Courage and bravery can be learned........

(Just in case you are wondering what on earth this image is supposed to be; (but please feel free to have your own interpretation)..... this is the view from under a Dandelion before its seeds have flown.)

Bravery, is often referred to as an admirable quality in a person in most or perhaps even in all, cultures. What a person has to do in order to be considered a brave person however, in my view probably involves a number of variables.

As is often the case with many words, our definitions of words are commonly influenced by our own experiences, belief-systems and biases, so let me offer a few definitions for bravery: courage, valor, being able to show mental and or moral strength in the face of danger.

For me, bravery means staring straight into the center of something one is scared off, (whatever that may be), but instead of trying to avoid it, walk around it, under it, over it, or ignore it......one "walks" right at it.

Tomorrow, I will have to do just that when I go to see my doctor...... because finally my biopsy results have come back. Until I have actually been given the results, like Schrodingers cat experiment; the results are neither bad nor good, they are both.....(I am thinking however, that if they were really bad, they would probably have contacted me by now, so regardless of not knowing, I can still chose to be optimistic.)

Such is not the case for someone my son and I have known for years. Our friend has battled with cancers of varying kinds for many, many years, and now, other life threatening medical issues have popped up. The way he has coped, and still copes with all his health battles, as well as life's curve balls, is for me the very epitome of a behaviour that constitutes being a "brave" person.

Nelson Mandela: "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man (woman) is not he (she) who does not feel afraid, but he (she) who conquers that fear."

Most of us will at times face things, events, people, etc. that evoke fear in us and we will have to decide how to deal with it. There are options: denial, put it on hold, avoid, put it in the "too hard" basket, minimize the size of the issue, and so on,... or face it; investigate options on how to deal with it, seek assistance and guidance from a professional, talk over the problem/issue(s) with a friend or family member, etc.etc.

"Feel the fear and do it anyway" suggests Susan Jeffers. Well, at times this can be quite difficult, although when it comes to dealing with fears that interferes and cripples our quality of life, it is probably good/useful advice. A little analogy: Learning to drive a car (manual) can at first be quite scary for some of us, but if we want the freedom of movement that being able to drive a car offers us, we have to face our fears one by one, and then with practice....  driving suddenly seem to have become almost second nature. 

Most of us experience anxiousness to some degree when we learn or deal with new things/experiences/events/people, but the good news is that more often than not, each time we overcome that anxiousness and forge ahead, a sense of achievement and empowerment follows.

Is it possible that perhaps with "practice" we can become "braver" human beings? 

In my view, the answer is Yes.

"Lifehacker" has this to say: 

                                            1. Be terrified of something

                                            2. Do it anyway

                         3. Be moderately less scared than when you do it the first time

                                            4. Repeat

Another alternative:           1. Be terrified of something

                                           2. Do nothing

                                           3. Still be terrified

There may be much we have little power to change, but one thing we DO have the power to change is our attitude, how we chose to view things, and how we chose to respond to events and experiences in our lives.

About the image: A little colour added to our lives can make a big difference

Beauty resides in the mind........

Flicking through channels on the box (foxtel), suddenly one after the other grotesque image of faces distorted by plastic surgery filled the screen.

(It looked painful, so painful that I could almost feel the pain.)

Pictures of before and after surgery were placed next to each other, followed by interviews with the "patients" who tearfully spoke of how the surgery had "destroyed" their lives.

I know very little about plastic surgery, but I know that in some cases plastic surgery is performed due to patients suffering with severe burns, dis-figuration caused by an accident or a physical altercation, and or other medical issues, and so on. But, such was not the premise for the program that I was watching, the premise for the program (as I understood it) was to tell a story about "patients" who had undergone plastic surgery, not due to a medical issue, but because they were not happy with the way they looked.

Their lips were too thin, their jawline too weak, their ears too big, their nose too big, too small, too crooked, too straight, too bulbous, their eyebrows not thick enough or too thick, their cheekbones too protruding or not defined enough, their skin too wrinkly, their crows-feet too pronounced, their eyelids too heavy, and etc.etc.

