Life Via a Line

Love is an incredibly strange and beautiful thing. From a young age, I believed I knew how to love. I mean, I told my teddy bear that I loved him because he kept me safe at night. At Primary school, it dawned on me, that I seemed to only love the people and things that would give me something in return and that would allow life to go on the way that  I  wanted it to. I never truly felt love, a love that was unconditional and all encompassing until I was an adult. There is never a day or two that goes by where I do not tell those close to me that “I love you” at some point during the day.   Unconditional love does not come easy and it is something learned and practiced.  I know that it is through the toughest times, the happiest times and every single obstacle of my life that I have discovered new ways of loving. My parents, my grandparents and my wife have taught me that to love unconditionally is to love with absolutely no bounda...

For me, the expression “you are your own worst enemy” holds a lot of truth. It’s a painful reality that much of what limits me in my life is my own feelings of unworthiness and self-hatred. “I hate myself” is a fairly common thought. Where do these feelings come from? How do they influence me? How can I push past them to live a life free of the harsh attitudes of my inner critic? I see myself as different, not in some positive or special way, but in a negative sense.  I believe people who seem well-adjusted and well-liked in their social circles also like me,  have deep-seated feelings of being an outcast. I have a “real self,” the part of me that is self-accepting, goal-directed and life-affirming as well as an “anti-self,” a side of me that is self-hating, self-denying, paranoid and suspicious. The anti-self is expressed as my critical inner voice.  My critical inner voice is like my internal coach negatively commentating on my life, influencing how I...

Listening.  Listening is a very powerful tool and a skill that unfortunately is not very well utilized in today's society.  I have recently listening to a TED talk by Julian Treasure discussing 5 ways to listen better.   Listening is a skill that is actually highly valued in the workplace.  It's classed as a soft skill.  Listening within a work context is the process by which you can gain understanding of the needs, demands and preferences through interaction. All of us need to learn to listen.  Being better at listening helps improve every aspect of our lives including productivity as well as being able to persuade, influence and negotiate.  How well we listen has a major impact on various aspects of life especially job effectiveness and has a major impact on the quality of relationships with other people.   We listen to obtain Information We listen to Understand We listen for enjoyment  We listen to learn...

Why are we here? What is my purpose? What am I here on earth to achieve? So many questions but I do not have the answers.  The questions burn deep inside of me.  The majority of my life’s journey so far has been about helping others.  As I have grown to know myself, I have discovered that I have a heart that wants the best for myself and for others. It hasn't always been easy for me. I have spent a great deal of my life questioning why I am here and what my life is all about. I had been through loss and I unfortunately am in a lot of pain.  Enough is enough and I know I need to be different.  Little did I know that being different meant discovering myself and not simply changing my circumstances. At school both primary and secondary, I was always helpful, but it was more about seeking validation back then and not for the difference I could make to any of my peers.   Towards the end of secondary school, I started to learn who I ...

My wife and I got our first dog together when we lived in Spain, Jasper was a fantastic character and very loving, he lived to the ripe old age of 11 when he lost his battle with diabetes after being blind for 10mths, we made the most difficult decision that ever needs to be made by a dog owner and knew we had to say goodbye at that point.  The decision to let Jasper go wasn’t easy but it was uncomplicated as we knew he was suffering now and no matter what we tried we just could not stabilise his blood sugar and we felt a sense of clarity throughout the process of saying goodbye to him.   We got Maca, our chocolate Labrador when Jasper was 6.  Maca loved swimming, loved eating and just loved life.  Unfortunately after Jasper passed away Maca was never the same as she had grown up with him.  We lost Maca very unexpectedly when she was 6yrs old with some complications before a hip operation.  This broke me into a...

Given the chance, I would much rather bear pain on my own, mainly because it is incredibly difficult for me to be vulnerable and ask for help.  I even struggle to share how I feel with my wife and my family.   I am like this because of my upbringing, self-sufficiency was valued with the nuns.  Knowing that I have often praised individuals who have done extraordinary things and I have seen it as a sign of strength that they accomplished all of it on their own. Long chats with my team at Kings and even a top neuropsychologist who just so happened to retire after seeing me... means that I can understand that I am not an island and I am connected to my wife and even my little Lindo, how I am even affects her and I also have a connection to my family especially my sister and what I go through even though I spare them the details, does affect them eventually.  I have someone external that I can talk too, he is my twin, I can be brutally honest and ope...

