We all need to grieve – not just over the death of someone we love – but for other things as well. Obviously to lose a pet is a cause for grief as is the loss of a friend. In these cases we need to grieve, to gather our strength, to re-assess our new situation without that person or pet. What I am talking about here is the loss of something close to each of us, something that we hold dear, something that has been a constant, that we have taken for granted, at least in our own mind.
I am talking about something which we may have considered as part of us, our make-up, our psyche, some characteristic, some trait which makes us, us. If this particular trait or characteristic is criticised or diminished in any way, or if it is realized to be, or pointed out to be, somewhat inappropriate and we recognize the truth of the matter then a change takes place, whether we want it or not. It is an immediate change and comes as a shock to the system. We immediately feel we have lost something – something we had previously considered as important.
Take my case for instance. I recently became very angry with someone I love dearly and who is my best friend. There had been some disagreement over a relatively trivial matter (as is usual in life’s relationships). This gradually, over the course of a few days, grew into something far greater than it really was. As I say I became very angry and it was not entirely what I said but the manner in which it was said, that has caused the repercussions.
As has been repeatedly stated in what I write, for every effect there was somewhere a cause. We can never know what string has been pulled or what thread has been severed and where the effect of the pulling or the severing will be felt. But felt it will be – somewhere and at sometime. There have been so far two repercussions that I have keenly felt. One and by far the most important one is that I sense the relationship with my friend has grown slightly more distant – still friendly and a loving relationship but not quite so warm. There is a lack of spontaneity and a slightly more cautious approach – from both my friend and myself.
The other repercussion is one that is of lesser importance but keenly felt none-the-less. It is about my temper. I have always striven, generally successfully, to control my temper. I am a human being and have always known that I had a temper and that if I let slip the leash, it will become a very bad temper. Now I may be exaggerating, but I don’t believe I have lost my temper more that about three or four times in my life. One of the reasons I try to control it is because when I really loose it and see red (and I do actually see red – my attention is totally focused by what appears to be a narrow tunnel, with the object of my anger at the other end) I feel physically ill for some time afterwards. The other, and more important point, is that I am afraid of what I might do to the person I am angry with – if I totally lose control, what will (or what can) I do? I don’t know.
I have written about the pointless of anger many time – it never solves a problem – only causes more! So now I have not only hurt a friend, which grieves me, but I have also, finally and at last, recognized the foolishness of getting angry – anger is toxic (to me at least) and has severe repercussions on innocent parties to the detriment of all.
The realization that control over my anger was always merely a front, to appear to be calm and in control, is difficult for me to appreciate and to learn. Yet the only thing that I have damaged in myself is my ego. I am now, in some small way, not what I thought I was. I am not diminished in any way – in fact I may now be a better person. But I feel the loss. This is where the grieving comes in.
I will grieve about, and do my best to repair, the relationship with my friend, and over time I feel sure that a new and stronger relationship, based on a new understanding and stronger ties will eventuate. That is what grief is for – to grow and become stronger from the grief.
My ego? Oh well I am sure it will recover fairly quickly as ego’s tend to do. I will justify the “loss” in whatever way seems appropriate and again, I am sure, I will be a better person from the loss!!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Dangers of using FENAC
Gee! One has to be so careful about what drugs you take and be self aware – know yourself – to see what side effects they may have.
Take my case for instance. I have been taking FENAC, a widely diagnosed anti- inflammatory, for a month or two, to control the pain in my arthritic left shoulder. There are thirty (yes, 30) listed side-effects. The ones that I noticed on myself where a bit of confusion and some disorientation with a change of mood – I felt a bit depressed. So I read the information from the Alphapharm Pty Limited website (the makers of FENAC) and there it was, and I quote, “If you are over 65 years of age, you may have an increased chance of getting side effects. .......
• confusion, disorientation
• change in mood such as feeling depressed, anxious or irritable.”
The Chemist never told me about these side effects – nor did my Doctor. LESSON ONE – never just accept what a doctor or a chemist tells you. Learn to read your body. It is your body so don’t give control over it to some stranger.
So now you know – be warned. I have now thrown away the FENAC tablets I had not used and will now use nothing except possibly some milder substance such as (occasional) use of paracetamol.
Take my case for instance. I have been taking FENAC, a widely diagnosed anti- inflammatory, for a month or two, to control the pain in my arthritic left shoulder. There are thirty (yes, 30) listed side-effects. The ones that I noticed on myself where a bit of confusion and some disorientation with a change of mood – I felt a bit depressed. So I read the information from the Alphapharm Pty Limited website (the makers of FENAC) and there it was, and I quote, “If you are over 65 years of age, you may have an increased chance of getting side effects. .......
