It is astonishing what the human being can achieve

There are times when you begin to doubt yourself.  To see flaws, imperfections in all aspects of your persona.  Then cracks appear which effect your outer façade.  How you seem to others deteriorates until huge chunks of who you once were begin to fall away.  It’s not that we are, what others think of us.  It’s more that we are easily polluted by our environment.  We all like to think of ourselves as impervious to such erosion but unfortunately we’re not.  Once the slide into disintegration has begun no energy goes into reconstruction. All of it is diverted into keeping up appearances.  Trying to fool the onlooker that, actually, all is well.  So many organisations and  individuals are in that mode.  They don’t take criticism well because it strikes at the very core of what they have become.  Hypocritical shells of themselves.  Criticism to them can only fuel huge self-deception and aggressive defensiveness.  It is so easy to lose the plot.  Principles go out the window as pragmatism dominates.  In such a slippery state the hardest thing to do, is exactly what you need to do.  You need to set aside your own perspectives and learn from others.  It is perhaps hardest to do because it demands a trust of others at a point when we no longer even trust ourselves.  

One example of what one individual can achieve when they believe in themselves and go for their goals is the Edhi Foundation.  Abdul Sattar Edhi started a welfare centre in Pakistan with the equivalent of fifty-three pounds.  He bought an old van, which he called "poor man’s van" and he drove around providing medical help and burying unclaimed bodies. 

With his wife, a nurse, he has built a foundation that has grown to have 300 centres across the country, runs 8 hospitals providing free medical care, eye hospitals, diabetic centres, surgical units, a 4- bed cancer hospital and mobile dispensaries and they have in addition to a fleet of ambulances their very own air ambulance service.

Their achievements are breath taking indeed and include:

20,000 abandoned babies rescued

40,000 qualified nurses have been trained

50,000 orphans are housed in Edhi Homes

1 million babies have been delivered in Edhi Maternity Centres

1800 ambulances (the largest ambulance fleet in Pakistan and the largest private ambulance service network in the world)

He is now 82 years old and has been working for 60 years to serve the poor and the suffering. Here is a description of this modest man and his home,

“Edhi remains a very down-to-earth person, dressed always in grey homespun cotton local clothes.  Apart from the one room, which he uses for his living quarters, the rest of the building serves as his workplace in Mithadar, a locality of old Karachi that is full of narrow streets and congested alleyways. Adjoining their living room is a small kitchen where his wife usually prepares the midday meal. Next to it is a washing area where bodies are bathed and prepared for burial.”

It is astonishing what the human being can achieve when it sets out to try and solve the challenges society faces.  He may be half way around the world from us but isn’t it heartening to hear of an individual making a real difference. 

Humanity seems really weary for want of a better pattern of life to which to aspire.

My father was headmaster of a school in a small village in Northern Ireland high in the Sperrin mountains.  You learn a lot from your parents, not so much from what they say but more from what they do.  From my father, I learned tolerance and a search for knowledge.  In that small polarised community, Catholics on one side and Protestants  on the other, two communities existed side by side.  As one village wit sarcastically pointed out to my father, “You try and stay on the fence between the two communities and there isn’t room on that f__king fence!”  In a place, where some parents would stone the visiting psychologist’s car, in fear of them labelling their child as having special needs, it was tough at times.  Ignorance is scary, not funny.  Those who shout loudest are not necessarily the people we should listen to.  Volume rarely equates with insight.  Those who stir up hatred and prejudice do not appeal to our intellectual side but to our more animal instincts.  The few that try to speak to grander principles, such as the independent investigation of truth, will never be given the populist platform bigots possess.  Perhaps, it is easier to speak to the worst side of human nature rather than engender thoughts of the nobility of mankind.

I had a colleague who ran a business in the town nearby, a good man, married with two children.   For decades he was a pillar of society and then he lost his footing.  He had financial problems and he used client’s money to make up the shortfall.  Of course it was discovered, only the hardened criminal with expertise or the very lucky escape such deeds.  The local paper was frank but surprisingly fair, highlighting in an article the financial mistakes and criminal charges but also speaking to his forty years of service to the community.  The national tabloid newspapers were not so balanced.  They ran lurid headlines that assassinated that quiet man.  He was found in a fume filled garage dead, the tabloid newspaper open beside him.  When did these newspapers get the green light to degrade, humiliate, eviscerate, hound the famous, plague the bereft and expose only the very worst of our civilisation?  We have cultivated that taste for excess and the perverse in all of us and it sells newspapers very well but at what cost to all of us?

