Tag: survival

Re: Rub

Few things rub me the wrong way but negativity tops the list. Some folk speak the no, not now, never happen, nada, or other expression to deflate the positive balloons of life on a regular basis. I suspect such a philosophy makes them feel smart since they’ll refer to my optimism as being naive. But there’s the rub, so to speak, because they are accusing me of ignorance rather than  admitting they feel that life sucks.

People who work at making lemonade with these sour notes must be honoured. Case in point: I visited a moving new memorial garden in our neighbourhood dedicated to the thousands of Japanese people who were evicted from the BC coast during WWII to concentration camps inland. The monument committee struggled for several years to get funding and permission from layers of government to acknowledge this event in a way that recognized the pain of each individual. Granite panels are etched with the names of friends, lovers, sons, and daughters all, whose contributions to society were negated due to their race. On opening day I marvelled as relatives used tomb-rubbing techniques to replicate their family’s name. I could imagine the soft charcoal image left on paper would be kept lovingly in pride-of-place back home.

I got a nasty rug burn on Thanksgiving weekend. Without rubbing anything out I’ll describe the event in stream of consciousness style. I literally leapt down the stairs yesterday, missing the bottom three treads, landing only on my left foot, then crashing into the approaching wall, knocking off the mirror there (which fell to the floor w/o breaking?), still managing to keep my balance while putting down the phone I was talking on, with my wallet in the other hand making a purchase of youth orchestra tickets, my reading glasses falling off my face, as my bride came to the alert from downstairs, rushing up panting, her mom had just gone down for a nap and she called out at the crash too, even the next door townhouse neighbour knocked to see what had caused the Richter proportion quake, miraculously nothing broken, some ankle bruising where the stair’s carpet rubbed along my achilles tendon but I managed to catch my breath and complete the phone call transaction. Really!? Phewff! When I retold the tale to a friend he wished I had caught the whole episode on TikTok.

After a near-miss incident like that, a warm bath with rubber duckies would be called for, right? No need for such external comforts, since just two seconds of imagining the way things might have gone if I hadn’t caught my balance made me feel warm inside with gratitude. Besides, a relative of mine once died in a bathtub. Not rubbed-out like in the gangster movies but accidentally electrocuted. They say accidents in the home are the leading cause of death if you erase heart disease, cancer or other biochemical medical-type things that can keep you awake at night.

Life is dangerous. I get it. Just don’t rub up against my belief that we can overcome misery.

Re: Clench

There is an exchange between two characters in the television series Lanterns where one person asks the other to, “Unclench already!” I could immediately relate to the one who was clenching. I think I have been in a clenched mode most of my life. Not hyper, not tightly wound, not quivering in the corner, not nervous or fearful, and not even uptight. Clench? As I examine the word and what it means to me –– I’d say it’s more like a state of amber alert.

My Boy Scout leader, noticing the mildly timid boy I was, taught me how to be prepared. My best elementary school teachers encouraged my talents so that I could gain confidence. I was always wary of the moods of others, particularly my mother, so I learned to blend into the background. I practised stealth techniques. I found it easier to surprise people with my abilities rather than have them expect too much of me. My youthful comfort level found me often on the sidelines, working for the good of the cause, watching for the right time to step in with an opinion or a helping hand.

Fighters have clenched fists. My fingers were always fully extended so I could catch what was thrown my way. Pacifism felt safer to me than pugilism. Yet my mother enjoyed telling visitors (while embarrassing me) with the story of when I balled-up my fingers at age twelve, ready to tell my peace-loving father not to give my younger sister a mother-mandated spanking for her latest misdemeanour. Such are the contradictions of growing into maturity. It’s a wonder my teeth are in the good shape they are in, what with all my jaw clenching while trying to sort things out in my early years.

In adulthood, after explaining my history to my first personal GP doctor, I was diagnosed with a mild anxiety condition. I researched, as anxious folk do, to understand what level of trouble I was in. Turned out condition was the lesser of syndrome, or disorder. Thank goodness for that! I wouldn’t want my symptoms to be outlined in the latest DSM. I’ll admit, there is certainly a degree of urgency behind my thoughts, which can be expressed as clenching when I’m waiting to get my way. For instance job interviews used to give me fits of insecurity combined with salivating lust for work I really wanted. The desperate feeling that my professional life would be over if I didn’t get hired would torment my consciousness.

Recovering from trauma has been something I seem to manage. It’s the before fantasies that ball me up faster than any regretful scenarios. I don’t do doubt. I can be quick to visualize a comforting blanket or even a rope tethering me from stormy seas. I have discovered ways to unclench from the need for immediate gratification. When life piles on more stress than I want to handle, I have prescribed medication that smooths the waters while still giving my mind full scope to navigate or problem solve. I can survive to see another day.