• confusion, disorientation
• change in mood such as feeling depressed, anxious or irritable.”
The Chemist never told me about these side effects – nor did my Doctor. LESSON ONE – never just accept what a doctor or a chemist tells you. Learn to read your body. It is your body so don’t give control over it to some stranger.
So now you know – be warned. I have now thrown away the FENAC tablets I had not used and will now use nothing except possibly some milder substance such as (occasional) use of paracetamol.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Consequences.
There are always consequences for anything we do. These consequences cannot be avoided or limited in any way – each one of us feels the effect of these, both negative and positive, on a daily basis. We do ‘good’ things and good things happen; we do ‘bad’ things and bad things happen.
The thing is that we can never, or at best very seldom, tie any specific action or behaviour or sequences of actions or behaviours, to any particular consequence or sequence of consequences. There are some obvious ones certainly – aim a gun at someone and pull the trigger and there is a very good likelihood of injuring or killing them; spend more money than you earn and you end up in debt. These are brutal, up front, in your face type consequences. What I am talking about are the subtle ones that are not immediately obvious; the ones that may take years to work their way through the ‘system’ as it were.
Take two current problems the World is facing at the moment, which are consequences of activities, actions, behaviours and thought patterns that go back many years – generations in fact. The first one is ‘climate change’ and the second is the Middle East (Israel, Gaza, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan).
Now whatever you think about the science behind the various claims and counter claims supporting or denying Man’s involvement in this debate one fact (to me) is obvious. We CANNOT continue to despoil, pillage and exploit the resources of the world as we are doing at the present moment. We cannot continue doing what we are now without suffering consequences of some sort. More of the same will be disastrous – there will be consequences we cannot predict but only sense.
I know that climate change – natural change – has always been a feature of geological time; ice-ages, extreme volcanic activity playing havoc with weather patterns and such like. This is natural and I have no argument with this – we can’t do anything about it anyway – it just happens and we (here we go) have to live with the consequences. My point is that by doing nothing we are not HELPING nature, the World, the Gaia, or whatever you call it, to recover naturally. And it will recover naturally – with time but we are not giving it that time.
Exploitative human activity is damaging the Nation and ‘our’ World to the detriment of all.
• Soil degradation. Much of our precious topsoils is either blown away (dust storms) or washed away (soil erosion) each year. Poor environmental planning and farming practices are the cause.
• Excessive use of chemical fertilizers. Because of the soil degradation more and more chemicals are being used which produce foods that are not as nutritious as they should be. They are deficient in essential minerals.
• Water. The essential element for life on earth. In the case of fresh water, in quantity, storage and quality, improvements are vital for the future health of the Nation and the World.
• Industrial activity. In the quest for ever increasing profits enormous quantities of toxic and polluting substances are being pumped into the atmosphere, the soil and water (both fresh and salt) of our Nation and the World. Huge tracts of land are being cleared of trees and other vegetation for what – profit?
These are just a few aspects of the immensely complex and interwoven matrix which I consider comes under the umbrella of ‘climate change’. We are in a position to do SOMETHING (my preferred option) rather than NOTHING (as advocated by the sceptics). Just think about it, even if, as some of the sceptics believe, the world is getting colder, not hotter, how will this help? It will just herald a new dark-age with shorter growing seasons.
From an economic point of view I suspect we are going to suffer, one way or another. This will be the consequence of thoughtlessness, of greed and the extreme capitalistic ideal of ‘profit’, no matter the cost (in the lives of all flora and fauna and economic cost).
Now for the second big problem – the conflict in the Middle East. This goes back a long time. Without going into a detailed history of the region one could really consider the problem as being the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (after the First World War) and the British withdrawal from India (and Pakistan) and Iraq and the West’s interference in Iran and Palestine. The immediate cause, I suspect, is the false idea that the ‘West’ can impose its will, its ideas and its manner of living on peoples who trying to work out their own responses to their environment and to world events.
To think, even for a moment, that peace will be established by the production of greater numbers of ever more complex weapons is madness. Most of us have still to learn that peace is not external, but an internal state, that then translates to all things external. How can there ever be peace if nations or groups of people are constantly thinking about and preparing for war? How can there ever be peace if people are constantly thinking violent and warlike thoughts? It is never going to happen.
A cessation of violence or truce may be established if someone or some nation subdues another by being stronger or having a bigger and better army. But that is not peace. Think of the Korean conflict in the 1950s and how about the various Israeli/Palestinian conflicts. There has never been peace in these areas. We need to think ‘outside the box’ and use our accumulated wisdom in a rational, measured and reasonable manner.