It is not possible to grasp the infinite from a position that is finite.  This seems like a very good place to start. Dual thinking is the idea that something is either/or, that it's either good or bad, right or wrong.  The concept of up and down seems to make sense from a gravitational perspective, but if, for example, you happened to be in outer space, it makes no sense at all as there is no up or down. Every polar opposites is laced with judgement and the need for resolution.  I make judgements or assumptions everyday.   Dual thinking has become integrated in how I process things, and it is rooted in fear, fear of what I don’t know, fear of what I don’t understand, and fear of what I cannot control.  Being right seems to temporarily quieten the screaming monkeys.   For me to be right, someone is wrong.  When I think in black and white, I miss out on all the different shades in-between.  Sometimes, I hav...

It has taken me almost thirty plus years to realize that running away from myself isn’t the same as letting go. That realization, as with so many others, came at a time when I was at one of my lowest points. At the time, I was working full time in a job I'd grown to hate and I was exhausted. I was barely sleeping, and when I did it was the kind of nightmare-filled, fitful sleep that took forever to return from.  I would wake up each morning feeling as though I'd been in a battle as I slept. My fatigue was so overwhelming, I was beat, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. That’s when it happened. I was half-listening to a talk on radio 4 that I had heard before, but this time something he said utterly gutter-punched me. He said:  “Do you leave your deaths on the battlefield of life, or do you have the strength and courage to give them your love and bring them back?” Golf had been my refuge, became my refuge and escape from everything and was the o...

Early hours of Friday morning and I am awake, with a cup of tea listening to the river outside the cottage, I have several thoughts racing through my mind, some utterly ridiculous and I have the advert song from People's Postcode or whatever it is called running on loop in my mind.. One of my thoughts at 12:05am is Who am I?  This is a question I often ask myself, I am famous for one to one chats with myself in the mirror, I call them my having a word with myself moment.  I work as a part time in Pharmacy in a busy GP surgery with around 14,000 patients. In Pharmacy, everything is supposed to fit in its right place and there is an established value system in place. In my experience of working in Pharmacy for the majority of my working life, I believe my current role is founded on one major theme, and everyone is expected to conform to this -  Command is valued over communication. This is an area where I have done a great job making myself a...

I am sat here comfy with a cup of tea infront of the fire, it's nearly 6pm already and I will be having Steak and sweet potato fries for dinner shortly.  In life we start forming opinions at an early age and this continues all through life. We decide what we think is right and wrong, what's good and what's bad on a grand scale such as ethics and a small scale concerning day to day interactions. As a youngster we also learn to develop ideas about how the world should be to support our beliefs and views, things we have learned from our environment and experiences and we learn to also at this time deal with conflict when someone does not have the same opinions as us. Sometimes my own personal opinions have nothing to do with fact, logic, or common sense. It's just a matter of what  feels  right to me or infact what my gut tells me, I have a very powerful gut instinct.  I have learnt though that it isn't always right.  I don't often stop to consid...

Simplicity comes down to eliminating the excess in our lives.  Excess needs, wants, possessions. The list goes on. Society tries to sell us on the idea that having more in our lives should be the goal and is the answer. But is  more  really improving the quality of our lives? Do more possessions beyond a certain point really add value to our lives? Do more commitments in our diaries really help us feel less stressed and rushed? Does always wanting the latest smartphone really improve the quality of what we have now? My concern is that is  more  even feasible for many of us who are struggling just to make ends meet and pay basic bills in these challenging economic times. Many can barely afford  enough , let alone  more . I believe having more in my life or buying into the concept that more is better, could mean that I miss living in the moment.  I do not want to be constantly waiting for my life to be complete w...