 These patients, as I understood it, were motivated to have plastic surgery much due to an underlying belief that "good-looking" = happiness, better opportunities, a better life.

Whether it is true/correct that good looks ensures happiness and a better life I am not so sure of, but what I am sure of and know to be true (judging by statistics) is that the pursuit of "good looks" is a mega dollar industry. 

Roger Moore, who played James Bond in many films, was once asked if he considered himself good looking to which he answered: "Good looking? I don't know about that, but I guess I do have rather symmetrical features."

Bombarded as we are in most western societies by image after image defining for us how we have to look in order to be described as good looking/attractive/beautiful, I am not surprised that so many of us feel/think that we just don't measure up. Hook, line and sinker, we swallow the bait and rather than bristle and defiantly question the definition served up to us, many of carry with us the feeling that we just don't measure up in the "beauty/good looking" department. 

A little analogy: "A house may look beautiful on the outside, but unless there is some light and furniture inside of it, the exterior beauty is not enough to make the house a home."

An oyster may be "ugly" on the outside but within, it holds a precious pearl.

I once worked in a band with a guy who was very good looking, women used to chase after him, give him their phone numbers and proposition him virtually every time we did a gig. I assumed he loved all the attention....until one night when for whatever reason he decided to talk to me about it. 

Much to my surprise he told me that "it was fun in the beginning, but not anymore." "I feel cheap, men can feel cheap too after too many one-night-stands. The women who proposition me, they don't want to know me, they just see a good looking guy on a stage and being with me is not about me, it's about how they feel about themselves having been with me, a musician. I am just a feather in the cap."

According to him, his good looks was more of a deterrent to finding love rather than the opposite.

Whoever said : "Perception is everything",  in my view offers a great insight.

Stephen Hawking, regardless of his physical limitations, to many of us may still seem "beautiful", Joseph Merrick, aka the Elephant man, to those who knew him, was considered a "beautiful" person regardless of his deformed body, as they say: "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder."

Our ideals for what we mean with good-looking/attractive/beautiful varies: factors such as tradition, culture, peer pressure, media, exposure, etc.etc. plays a big role in influencing our perceptions. 

Even so, in my experience, once we get to really know somebody and enjoy being with them, our perceptions often change. As we get to love and cherish somebody, looks matter less and less, and who they are as human beings matter more and more. 

Come to think of it, I think this extends to most living creatures. The flea bitten mutt, the scrawny tabby, the turtle with only three legs, the horse with a limp, the black sheep....they are all worthy of being loved. And so are you, whether your lips are too thin (in your view), your butt too big, your nose too crooked, your ears too narrow, etc.etc.

A good looking person can have a mean personality, a beautiful runway model a haughty temperament,

a handsome movie star a cold heart, etc.etc.

Whether we consider ourselves handsome, good looking or visually pleasing, in my view is in the long run less important than whether we consider ourselves as "good" people, because like it or not,

beauty is fleeting but a beautiful soul and mind, and a compassionate disposition lingers even after we have ceased to do so.

Go on, embrace yourself....warts and all.....and others will too.

"Beauty is not in the face; it is a light in the heart."

(Kahil Gibran)

about the painting: a "perfect" face is not about measurements, it is about .......

How our associations to words influence us..........

According to some research, some words are more "powerful" than others and two of the most powerful words are "love" and "peace". How exactly this may be measured, I don't really know, but what I do know, is that I would like to add a word, and that word is "hospital".

Most of us begin our lives in a hospital, and for many of us, this is also where our life-journey's end.

Right now, I am sitting in a Starbucks in a large Hospital, sipping coffee and trying to chew my way through an awful wrap which seem to consist of mainly mushy pumpkin, some other indistinguishable veggis, and a whole lot of un-digestible pumpkin seeds.

My son has been called to the hospital to have yet another fMRI, a procedure which usually takes about one hour or so, so it's up to me to find something to do to pass the time.

I decide to buy a cheap notebook and get a head start on my next blog post. After staring at the blank page for ages, it suddenly dawns on me to write about hospitals, after all, I have spent many, many, long hours in hospitals since I was very young.

