Descent into madness and avoiding rabbit holes

Lockdown felt, at times, like a rabbit hole down which one sinks with remorseless ease.  Its progress or regress could be expressed most simply in terms of television viewing habits.  But I feared that under the surface, far more insidious changes are happening. 

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”        Khalil Gibran

It started with "Say, yes to the dress" a programme where women young and old come to find their bridal outfit in a plush shop in New York City.  There, they spend small fortunes to find that mystical dress that will transform their wedding into a fantasy story.  In the plush, spoiled environment they prance and complain and demand still more.  After a while one grows tired of their demands and expectations.  You simply become bored with their selfish absorption of how they want to look on the big day.  It is no coincidence that even the most expensive extreme dress is not quite enough and disappointment is often clear on their cosmetically enhanced features. 

Beauty and folly are often companions.                                    French Proverb

So I turned to another type of wedding outfitters.  Nazranaa Diaries offered a much more extreme range of dresses in terms of colour and richness both for brides and bridegrooms.  The vivid colours and range of styles make the ordinary bride wear very humdrum indeed.

An extra component is that the men are regaled in outfits just as over the top as the women.  It is refreshing to see men decide what suits them.

However, it is the young brides who usually dictate the colour and design of both bridal outfits.  Remonstrating with their groom-to-be about the colours of the wedding venue, their chosen colour palette and how the groom's outfit has to fit with her dress.    Her bridesmaids often have strong opinions too and the grooms are commonly paraded in increasingly bizarre clothes that are chosen for them whatever their own wishes.  It suddenly occurs to the viewer that this does not bode well for the future of the marriage.  Just once a groom held firm to his favourite outfit and his bride sulked and threatened him.  Her bridesmaid told him it made him look ridiculous.  He decided he wanted it anyway.  After a hundred episodes of hen picked grooms it was a wonder to behold.  "But it clashes with my dress!" His bride cried real tears to get her way. In the awkward moments that followed of his weeping tear-stained bride,  he fixed her with a steely glare and said: "I want this one!" I wanted to stand and clap in satisfaction.  But there are only so many Asian outfits despite the wider range of colours and shapes and sizes one can watch.  I grew weary of the expense and the shallowness of all it portrayed.

After that, I turned to the series on Big Fat Gipsy Weddings where the wedding dresses are so extreme and over the top that after only a few episodes I wearied of the excesses.  Somehow the outfits remind me of the tackiness and creepiness of Punch and Judy puppets.  I don't know why?

“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.”                         Confucius

By this stage, I was sickening of the self-obsessed prancing of brides-to-be in front of mirrors and screams of "Oh how beautiful I look!"  Quite frankly their happiness neither pleased nor entertained but merely bored me.  I needed something more hard-hitting, more emotion-inducing.  I found it in the series Curvy Brides Boutique.  Here very fat brides go to a wedding dress shop in the countryside designed for the larger woman.  Instead of being disappointed at finding one or no dresses to fit them, they are delighted to find an entire shop full of wedding dresses that actually fit them.  Nearly all these fat woman hate their image in the mirror so much that they don't like looking at themselves at all.  Their humility and lack of pride are refreshing.  They come across as so much nicer people.  Modest and self-effacing.  Prepared to laugh at themselves and with the very lowest of expectations regarding their wedding dress.  They just want to find a dress that fits, that will do.  So watching them get perfect makeup and hair then being given a dress that, with corsets, creates a waist was like watching Cinderella being transformed for the ball.  A kindly, fat, lacking in confidence Cinderella that deserved to have her big moment.  The look on their faces when the right dress is found is not triumphant but emotional and tearful.  They look genuinely surprised at their reflection in the mirror and say things like "I cannot believe I look alright in this dress".  As if being hideous was their birthright.  Their happiness makes them beautiful and you suddenly see that too.  All have stories and many touch your heart.  So many have been bullied because of their weight throughout school and they speak of the unkindness of others.  One feels ashamed at the cruelty of humankind and how much damage is inflicted to sweet souls every single day because of how they look.  A large young twenty-four-year-old had donated one kidney to her Mum and had put on a lot of weight since the operation.  Her bravery and act of selflessness which saved her mother's life spoke of the quality of this young lady and suddenly you realised what a lucky man her groom was.  The compassion and kindness of these self-deprecating ladies was the perfect antidote to the self-absorption of those earlier skinny brides.

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”              Rumi

Then, I grew tired of this rabbit hole entirely and saught the light.  Watching TV is such a degrading sedentary practice in so many ways.  You spend so much time digesting stuff that is unwholesome searching for more extreme versions of what you have already seen.  Your taste becomes odder and quirkier and jaded.    I call it a descent into madness and I tell the tale as a warning.  Avoid this particular rabbit hole and choose a healthier and more productive path.  WE are what we Do.