The last year has been one of unprecedented change, amidst all the turbulence, challenges, and pain, a few insights have occurred to me.   Nothing is permanent even though we are programmed for the opposite.  I, like everyone wants my life to feel safe and secure, and permanence gives me the illusion that it is. The reality is that nothing is permanent, and the only thing I know I can count on is change. The more I push for permanence in life, against the current, the more disappointed I become when I find it is not achievable to the extent I think it should be, but if I can accept the fluidity of life, everything changes. Why is it that life can look hopeful one day, and so very dark the next? Very little of my actual situation has changed from one day to the next. But my perception of it can change minute by minute based on how I am feeling in that moment, whether I am tired or rested, peaceful or angry, whole or damaged. I am learning not t...

Its 23:24 and I have just finished writing this.  This is a very honest and open blog post, like with all my posts, I am open and honest and I try to explain and give some background detail about what I am going through and why.  This is something I have gone through since I was around 15yrs old.   My relationship with my body affects my entire life.  I know that because when I am fighting with my body, I am fighting with myself.  As a teenager I used to believe this  If I love my body as it is today, it will get worse. I will gain more weight. If I keep my constant attention on it, remind myself hourly how much I don’t like it, it will transform. Blood crazy, isn't it? Has anyone ever “hated themselves skinny” and had healthy, long lasting results?  Has anyone ever “loved themselves fat”? And I am not talking about the love you think you are giving yourself by eating a huge dairy milk. I am talking true love causing th...

A few months ago, I learnt that you cannot help everyone, in life sometimes there are people sometimes you just cannot help.  It actually is that simple. There are people in my life that I just can’t help. So incredibly simple, yet so deeply profound. Why hadn’t I realized this before? So many times, I have been in situations unfortunately, all too common for those of us with big hearts. They are quite common for those of us who are caregivers, lovers, amazing friends and all those who wish to use our lives in service to a higher good. In order to be helped,  a person must first ask for help . A person must make themselves available, vulnerable, open and humble.  It’s not easy to be open. In order for you to help someone with your words, that person must first resonate with the  kind  of wisdom you have to share. In life, there are around a thousand paths and a thousand ways to interpret the world.  My way ...

Dear Odette, I am writing this letter as a gentle reminder to your previous life.  When you thought it just wasn't worth the pain to continue, when the rituximab you relied on failed, when your bank account looked as unhealthy as you, When you spent more time arguing with everyone close to you than talking.  Everything felt like a never ending uphill struggle and the abundance of the Universe was nowhere to be bloody seen. Mistakes made, money made and lost, opportunities taken and opportunities missed, angry conversations remembered word for word and still thinking about how right you were and how wrong they were, you were searching for forgiveness but holding onto the unfairness of it all. I know, that if you admit it, you have spent more time than you want to admit wishing you not longer existed in this body.  You do realize now that you wasted a lot of time with that ridiculousness, right? You were hoping for a finely tuned droplet of self-aware genius to magically...

Day in, day out I am bombarded like everyone else by images of people living apparently perfect lives. They suffer no bereavements, breakups, losses or failures. They look perfect, make perfect choices, and act perfect. Everyone seems to love them as they sail from success to success, with zero misfortunes, mistakes, or regrets.  So, it's easy to believe that I, too, need to be perfect. I had a simple definition of success when I was younger. It was whatever made others accept me.  So, I aimed high, defined in terms of title and salary.  It became almost a game.  My life away from work and golf told a different story.  I changed my job late last year as I felt like I was walking a tightrope of stress and irritability.   I have gone from measuring success in financial terms to a wider definition of success, the biggest changes occurred in my inner life.  Stress and irritability used to really bother me but no longer are they part of m...

03:19am How did I get to this point? This question has pulsed through my brain repeatedly in a state of complete exhaustion this past week.  Plasma Exchange has been incredibly tough and I have felt very unwell.  On tuesday after my second session I felt done. Inside I felt like I had nothing left to give.  I was crying in bed feeling the sickest I have ever felt. How did I get here? Gradually, then suddenly. It happened so gradually, almost imperceptibly. And then suddenly, unequivocally, shockingly, I am here, me, this person who cannot control my blood pressure, the sickness, the pain or this condition. Looking back, I can see that I have immersed myself in everything needed of me, blood tests, skin tests, skin biopsy, muscle biopsy, CT Scans, MRI scans, X-RAYs, exercise tests, fasting tests, brain tests, epilepsy tests, catheters, Vas Caths and permanent line to name a few. Gradually, these things...