Is that the only way individuals can feel good about themselves, by constantly observing and gloating at the degradation of others?  To me it is akin to a short man digging a trench around himself so that he can appear taller.  The sad news is there seems no end to the depth of this trench.  Just when you think the press has reached an all time low they discover a whole deeper darker level.  Reporters should enquire into situations as much as possible and ascertain the facts, then set them down in writing.  Such news is a mirror of the world and it is a potent instrument that should be used with justice and equity, not to torture the subject and degrade the reader.  They have a  mighty responsibility.  They are not meant to manipulate for material gain, malign for malicious intent or magnify the misdemeanours of our society. Humanity seems  genuinely really weary for want of a better pattern of life to which to aspire.

It is surely in finding a better of pattern of life real hope lies.  My mother taught me kindness not with words but deeds.  A neighbour’s cat died after giving birth to five kittens near our home and I remember being awed as my mother set herself the task of hand rearing these five small bundles of fur.  We had big thick brick storage heaters, which were great for sitting on, and she used one of these for the kittens, placing their bed just above the heater.  She used an eyedropper to feed them regularly and had names for them all including the best feeder Big Boy who was impossible to fill.  I watched as she fought to save them all even the runt a tiny still shape under the feet of the rest.  They all survived and I watched engrossed at how much work and dedication it took to keep these tiny fragile animals alive.  It seemed to require incredible act of determination and will power.  When they were fully weaned she found owners for all of them.  The local postman took two of them.  Within weeks, he and his family suddenly decided to immigrate to Australia.  Unbelievably to me, as a child, he had the two cats, one of whom was Big Boy, euthanized.  I was devastated by how much work it takes to keep something alive and how little it takes to end a life.  It suddenly seemed when it comes to ending life, thoughtlessness is an advantage.  

Now, as an adult I look back and wonder at my Mum’s thoughtfulness and kindness.  She worked, had three children, nursed my invalid grandfather fighting gangrene and yet found it within her to lavish such kindness on five vulnerable kittens.  I suspect that, is what good people do, they instil in themselves the habits of kindness, every hour and every day.  Steeling themselves to do good in this world.  It is not easy, it is backbreaking and it is hard finding that extra energy to see to the needs of others.  But there are so many like her around us, looking after our young, our elderly, the disabled, the ill every day and night.  Pushing themselves past limits of human endurance and we will never read about them in newspapers.  It is a shame really, because these are the people at whose feet we should be learning what it is to be a real human being.   They, by their deeds, foster families and communities whose ways give real hope to the world. 

           

 

The Walk – A pictorial tale of desire and longing

Walked around San Anton gardens (in Malta) and then from Valletta to Sliema capturing some of my favourite things on the way.

A beautiful walled garden around a palace. San Anton Palace was built between 1623-1636 as a summer residence for the Grand Master of the Order of St John, Antoine de Paule. Beautiful trees and lovely green lined paths.  Such an oasis of calm.

One of the lovely walkways, great to wander through pondering stuff.  It has a lovely kitchen garden cafe to have coffee in and watch the ducks and kids.

Then, after a coffee it was on to Valletta.  Jumped off the bus as it entered the city walls so I could take the coastal route back to Sliema.  Next stop, after an hour of walking, was ice cream at Busy Bees.  Positively, the best ice cream on the island.  Then onto my favourite house, I have no idea who owns it, but I want it!

Around the corner is a ship owned by Errol Flynn briefly in the 1950s now converted into a restaurant on the sea front.

