Pip was highly intelligent & worked in Education as a university lecturer & teacher. Generations of students will be all the better for having been taught by Pip.We loved discussing politics & ethics & were of very much the same mind on issues. One of her favourite TV programmes was "The West Wing" which she introduced me to. Pip was a really ethical person in a world where that is becoming more and more unusual.
Pip was always very positive and fun loving. One of my best memories will be of the holiday we had sharing an apartment in Lanzerote last year. It was really great, cooking meals together every night & sharing several glasses of wine. Not a single cross word or problem, despite our age difference. How many people can you go on holiday with and say that?
I loved Pip and thought of her as a second daughter, especially as her mother died when she was in her teens. I knew her for over 30 years. I remember coming home early from holiday, when she and Maryon my daughter were teenagers staying in my house. They had obviously had a couple of boys staying & were highly embarrassed. Looking back neither of them were ever anything other than lovely girls, no huge rebellion, no drugs, no real cause for worry.
Maryon and I will miss Pip hugely. She will be a great loss to her sister Becky and her family. She loved them all a great deal. She was a great aunty, what a shame she won't be there to see the boys grow in to men. Maybe she will from afar - I'm not religious, so who knows.
She was a remarkable woman in many ways, unusually empathetic, kind & loving. Life had never been easy for her. The Cancer which killed her was caused by earlier chemotherapy when she had Non Hodgkins Lymphoma years ago. Obviously life's blows shape our personality, but there was more to Pip than that. She had never become cynical, bitter or distrusting. She supported me through my husband's coma in ITU, subsequent death & funeral. But also continued that support untill she became too ill in the last week & a half. Not many people are capable of that.
Pip was highly intelligent & worked in Education as a university lecturer & teacher. Generations of students will be all the better for having been taught by Pip.We loved discussing politics & ethics & were of very much the same mind on issues. One of her favourite TV programmes was "The West Wing" which she introduced me to. Pip was a really ethical person in a world where that is becoming more and more unusual.
Pip was always very positive and fun loving. One of my best memories will be of the holiday we had sharing an apartment in Lanzerote last year. It was really great, cooking meals together every night & sharing several glasses of wine. Not a single cross word or problem, despite our age difference. How many people can you go on holiday with and say that?
I loved Pip and thought of her as a second daughter, especially as her mother died when she was in her teens. I knew her for over 30 years. I remember coming home early from holiday, when she and Maryon my daughter were teenagers staying in my house. They had obviously had a couple of boys staying & were highly embarrassed. Looking back neither of them were ever anything other than lovely girls, no huge rebellion, no drugs, no real cause for worry.
Maryon and I will miss Pip hugely. She will be a great loss to her sister Becky and her family. She loved them all a great deal. She was a great aunty, what a shame she won't be there to see the boys grow in to men. Maybe she will from afar - I'm not religious, so who knows.
Tuesday 12 July 2011
Dying of Hunger
How often have I said that? How obscene. I've always had a huge choice of quality food and have never not had enough to eat.
The statistics of the current famine unfolding in Ethiopia, Kenya & Somalia are simply to large to comprehend. The last time this happened Band Aid worked wonders. How aptly named, because it was just a sticking plaster on a near mortal wound. And here we are again, but worse.
How can I - you - our country - the Western "civilised" world tolerate this litany of suffering and death? I, like many people, give to charity regularly as direct debits & sporadically as I see causes I identify with. It just scratches the surface of the need for equalisation of resources in our world today. Life isn't fair, but we are tolerating such gross unfairness simply by the way we live every day in the West. Only we can redress that balance. At the moment we are all complicit in the inequality.
Do we really need supermarket aisles, not shelves, stacked with every concievable sort of yoghurt to chose from? Do we really need the current plethora of choice of vegetables & fruits all year round? Producing our food cheaply means that someone somewhere in the Third world gets paid a pittance. We should be ashamed.
Everyone is equally important, wherever they happen to be born. Until there is a reasonable diet for everyone in our world we should individually & collectively say no to the unsustainable practices we turn a blind eye to every day. We know that individuals, changing their habits & working together can significantly influence politicians & effect change. We should all do it - NOW.
The statistics of the current famine unfolding in Ethiopia, Kenya & Somalia are simply to large to comprehend. The last time this happened Band Aid worked wonders. How aptly named, because it was just a sticking plaster on a near mortal wound. And here we are again, but worse.
How can I - you - our country - the Western "civilised" world tolerate this litany of suffering and death? I, like many people, give to charity regularly as direct debits & sporadically as I see causes I identify with. It just scratches the surface of the need for equalisation of resources in our world today. Life isn't fair, but we are tolerating such gross unfairness simply by the way we live every day in the West. Only we can redress that balance. At the moment we are all complicit in the inequality.