Hoshi Ryoku, oldest spa in the world? Built in 718 AD

In the year 717 AD a Buddhist monk climbed Mt Hakusan in Japan.  

Mt Hakusan

To put this period in historical perspective the Roman Empire had fallen and the world was dealing with the aftermath.  There would have been people alive in those days who would have lived in the time of the Prophet Muhammad.  Great Britain had not yet been invaded, but soon would be, by the vikings.  That lets you know how far back we are talking about.  

His name was Taicho Daishi and he spent a year there carrying out rigorous spiritual practices.  At the end of this period he had a dream.  In the dream he was told, 

”Lying 20-24 kilometers from the base of the mountain is a village called Awazu. There, you'll find an underground hot spring with wondrous restorative powers that Yakushi Nyorai (the Physician of Souls) has bestowed upon it. The people of the village, however, do not known of this good fortune. Descend the mountain and head to Awazu. With the people of the village unearth the hot spring-it will serve them forever."

Daishi went down to the village, uncovered the hot spring, and it was noticed that some sick people immersed in the water were cured immediately and their health restored. He bestowed the task of building a spa building at the site upon his disciple Garyo Hōshi, who really took this task to heart.   In fact, Hōshi’s family have diligently run a modest business at the site for nearly 1300 years. Hōshi has survived the rise and fall of the Samurai, the Ninja, many Japanese emperors and two world wars. His family have been running the business continuously for 46 generations.  It is still running to this day as a spa.  One of the oldest spas in the world. 

With such a history, when the Guiness Book of Records investigated the Hoshi Ryoku, for inclusion imagine their disappointment to discover that there was in fact an even older spa in Japan. This spa had been founded in 705 and had been running for 52 generations, the Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan!  But I reckon the Hoshi Ryoku has a whole mystical side that keeps it high on my list of favourite places to visit.

http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-oldest-hotel-hoshi-japan/13017/

The business that kills 5.4 million people a year and earns governments $200 billion a year

I had a friend who smoked.  She had two small children and was married to a nice chap called Timothy.  Nothing surprising about that you may be thinking.  Her young son David suffered from asthma and his inhalers were a part of his life.  

It was hard to see someone young struggle for breath and when asthma sufferers do not keep a control of their condition, things turn life threatening.  Hard enough to be disciplined when you are an adult but for young children it becomes trickier still.  Then, David had an accident and fell off his bicycle and ended up in hospital for many weeks as it was a compound fracture.  Julie, his mother travelled to every visiting time and took sweets, changes of pyjamas, toys and of course his asthma medication.  On the second week the nurse in David’s ward told her not to bring the asthma medication in, as he did not need it.  Perplexed Julie explained, “But he takes it every morning and evening!”  The nurse assured her that David had not used an inhaler since he arrived in hospital two weeks earlier and had been fine with not one single asthma attack.    Julie was stunned and the nurse asked a surprising question. “Do you smoke?”  Julie replied that she did, to which the nurse responded, “that is probably what is triggering his asthma, it is very common.”  Julie was stunned it had never occurred to her that she could be the cause of her son’s fight for breath.  When Daniel came home there was a sudden change, she no longer smoked in the house only in the garden.  After a few weeks it became only the kitchen.  In a month she was back to smoking in the house as before and David returned to his inhalers.  It amazes me how addictions can mean we sacrifice even our nearest and dearest to them. 

The smoking ban which came into force in public places in July 2007 has resulted already in 1,900 fewer emergency hospital admissions for asthma patients every year.  In other countries, where to the ban has been brought in both working and public environments the drop has been 40%. 

Dr Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, added: "This is important new research that further demonstrates how the smoking ban has dramatically improved people's lives and made smokers more aware of the harm smoking does to their health.

"Nearly a third of a million GP appointments each year are caused by children who are the victims of passive smoking. These horrendous figures show the scale of the problem we are still facing.”

Emily Humphreys from the health charity, Asthma UK, has also welcomed the findings: "This is something we campaigned for, so it is particularly encouraging that there has been a fall in children's hospital admissions for asthma since its introduction.

"We have long known that smoking and second hand smoke are harmful - they not only trigger asthma attacks which put children in hospital but can even cause them to develop the condition."

I remember David with all his inhalers and breathlessness and think of all those tiny children fighting for breath due to passive smoking in homes throughout the world. 

But then, one has also to remember all those who die from the effects of smoking.  The World Health Organisation has brought out a report (The WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic) very critical of the lack of action by many countries in confronting smoking.   “The tobacco epidemic already kills 5.4 million people a year from lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan. “Unchecked, that number will increase to more than 8 million a year by 2030.”

The report also gives one clear explanation for the lack of action.  Nations worldwide collect more than $200 billion in tobacco taxes annually.  Killing people is obviously a profitable business and the very best business is built on addiction.