There is no peace because the underlying problem has never been addressed – injustice, perceived or actual, is at the root of most conflicts and will be the root of the Middle East and the Korean problems. Sort out the injustices (perceived or otherwise) and the reason for the violence is removed. There is nothing that rankles and festers in the mind as much as injustice. If individuals have a feeling they have been hard done by and bear a grudge because of this then, rightly or wrongly, they will feel justified in fighting (as they may think) to redress the injustice.
The thing is that we can never, or at best very seldom, tie any specific action or behaviour or sequences of actions or behaviours, to any particular consequence or sequence of consequences. There are some obvious ones certainly – aim a gun at someone and pull the trigger and there is a very good likelihood of injuring or killing them; spend more money than you earn and you end up in debt. These are brutal, up front, in your face type consequences. What I am talking about are the subtle ones that are not immediately obvious; the ones that may take years to work their way through the ‘system’ as it were.
Take two current problems the World is facing at the moment, which are consequences of activities, actions, behaviours and thought patterns that go back many years – generations in fact. The first one is ‘climate change’ and the second is the Middle East (Israel, Gaza, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan).
Now whatever you think about the science behind the various claims and counter claims supporting or denying Man’s involvement in this debate one fact (to me) is obvious. We CANNOT continue to despoil, pillage and exploit the resources of the world as we are doing at the present moment. We cannot continue doing what we are now without suffering consequences of some sort. More of the same will be disastrous – there will be consequences we cannot predict but only sense.
I know that climate change – natural change – has always been a feature of geological time; ice-ages, extreme volcanic activity playing havoc with weather patterns and such like. This is natural and I have no argument with this – we can’t do anything about it anyway – it just happens and we (here we go) have to live with the consequences. My point is that by doing nothing we are not HELPING nature, the World, the Gaia, or whatever you call it, to recover naturally. And it will recover naturally – with time but we are not giving it that time.
Exploitative human activity is damaging the Nation and ‘our’ World to the detriment of all.
• Soil degradation. Much of our precious topsoils is either blown away (dust storms) or washed away (soil erosion) each year. Poor environmental planning and farming practices are the cause.
• Excessive use of chemical fertilizers. Because of the soil degradation more and more chemicals are being used which produce foods that are not as nutritious as they should be. They are deficient in essential minerals.
• Water. The essential element for life on earth. In the case of fresh water, in quantity, storage and quality, improvements are vital for the future health of the Nation and the World.
• Industrial activity. In the quest for ever increasing profits enormous quantities of toxic and polluting substances are being pumped into the atmosphere, the soil and water (both fresh and salt) of our Nation and the World. Huge tracts of land are being cleared of trees and other vegetation for what – profit?
These are just a few aspects of the immensely complex and interwoven matrix which I consider comes under the umbrella of ‘climate change’. We are in a position to do SOMETHING (my preferred option) rather than NOTHING (as advocated by the sceptics). Just think about it, even if, as some of the sceptics believe, the world is getting colder, not hotter, how will this help? It will just herald a new dark-age with shorter growing seasons.
From an economic point of view I suspect we are going to suffer, one way or another. This will be the consequence of thoughtlessness, of greed and the extreme capitalistic ideal of ‘profit’, no matter the cost (in the lives of all flora and fauna and economic cost).
Now for the second big problem – the conflict in the Middle East. This goes back a long time. Without going into a detailed history of the region one could really consider the problem as being the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (after the First World War) and the British withdrawal from India (and Pakistan) and Iraq and the West’s interference in Iran and Palestine. The immediate cause, I suspect, is the false idea that the ‘West’ can impose its will, its ideas and its manner of living on peoples who trying to work out their own responses to their environment and to world events.
To think, even for a moment, that peace will be established by the production of greater numbers of ever more complex weapons is madness. Most of us have still to learn that peace is not external, but an internal state, that then translates to all things external. How can there ever be peace if nations or groups of people are constantly thinking about and preparing for war? How can there ever be peace if people are constantly thinking violent and warlike thoughts? It is never going to happen.
A cessation of violence or truce may be established if someone or some nation subdues another by being stronger or having a bigger and better army. But that is not peace. Think of the Korean conflict in the 1950s and how about the various Israeli/Palestinian conflicts. There has never been peace in these areas. We need to think ‘outside the box’ and use our accumulated wisdom in a rational, measured and reasonable manner.
There is no peace because the underlying problem has never been addressed – injustice, perceived or actual, is at the root of most conflicts and will be the root of the Middle East and the Korean problems. Sort out the injustices (perceived or otherwise) and the reason for the violence is removed. There is nothing that rankles and festers in the mind as much as injustice. If individuals have a feeling they have been hard done by and bear a grudge because of this then, rightly or wrongly, they will feel justified in fighting (as they may think) to redress the injustice.
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