Do we really need supermarket aisles, not shelves, stacked with every concievable sort of yoghurt to chose from? Do we really need the current plethora of choice of vegetables & fruits all year round? Producing our food cheaply means that someone somewhere in the Third world gets paid a pittance. We should be ashamed.
Everyone is equally important, wherever they happen to be born. Until there is a reasonable diet for everyone in our world we should individually & collectively say no to the unsustainable practices we turn a blind eye to every day. We know that individuals, changing their habits & working together can significantly influence politicians & effect change. We should all do it - NOW.
Monday 11 July 2011
To My Daughter
How do I begin
To tell you all the things I want to say?
That life is short,
Joy is brief and to be savoured.
Love is elusive,
Rarely reciprocated in depth.
Avarice abounds.
Possessions possess.
The butterfly flits from flower to flower
For a brief summer.
How many note it's passing,
Wonder at it's beauty?
How many grasp at it's wings,
Crush & destroy the fragile beauty,
And brush the powder from their callous fingers?
To speak with the experience of passing years
With attitudes obscured by cynisism,
To one unfolding before my eyes
Like time lapse photography.
Dewy with expectation
That the world will unfold like a flower,
A bloom everlasting.
Not tainted.
How to impart the wisdom of age
In an age of no wisdom?
To a microcosm of self,
Though not a clone?
Subtle differences in looks and behaviour.
Have I given you enough along the way?
Enough to make wise judgements,
To value the valuable,
To leave aside the valueless.
Do you even mean the same as me,
When we speak the word
Values?
Hold fast to what you believe in.
But mostly, believe in yourself.
I don't want to see you a hedgehog
Flattened on life's road
By passing traffic.
Val Carlill - Written in the 1980's
To tell you all the things I want to say?
That life is short,
Joy is brief and to be savoured.
Love is elusive,
Rarely reciprocated in depth.
Avarice abounds.
Possessions possess.
The butterfly flits from flower to flower
For a brief summer.
How many note it's passing,
Wonder at it's beauty?
How many grasp at it's wings,
Crush & destroy the fragile beauty,
And brush the powder from their callous fingers?
To speak with the experience of passing years
With attitudes obscured by cynisism,
To one unfolding before my eyes
Like time lapse photography.
Dewy with expectation
That the world will unfold like a flower,
A bloom everlasting.
Not tainted.
How to impart the wisdom of age
In an age of no wisdom?
To a microcosm of self,
Though not a clone?
Subtle differences in looks and behaviour.
Have I given you enough along the way?
Enough to make wise judgements,
To value the valuable,
To leave aside the valueless.
Do you even mean the same as me,
When we speak the word
Values?
Hold fast to what you believe in.
But mostly, believe in yourself.
I don't want to see you a hedgehog
Flattened on life's road
By passing traffic.
Val Carlill - Written in the 1980's
Saturday 9 July 2011
Anniversary
Today is the day that life as I knew it stopped 2 years ago. It's the day David died, on what would have been our 43rd wedding anniversary. In the end he never recovered from the coma he had been in for 13 days, resulting from his fall from the roof. In the end he died naturally, if you can call being hooked to various machines in intensive care natural. I didn't have to give the word to switch life support off, the chest infection got him first. I felt he made the decision about when & how to die.
I wasn't with him. The transplant team had suggested I went off to get some fresh air after lunch because nothing could happen till 6pm when the operating theatres in Frenchay & Birmingham would be free from routine surgery for the organ harvest. I had been there since first thing in the morning to do all the organ donation paperwork. Mid afternoon I was just about as far away as it was possible to walk when they phoned to say I should come straight back. He had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. By the time I got to his bedside he had died.
It's very odd, because although he, as in his personality, hadn't been there since the fall, in death it was different. It was just a body he had left - finally. I had so wanted to be with him. I had so wanted there to be something good which came out of a stupid & careless accident & we had both registered as donors. But David was a very shy, unassuming & private person, in many ways a loner. Again I felt strongly that he had wanted to leave quietly, without fuss & without me having to turn off the machines.
People always thought that I was the dominant one. More outgoing than he was, yes. But he was the one who quietly made the decisions. He didn't believe in discussing things. He didn't believe in consensus. He knew what he wanted & by an large it happened. He knew right from wrong & he lived by that. He was kind and considerate. He was rarely emotional, he hardly ever lost his temper, but he also didn't broadcast his love. He was a really good friend, husband & father & I miss him - literally every single day.