Fashioned on strength, so that she could penetrate the Baltic ice floes in the cold winters and sail in the strong Nordic winds of Scandinavia, the Black Schooner was constructed with a hull of two layers of thick seasoned oak. For sixty-nine years she navigated under sail with cargoes of grain, coke and wood on voyages far and wide. Built around 1909 it has had a traumatic history, suffered weevel worm in the hull, a fire in the engine room, abandoned by her owners in a Malta harbour where she sank, settling on the seabed at a depth of 70 feet for years.  Eventually, she was refloated and refitted and used in the filming of the motion picture “Popeye.  Sadly, she sank again during a freak storm in 1981.For a ship that has sailed the high seas for so long there is something tragic to find it on dry land, being prostituted as a restaurant.

This one is my favourite yachts in Malta so far.  Such beautiful wood and lovely lines.  A really classy article with a life boat look of stability that appeals to the total coward in me.  Note the rich cruiser alongside, now they don’t tempt me at all.  We had a cruiser and they drink the fuel so quickly that instead of enjoying the sea and scenery you end up transfixed by the falling fuel gauge.  Just in case you think I come from a rich yachting set, let me hasten to say ours was small and much less impressive.  I fondly remember my Dad feeling nervous about leaving our new purchase tied to the walls of the harbour and so we rigged up a combination of sturdy ropes to secure our new boat safely in place.  Came back to find the tide had gone out and our boat was hanging from the wall in mid air.  Darn, but we had really tied it securely! 

She is bigger and broader than she appears.  See what I mean about a broad beam?  But, like all things it has that beauty that only comes from being well looked after!  Only another 4km to home now, I reckon I will make it before nightfall.  

A Real Winner

 

It has been said with more than a grain of truth that if you want to win the Nobel Peace Prize start killing loads of people quickly.  Once you have murdered enough then make peace.  This, it would appear is the quickest way to win the Noble Peace Prize.  It is perverse because it is also so true and many previous winners fall into this category.  But, the hardest way to win this prize is to actually believe in a noble principle and work with backbreaking intensity all your life to achieve it. 

An example of some one who falls in to the latter category is Norman Borlaug.  He grew up a farm boy in Iowa and saw at first hand the poverty of the depression years and it instilled in him a conviction that it was impossible “to build a peaceful world on an empty stomachs”.  This fuelled a lifetime commitment of almost a century during which this determined man did more than anyone else during the 20^th century to help the world feed itself and the fruit of his labour was the saving of hundreds of millions of lives.

 

Now, that is the way to win a Noble Peace Prize!  It was typical of the man that when his wife told him he had won the prize he was working in a wheat field outside Mexico City and he responded by telling her someone was pulling her leg.  When persuaded of the truth of the prize he did not leave the field but kept working commenting that he could celebrate later.  It was this sense of urgency that stayed with him and his knowledge that every second two more people into the world crying to be fed.  By 2050 he predicted that the world would need to double its food supply of 2005.

He specialized in plant breeding and left a good job to go to Mexico in  1944 and started experimenting with wheat to help people who were starving there.  Mexican farmers faced soils which were depleted, crops ravaged by disease, low yields and were not even able to feed themselves, much less sell surplus for profit.   For ten years he persevered even ploughing by hand and, thanks to his efforts, by 1956 Mexico’s wheat production had doubled and it had become self sufficient.  It did not stop there, he then went to India and, while the war between Pakistan and India raged around him, began planting until it too became self-sufficient in producing cereal grains.  He even came out of retirement, in 1984, to take his seed and techniques to Africa. 

 

When the Nobel committee presented him with the Peace Prize they commented “More than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world”

Isn't it sad, and a sign of the poverty of our education system, that hardly anyone even has heard of this amazing character?

“The fundamental basis of the community is agriculture, tillage of the soil.”

Baha’i Writings

So leaders can be killers and often are

Am posting this here as new website a bit slow these days -sorry if you have already seen it!

People sense things about others.  My mother swears her first impressions are always spot on.  Mine are totally crap.  It’s not just that I lack that intuitive feel for people; it’s something more fundamental than that.  Lately, I have begun to suspect I am a hermit in a modern world.  Think about it, what social skills do hermits need?  None, in fact in a certain light a desire for social interactions is a positive flaw.  You can’t have a hermit hanging out on street corners gabbing away about the local gossip.  Neither, do you want a talkative hermit with the broadcast signal ever on.  No, you want silence, introspection, a tendency to prefer your own company and a genuine desire for solitude.