Re: Sanity

I took a break from media for three days and found that I could translate the world news with a bit more detachment. I wanted to find out how to be sane in an insane world. Making sense of things for me is mathematical. I take my experience, add the ideas of trusted experts, blend in what feels like intuitive common sense, and I might end up with some clarity. Actually that reads more like a recipe, so go ahead and take a bite out of ‘Clarity’, and let me know how it tastes.

Freud comes to mind when I think of the search for sanity. Most people attach his genius to sexual things, especially motivations. He certainly has been maligned by that one aspect of his research. I consult Freud, in my imagination (WWFD?), when I’ve had a dream. In that subconscious state I am more relaxed and that is often key to embracing sanity. I can’t think well when I’m in an emotion state of craziness. During the softness of a dream, in day or night, I can fit puzzle pieces together in a more caretaking way. It’s no mystery to me that I can do better at a New York Times crossword when I am just a little tired. Performance anxiety is not a good partner when I can’t get that darn three letter answer to the clue.

Insanity has long been an excuse for bad behaviour. Sometimes an aggressor can get off in court for a ‘crime of passion’. We want to explain away a mass murderer because he couldn’t possibly be in his right mind. Wars are justified because the other side is mad, or worse still, not-human. In my book, any act of violence is an act of insanity because in moments of anger we have truly lost connection with ourselves. Insanity is a sign that we must check to see if we are still plugged in to our psyche. As far as punishment goes then maybe, in computer terms, we need a re-boot (not a boot in the butt, as violence begets more of the same).

I’ve been insanely in love. During those almost panic moments I have been of such singular mind that I’ve been a danger to myself. I once manically peddled my bike along unlit country roads, to deliver a rose, dark rain splashing around my clinging clothes. I was in a mental fever. Losing one’s sanity is not funny, but it does contribute to artistic expression. We have all had moments where we have snapped. Hopefully there has been someone around to safely guide us back to finding reason where we thought there was none to be found.

Admittance to an insane asylum used to be an answer to the fear that folks had of letting lost souls run amok in society. Visions of torture-like treatments, padded rooms, and straight jackets can still be found as reality in some parts of the world. Compassionate care remains a hallmark of a healthy society’s approach to times when citizens lose their way.

Re: Allergy

People with allergies can be the butt of jokes. When schools had to design policies around the potentially deadly outcome of peanut allergies in children, controversial comedian Louis CK got headlines because he suggested that “If touching a nut kills you, maybe you’re supposed to die.”

Today, I was tempted by a fresh black cherry. When I am exposed to certain foods I can get allergic reactions that could include; a runny nose, sneezing, coughing, shortness of breath, swelling, itchy palate, or red eyes. I can relate to the ads on television during allergy season promoting their product’s efficacy in removing all these sorts of symptoms. I know about the risk of certain foods, but that cherry looked so red, ripe, and delicious. I ate it and felt fine, for ten minutes, then I got all the reactions I just described. I didn’t die, but I was a noisy, mucus-filled mess for half an hour. ’Twas not a pretty sight.

I didn’t always suffer from the A disease. In my twenties, I moved from southern to northern Ontario and that particular summer was apparently the worst pine pollen bloom of-all-time. The yellow powder was smeared on vehicle windshields, it coated clothing hanging outside to dry, and was a sticky icing on the surface of lakes and rivers. I can’t see how anyone could avoid having their lungs clogged by this powdery air. From that bio-hazard summer to this day I can start sneezing over unknown elements in the air, or in the beverages I drink, or on the animals I pet, or in some of the foods I ingest. It’s a crap shoot.

Many medications are available for allergy relief. My doctors have prescribed many remedies (the best being codeine) and I have settled on a formula of antihistamine, decongestant, and anti-inflammatory to reduce most of the symptoms, most of the time. Sometimes I can predict what might bring on an attack and take the necessary pill(s) in advance. I always carry a tissue in my pocket. It’s usually damp.

The first thing I’m asked when going to a hospital is, “Do you have any allergies?” I want to be dismissive but I usually say it’s only seasonal. When I sneeze (loudly) in a grocery store aisle I want to go to customer service to tell them to assure everyone with an announcement, “It’s just allergies folks!” I fell in love with a woman who took out a Kleenex after her first bite of food, from our first restaurant meal, just as I did too! It’s breezy to be sneezy, when you’re in love.