Last year I emailed everyone to ask them to remember David & send me a memory of him for Maryon & the twins. This year I'm doing this blog. Next year I'm going to try not to put all the dates in my diary. So these are the dates:-
June 27th 2009 - In the morning David fell from a ladder up to the roof onto the
concrete in front of the kitchen at Savitri.
July 9th 2009 - Our 43rd wedding anniversary. David died after being in a coma.
July 18th 2009 - David's funeral.
July 19th 2009 - David's 67th Birthday.
I wasn't with him. The transplant team had suggested I went off to get some fresh air after lunch because nothing could happen till 6pm when the operating theatres in Frenchay & Birmingham would be free from routine surgery for the organ harvest. I had been there since first thing in the morning to do all the organ donation paperwork. Mid afternoon I was just about as far away as it was possible to walk when they phoned to say I should come straight back. He had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. By the time I got to his bedside he had died.
It's very odd, because although he, as in his personality, hadn't been there since the fall, in death it was different. It was just a body he had left - finally. I had so wanted to be with him. I had so wanted there to be something good which came out of a stupid & careless accident & we had both registered as donors. But David was a very shy, unassuming & private person, in many ways a loner. Again I felt strongly that he had wanted to leave quietly, without fuss & without me having to turn off the machines.
People always thought that I was the dominant one. More outgoing than he was, yes. But he was the one who quietly made the decisions. He didn't believe in discussing things. He didn't believe in consensus. He knew what he wanted & by an large it happened. He knew right from wrong & he lived by that. He was kind and considerate. He was rarely emotional, he hardly ever lost his temper, but he also didn't broadcast his love. He was a really good friend, husband & father & I miss him - literally every single day.
Last year I emailed everyone to ask them to remember David & send me a memory of him for Maryon & the twins. This year I'm doing this blog. Next year I'm going to try not to put all the dates in my diary. So these are the dates:-
June 27th 2009 - In the morning David fell from a ladder up to the roof onto the
concrete in front of the kitchen at Savitri.
July 9th 2009 - Our 43rd wedding anniversary. David died after being in a coma.
July 18th 2009 - David's funeral.
July 19th 2009 - David's 67th Birthday.
Monday 4 July 2011
Make Life Better
"...each one of us should do something to make life better for somebody, to change the course of events, even if only in the most local sense." - Alexander Mc Call Smith.
How easy it is not to get involved, not to put oneself out, to feel that one is too insignificant to make a difference to anything important, or one has too many problems of one's own to cope with someone else's. Rubbish! Simply a kind word or action can make a huge difference to someone in trouble. How positive is a little encouragement, a suggestion of a solution to a problem, an offer of help, a visit, phone call or email, or just an acknowledgement that someone is having a rough time.
At the other end of the spectrum there are numerous examples of how individuals doing small things together can actually effect huge positive change. Non smoking in public places, drink driving, the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Arab Spring, Nuclear Disarmament, Live Aid, volunteering.
Our society has changed so much. We no longer have the family networks or even close friendships we once had. Neighbours are often only glimpsed infrequently. So many people live alone & cope alone - or not. We are in danger of becoming ever more insular & wrapped up in our own lives. Once the habit is established it is very hard to break. The older you get, the harder it is to make new meaningful relationships.
“The fluttering of a butterfly's wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet” - Paul Erlich. Each one of us is a the butterfly's wing. We can effect micro and macro change. We just have to want to do it & be prepared to make the effort.
How easy it is not to get involved, not to put oneself out, to feel that one is too insignificant to make a difference to anything important, or one has too many problems of one's own to cope with someone else's. Rubbish! Simply a kind word or action can make a huge difference to someone in trouble. How positive is a little encouragement, a suggestion of a solution to a problem, an offer of help, a visit, phone call or email, or just an acknowledgement that someone is having a rough time.
At the other end of the spectrum there are numerous examples of how individuals doing small things together can actually effect huge positive change. Non smoking in public places, drink driving, the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Arab Spring, Nuclear Disarmament, Live Aid, volunteering.
Our society has changed so much. We no longer have the family networks or even close friendships we once had. Neighbours are often only glimpsed infrequently. So many people live alone & cope alone - or not. We are in danger of becoming ever more insular & wrapped up in our own lives. Once the habit is established it is very hard to break. The older you get, the harder it is to make new meaningful relationships.
“The fluttering of a butterfly's wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet” - Paul Erlich. Each one of us is a the butterfly's wing. We can effect micro and macro change. We just have to want to do it & be prepared to make the effort.
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