Perhaps, first impressions were evolved by the sociable among us after their initial forage into community dynamics around Stone Age fires.  After chatting to enough fur clad companions these extraverts began to figure out who would respond willingly to conversation gambits and who would respond with a club to your head.  This over centuries morphed into an intuitive feel for different types, perhaps fuelled by common gestures, speech patterns, physical habits etc After all, most of us can tell when relatives are sulking, moody or bad tempered.  They don’t have to verbalise such distress, banging doors, awkward silences and even the way in which they perch uncomfortably on a chair say it all.  Gradually, those proficient in first impressions began to use their newfound skills.  It’s not a big jump from understanding your audience to manipulating and directing them.  Maybe, our first leaders emerged from this very cohort, skilled in the art of reading others, they could have used it to attain positions of authority.  No wonder intertribal warfare became common.  Into the mix comes different groups with their own loyalties and impervious to the group manipulation of their rivals. 

You can see it all evolving nicely with politicians and sales people emerging from this early branch of extraverts.  So if this holds true, what happened to the hermit?  Well, perhaps being on your own lends itself to development of crafts and arts.  It allows extra time to fine hone skills that only the extended isolation from others permits.  Some philosophers and scientists perhaps, could also trace their evolutionary roots back to the hermits in caveman days, loners who had time to examine sunsets on a mountain top, contemplate the grain of a wooden club.  But it is not all rosy in the hermitage.

Psychopaths and violent criminals also usually spring from hermit stock.  Studies have show that the majority of criminals at the vilest end of the scale have not yet mastered the social skills of toddlers.  Such people have often cannot even manage basic eye contact when speaking, nor learned rudimentary body language cues. So there you have it.  Hermit or socialite?  Are you adept at social skills, reading people, responding to their overtures?  Or are you happier in your own company, introspective and socially constipated?

Mind you it makes sense in caveman society that if you are a violent killer, there would be a high likelihood of some community minded individual clubbing you to death in your sleep.  After all, one of the advantages of community living is that one’s faults are plain for all to see.  Indeed one of the little known facts about psychotic aggressives is that, generally, they move frequently causing little oasis of pain in their wake.  Out of proportion to the number of social contacts most of us have.  The advantage of moving is that they can often evade detection by exiting when their activities begin to reach night time clubbing proportions or in today’s parlance, when they come onto police radar. 

But there are psychotic individuals who perversely rise to the very top.  Probably, the caveman example would be the violent oppressor who manages to rule the community with fear and impunity.  Despite their violent tendencies such characters have usually cloaked themselves in the disguise of a greater cause.  Thus, justifying their mass murders.   You may well think I’ve lost the plot here but you need only look back to   Stalin, Russia (through his land programme and The Great Terror caused the death of millions), Hilter, Germany (including six million Jewish people in the Nazi genocide) and in case you think World War 2 was an exception, later the killing propensity of leaders went on with Mao Zedong, China (40–70 million people through starvation and executions).  The list goes on, stretching not just back into the past but depressingly on up to present days.  So leaders can be killers and often are.  The question is, are they hermits with killer tendencies or extraverts with murderous intent?  I have come to no conclusions except two suggestions:

1. My conviction that things will improve when we elect leaders not because they want the position of power but because they are capable of serving a nation. 
2. It would also help if the horrendous tortuous process of becoming and staying a leader did not deform even normal decent human beings into a shadow of their former selves.  You may be a hermit or an extravert or somewhere in the middle but do spare a thought for those in power whatever they started off, corruption seems to set in sooner or later!

"How does one look forward to the goal of any journey? With hope and with expectation.”

We are born, we live and we die.  Life on this material plane exists of these three stages.  Birth is pretty traumatic, you emerge down a narrow restrictive channel bruised, bleeding and gasping for air.  Dying, I’m told can be pretty traumatic too.  Again, gasping for that last breath, facing darkness and feeling battered from holding on to life. What about the in between?  Well, living that gap between birth and death, can be bloody, breath taking and you invariably find yourself in the dark at times.