Jeff Bridges was in a film about a plane crash. Surviving this ordeal, he finds that he no longer has a severe strawberry allergy. In joy, he becomes fearless in attitude, thinking he was somehow blessed by the tragic experience, making him immune to normal human frailty. There are many ailments that afflict our species. Within the great spectrum of illness I know that I am lucky to only have a response to a few allergens. It’s not likely to kill me.

Re: Wild

Most people my age can describe stories of their wild childhood. Children of the late fifties were told to get outside and play, totally unstructured. Urban kids, like me, would find creeks to splash in, grassy fields under towering hydro power lines or small preserved woodlots. I remember Saturdays leaving home after breakfast, scrounged some food from neighbours or restaurants for lunch. Getting up to no good, some would say. “Come home before dark.” was the only direction our parents gave, otherwise,“Have fun!” Along the way I learned how to fend for myself, who to trust and how to manage time and space. There has been a recent social movement to allow more freedom for young folk, to be raised in this ‘free range’ style without a lot of parental supervision. The whole idea of what wildness can do for our personal growth needs more examination.

Since our cave dwelling days, humankind has feared the wild even though we are part of it. We’ve been given biblical directives to tame the earth, thus separating us from nature. I enjoyed the characterization given to wild things in the television series Game of Thrones. For example there is the conundrum of the Wildlings; those far northern people beyond The Wall, who are feared and sneered at by those from the southern regions. They are clothed in primitive furs, exhibit a fierce determination and have awesome survival skills. They remind us where we came from so we get to feel superior. I found it so fitting that Jon Snow finds kinship with these prehistoric folk. At the end of the series, without giving too much away, this beloved character gets to start over by going back to the wilderness. To me, he goes home.

My formative years were spent near the Warden Woods in Scarborough, Ontario. In that area of the world there were few places, then as now, where one can find any sense of wilderness. In my mind’s eye I created deep jungles, vast oceans and towering mountains. I recreated the adventures of my explorer heroes, setting off to wild foreign landscapes with the wish to discover what others already knew. Charles Darwin was my earliest pretend mentor; brave scientist sailing in the Beagle to catalogue the wonders of the natural world. He went where the wild things dwelt.

Sir David Attenborough has made an impassioned plea for humans to ‘rewild’ the planet. This suggestion to go wildly off tangent from our consumptive trajectory is in response to the facts of global warming, deforestation and species decline which are elements of the Anthropocene. His latest effort is a call to action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Puv0Pss33M

Space travel does not answer the question of our ultimate survival. We already live on a spaceship. A former U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson said, “We travel together, passengers on a little space ship… preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and…the love we give our fragile craft…on (our) resolution, depends the survival of us all.”

Re: Need

I recently pleaded to a nurse, “I need to be rescued!” Needless to say she paid attention to this call to action and found a way to get me the help I needed. Bless her heart. Most times I think we are individually reluctant to say we need something. We like to be independent in our quest for the things we require. We don’t want to appear as whiners or be left feeling bitter because someone else got what we were needing, so generally we are quiet searchers for the things that will make us healthy, happy and whole.

We can all agree that for mere survival we need air & water. We often band together and demand needs as our rights: affordable housing, a clean environment, education, equal pay. When our side seems abandoned we protest, we argue and literally stomp our feet and bang our drums to right the injustice over the distribution of these human needs. How we define a need from a want can lead to further discord until a unified consensus is found.

Parents have to be wise in differentiating between needs and wants so their children can grow to understand. Very young children may have tantrums when they want something. In the film The Jerk, Steve Martin’s character finds out the differences between needs and wants through a humorous journey. In this scene I laugh at the childlike way he adds to his list of what he “really needs”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSWBuZws30g

Is emotion to want, as survival is to need? I’ve had some insightful conversations with my academic activist son on this topic. He easily lists Education, Housing, Employment, Food, Health Care as needs. He argues these needs must be supported by governments and to a larger or smaller degree they all are. Being a Star Trek fan, I would agree these five primary needs to be free for all, supported by tax dollars. Far from being utopian in scope, once these needs are met then we can tackle other areas of life with full bellies, open hearts and keen minds.

Trouble is, some of us think waging war is needed. Some think we need massive amounts of wealth. Others think education is only for boys or the rich or the white. Still others think the food that we grow, the water we drink must be managed for maximum profit. Information is even being commodified. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” used to be a boast, a school yard taunt or a military pronouncement. Now, in the search for basic facts, the information you need may end up costing you.

My personal needs for optimum emotional health include safety and love. Sometimes what you need has to actively pursued. Sometimes it’s a matter of seeing what has been there all along. The song, ‘Without You’ written by Pete Ham & Tom Evans of Welsh rock group Badfinger plaintively captures the universal need for love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPco24LS31A