Health section.qxp_Layout 1 24/03/2022 17:30 Page 52
MENDIP TIMES
Death, luck and power
THERE are three quotes that have guided my life, in no particular order. The first was from my Australian Auntie Queenie, who was fond of reminding anyone who’d listen: “The moment your sperm meets your egg, you join the queue for death.” Humans – like every other living thing – are born to die, and the price we pay for evolving such large brains is that we know By Dr PHIL it long in advance. HAMMOND This can either liberate us to get on with our one wild and precious life (as Andy says in the Shawshank Redemption, “get busy living or get busy dying”). It can also fill us with anxiety: “How close to the front of the queue am I today, Lord?” Or if you’re a comedian, you simply laugh. As Jeremy Hardy put it: “How do we live life to the full? At the age of 43, I have decided to live each day as though it were my last, so I lie in bed all day, slipping in and out of consciousness.” I was lucky enough to know and work with Jeremy and was very sad when he died from cancer at the age of just 57. We can change our behaviour to try to alter our position in the death queue, up to a point. As Kingsley Amis observed: “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare.” But we can’t cheat bad luck. Many people who live healthy lives suffer horrible illnesses at a young age. Which brings me to my second quote. As one of my favourite authors, William Boyd, wrote in Any Human Heart in 2002: “That’s all your life amounts to in the end: the aggregate of all the good luck and the bad luck you experience. Everything is explained by that simple formula. Tot it up – look at the respective piles. There’s nothing you can do about it: nobody shares it out, allocates it to this one or that, it just happens.” We all experience good and bad luck, and how we cope is partly down to how we play the cards we’re dealt. I lost my Australian dad Barry from suicide when I was only seven but my extraordinary mum Pat brought my brother Steve and I back to England, met and married a wonderful Wiltshire builder called, Stan, who I was very lucky to have as a second dad. The current pandemic is a lottery of luck. Some 40 million people have yet to be knowingly infected by the virus or have fully recovered, but several million have lasting and debilitating long Covid symptoms and over 160,000 have died. How to allow society to function in such a variable situation? Impose laws to limit spread or allow individuals to choose what risks they take, even if they put others at risk? Which brings me to my final quote, from The Healer’s Power by doctor and philosopher Howard Brody: “The central ethical dilemma in life is the responsible use of power.” The extreme example of this is war. Throughout history, those with the most power and weapons have been able to prosecute war on whoever they wished. But as individuals we hold power over ourselves and those around us. Cruelty and aggression leave life-long scars; kindness and understanding can help heal the most appalling bad luck. We could all be in Ukraine in a different life. Or living with motor neurone disease. Or bereaved by suicide or cancer. Enjoy your good luck when you have it. But share your good fortune as widely as possible with those less fortunate. Dr Phil is appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe (August 13th-27th), Wedmore Arts Festival (May 7th) and Widcombe Social Club Bath (July 22nd).
PAGE 52 • MENDIP TIMES • APRIL 2022
Plop the Raindrop
ONE of your ancestors once said that April was the cruellest month, but events in Ukraine in March would take some beating. I was in a cloud over Ukraine when the conflict started. So I had a bird’s eye view as the destruction began and masses of people started fleeing for safety. I’m no novice when it comes to violent conflict. As a water droplet, I was there at the birth of the earth when the opposing forces of nature showed they were capable of splitting space itself. But that kind of unpredictable, natural event is beyond any kind of control, unless there really is a God. I’ve never met him, or her, or it. So I’m a bit of a sceptic, given my considerable age. On the other hand, what did make everything or now controls anything? How random is life? Noone can tell when a volcano will erupt or a hurricane arrive to wreck an entire island. So natural disasters don’t have any explanation. But events in Ukraine do. You human beans have developed lots of special ways of killing each other. Stupidly. If we water droplets behaved in that way, literally all life on earth would disappear. We stay together to form your oceans, water your crops and make up most of your bodies. We also make the tears now running down the faces of so many people in Ukraine. So why do you do it? OK, I accept you are basically animals who have managed to develop big brains, but other animals don’t have the destructive instinct that you have. Big males might challenge each other for leadership of a pack, but they use teeth, claws and horns to do it, rather than weapons. And they don’t generally expect everyone else to get involved and risk getting killed. Most animals kill just for food, as you used to do. You seemed to live in relative peace while you had plenty to eat and plenty of space. Then you seemed to get a bit jealous of what the tribe next door had and might bash some of them occasionally with a rock or a stick. You are more deadly now, with all of your weapons of war. The line about April was written by a man called T.S. Eliot in 1922, worrying about the future of the world. I was there when he wrote it. Things haven’t changed much, sadly. Most human beans are friendly and peaceful. But it only takes one mad one… MENDIP GRANDAD