So what do we learn from all this?  For one, I tend to find the whole idea of re-birthing hogwash.  As if repeating the birthing experience as an adult can exorcise what went wrong first time around.  I feel the same way about reincarnation, the idea of having to live another life again, how depressing and repetitive.  I also am heartily fed up of listening to people who claim they were Princess Antoinette, or the Queen of Sheba in a previous life.  Please, isn’t living one life sufficient and having the notion of endless repeat attempts an admission of failure (a sort of university of life, examination resit schedule for the chronically incapable)? And doesn’t having that notion of endless repeat attempts steal from this one life the priceless unique opportunity that it really is.  Much as some would prefer to think otherwise, this is it folks, no rehearsals, no second takes we have only one shot.

You cannot even prepare the baby within for that shock of birth.  No stroking of that bump or careful explanations of the coming process can help.  Pre-natal classes, prepare parents but we are kidding ourselves if we think they make a major difference to the actual experience ahead for the baby.  Being born is traumatic.  Having a chilled out mother perhaps reduces adrenalin flowing to the baby, a darkened room helps reduce the shock of bright lights on the newborn, a quiet delivery room avoids the noise assault experienced somewhat.  The voices of family members, whose voices are familiar, can be comforting, but who are we kidding here.  Birth is traumatic for a reason.  Without that shock perhaps that first vital breath is not taken.  Indeed some babies require removal of fluid from their airways and a jolt to the body to get truly going.  Transition is painful, by definition there is a letting go of what one has become accustomed to.  We can have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the next phase of our life.

By contrast, dying can sometimes be incredibly peaceful too.  Weariness, deep tiredness to the bone can anaesthetise that final transition.  Sleep is referred to as ‘the little death’ for many reasons.  It is also a surrendering to oblivion, to a different state.  So, if our physical life is like bookends, with birth and death at either end, perhaps there are lessons that can be learned and applied.  Not being afraid will help reduce the trauma, a peaceful environment soothes the spirit (not easily found in the modern hospital environment) and being surrounded by those closest, remind you that you are not alone even at this final moment and wrap you in that greatest comfort blanket of all, love.  I chose to think that we are then, freed of our physical body much as when you remove the cage, the bird is finally free to fly.  This transition is traumatic but necessary.  At a recent funeral a family friend was speaking to the audience of mourners and pointed out that death is not a shameful and fearful thing to which the recently departed loved one has been subjected to.  It is a part of life, like birth and a path each one of us sooner or later will take.  He then asked the question, “How should we view death?”  and gave this quote as an answer,  "How does one look forward to the goal of any journey? With hope and with expectation.”

So, what about that period in the middle called life?  Well, it can be traumatic but then that usually  means a time of change has come.  Be comforted that you are at a turn in the road and a time of transition.  You may well be a little bloodied, somewhat in the dark, not sure of the way ahead, but don't forget to enjoy the journey.

Be gone foul cup cake

I will not eat that cake

It sits there gloating

Full of fat, bulging cream

As if to say

Be like me, abundant

Indulgent, finger-licking good

But I have eaten my ryvita

My chosen food of suffering

Chewed down the tasteless

Sesame covered cardboard

And I will not be tempted

By such fancies as that

Luscious cup cake

I have aspirations

To be less of me

And if I have to live

On cardboard and water

It will be so.

I am a woman with a goal

Not some weak floozy

Who is thrown by the unexpected

I am made of sterner stuff

My will once set

Cannot be broken.

Be gone foul cup cake

I spurn you

You are nothing to me

In the greater scheme of things

You are but a tiny morsel

I’ll take just one crumb to remind me

Of all that I choose to reject

One needs to know the enemy

Keep your friends near

But your enemies even closer

Heavens that cake was small

It started with a crumb

Barely a morsel

But somehow the cake has been eaten

I can’t believe it’s gone

In the greater scheme of things

I will not let such a slip

Cause me to lose my way

To err is human after all

Even one crumb can lead you to disaster

Now I know the danger of a tiny piece

That is how it begins

A slippery slope

To cake indulgence

I will be strong

I will say no

To all future, finger-licking food