For some of us, the word hospital may invoke all sorts of anxieties, flashbacks, scary or happy memories, joyful or sorrowful events, etc.etc., but for others, the word may just be one of many ordinary words. In my case, the word hospital often brings associations with both fear and comfort and emotions ranging from despair to relief, so I guess perhaps I could say that the word in my case, comes with "attachments".

Pondering these attachments I suddenly have a flashback: I am 12 years old and on the other side of a hospital door with a glass window in it, stands my brother. We are not allowed to touch due to the risk of infection, so we put our hands against the glass, look at each other silently, while our hearts whisper I love you. That was the last time I saw him, not much later he died in the hospital. He was 14 years old. 

Somebody suddenly shouts: double shot latte, skim milk! and in an instant I am transported back to the here and now. Although I have only had a few bites of the wrap, I decide to throw it away. 

I still have some coffee left, so I return to my seat after I have thrown away the wrap and then proceed to do my best to swallow all the emotions that the flashback has stirred up. 

This proves impossible. One after the other of flashbacks from times when I have found myself in a hospital waiting room hijacks my mind. The birth of my son, my son's first life threatening asthma attack at 13 months old, followed on by the 2nd attack, 3rd, 4th, and so on....not until in his mid teenage years did it slow down. Hospital, when my son constantly had to be hospitalized, was a word of comfort, a word signifying hope and survival. And then......the turbulence of finding his own way in the world began. "This is doctor Smith, from the ABC hospital, do you have a son by the name of...xyz? He needs emergency surgery and we need your consent..." I threw myself in the car and drove to the hospital with reckless abandon and eventually found myself once again in a waiting room, anxious, scared, yet also comforted by my trust in the surgeon at the hospital to be able to see my son through. Okay, I need to stop these flashbacks and their attachments now, I still have another 25 minutes to wait and I want to be calm and collected when my son has finished his fMRI.

I decide to clock up some steps on my "stepping-gadget" by walking up and down the corridors at the hospital. I toss the empty coffee container in the trash and take off.

That was a few days ago, I am now sitting at my computer. 

We have not been given any results by the hospital as to what they found on the fMRI, only another appointment. We do know however, that my son has tumors that need to be removed and that he will have to have some delicate surgery done. So, more waiting rooms, more hospital visits, and more worry. 

But hey, considering the fact that there are so many people who do not have access to hospitals (for a varied number of reasons), or that there are people who live in war torn countries where hospitals are targets used as a mean to exert control, or that there are people who can't access hospitals due to crazy healthcare systems, etc.etc., it may be worthwhile pondering how fortunate those of us are who have access to hospitals when and or if we need it. (This of course includes me)

Have you ever been asked to do a "word-association" test?

If not, then basically it is a method of trying to understand/gain insight into people's personality traits and mental functions by asking people to respond to words by giving as a response the first words that springs to mind. Examples: blue, red, white= a flag, green, legs, slimy=a frog, nurse, pain, bed=hospital...and so on.

In my opinion, most of us are involved with "word-association" most everyday, although we are mostly unaware of doing so. For me the word hospital triggers a lot of other words, but not only words, but also memories, emotions, events, and so on. ("Attachments")

Word-association, in my view, can at times be helpful to help us find a path to follow in order to understand our feeling-responses to some words and some word combinations. 

Here are some other "powerful" words that can evoke strong responses: religion, God, politics, poverty, suffering, right/wrong, truth, etc.etc ......

For one person suffering may be associated with their own experiences, for another it may be associated with someone else going through suffering, for one person dentist may be associated with fear and trepidation, for another person it may be associated with good dental hygiene, and so on.

Being able to communicate and understand each other well is often assisted/helped by us understanding our associations with words that trigger strong emotional responses in us and others.

For me the word hospital has a lot of associations, can you think of a word that has a lot of associations for you?

I think you may be surprised at all the words that may come tumbling out once you allow yourself to just let them flow freely.......:)

"He showed the word "chocolate cake" to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. "Guilt" was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: "celebration"."
(Michael Pollan)