When You Can’t Change Your Circumstances, Change Yourself
By Michael Michalko | Nov 07, 20120 comments -->Synopsis
The way you choose to interpret your experiences determines the way you live your life.
There is an old parable about a boy who was so discouraged by his experiences in school he told his grandfather he wanted to quit. His grandfather filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In the first, he placed carrots, in the second he placed eggs and the last he placed ground coffee beans. He let them sit and boil, without saying a word. In about twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then he ladled the coffee out into a cup. Turning to the boy, he asked, "Tell me, what do you see?" "Carrots, eggs, and coffee," the boy replied.
Then he asked the boy to feel the carrots, which he did and noted that they were soft and mushy. His grandfather then asked him to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, the boy observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked the boy to sip the coffee. He smiled as he tasted the coffee with its rich aroma. The boy asked, "I don't understand. What does this mean, if anything?"
His grandfather laughed and explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity--boiling water--but each had reacted differently. "Which are you?" the grandfather asked. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, becomes soft and loses strength? Are you the egg that appears not to change but whose heart is hardened? Or are you the coffee bean that changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the coffee bean, when things are at their worst, your very attitude will change your environment for the better, making it sweet and palatable."
The moral of the parable is that it is not the experience that matters. What matters is how you interpret and react to the experience. We are each given a set of experiences in life. The experiences are neutral. They have no meaning. It is how we interpret the experiences that give them meaning. Your interpretations of your experiences shape your beliefs and theories about the world which, in turn, influence the way you live your life. The grandfather’s lesson is that when you can’t change your circumstances, you change yourself.
We automatically interpret all of our experiences without realizing it. Are they good experiences, bad ones, what do they mean and so on? We do this without much thought, if any, to what the interpretations mean. For instance, if someone bumps into you, you wonder why. The event of her bumping into you is neutral in itself. It has no meaning. It's your interpretation of the bumping that gives it meaning, and this meaning shapes your perception of the experience.
You may interpret the "bump" as an accident or you may feel you are of such little consequence that you're deliberately unnoticed and bumped around by others. You may fault the architect for the design of the sidewalks or you may feel you are at fault for not being more attentive of others. You may interpret the bump as a deliberate example of feminist aggressiveness, or you may even interpret the bump as her way of flirting with you. Your interpretation of the experience determines your perception.
Think for a moment about Abraham Lincoln who is considered by many the greatest president in the history of the U.S. He could not choose his parents, the immediate circumstances of his upbringing, or the historical epoch of his birth. Modern day psychologists would label his parents as dysfunctional and abusive. He was mocked and ridiculed by his school classmates because he was awkward and gangly and his clothes never fit properly. At age 22, he failed in business, he ran for the state legislature and was defeated, and he tried to start another business and failed again. At age 26, he was rejected by a woman he loved and had a nervous breakdown. At age 33, he married a woman who was found to be mentally unstable, and once more was defeated for Congress. At age 37, he was finally elected to Congress but at age 39 he was once again defeated. He subsequently campaigned for and was defeated for the senate, vice presidency, and again for the senate. At age 51 he was elected president of the U.S.
Lincoln was not born with a positive "can do" attitude. On the contrary, his life is testimony that a positive attitude toward one's experiences takes considerable effort and practice. Lincoln learned to expect difficulties, and, so was not traumatized and defeated when faced with problems but viewed them as part of the natural course of events. Lincoln learned the harder one works to sustain a positive interpretation, the more one appreciates life.
Lincoln did not choose his experiences of failure and defeat, but he did choose how to respond. He realized that he was not reacting to an event but to how he interpreted the event. His life is testimony to the uniquely human potential to turn defeats into triumphs and to turn ones predicament into a human achievement. For those events that were not up to him, it was his own attitude that determined their influence on him. When he was no longer able to change a situation, he changed himself.
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Michael Michalko is the author of the highly acclaimed Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques; Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius; ThinkPak: A Brainstorming Card Deck and Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work. Learn more here.
Tags: adversity, attitude, behavior, change, experience, perception
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Monday, 19 November 2012
When You Can’t Change Your Circumstances, Change Yourself by Michael Michalko at The Creativity Post
Thursday, 12 April 2012
'Inspiration is 80% Mental, 40% Physical': Your Secrets of Creativity -by Jared Keller at The Atlantic
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By Jared Keller
Apr 11 2012, 10:41 AM ET Comment
Earlier this week, I asked Atlantic readers to share how they come up with their best ideas. The feedback was excellent: readers shared responses long and short through our comment section and on our Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr pages. As we suspected, inspiration takes many forms, and everyone has their own particular process for spurring on creativity and inspiration. Below, a sampling of longer responses from our readers.Inspiration Is "Something Of An Ongoing Disaster"I struggle with consistency. I think that's the best way to put it, and it makes talking about "inspiration" almost a laughable endeavor because I don't feel, I never feel, as if I have enough data points in any given field to make generalizations about where I get inspiration or even what I am inspired to do. I jump back and forth between writing a book to watercoloring to linoleum prints to short stories to blog articles; I work on them in the morning and late and night and at home and outside and in coffee shops; I break and re-arrange my "creative time" again and again to fit around my family and the weather and what kind of mood I am in. The last short story I finished was inspired by a DC comic series I found by way of feminist blog, and it was unusual in that I could pinpoint with some clarity where and when the idea developed.The story before that was more typical, in that I could list you some influences but not which one was the most important or how they fit together - reading Lord of the Rings as a seventh grader, mentally exploring the Mines of Moria again and again, dreaming not of being one of the Fellowship but instead an orc that could descend like an impervious insect into rock-hidden places; turning corners with neck outstretched in Salamanca as a recent college grad, nervy and terrified by a recent mugging but still desperate to love the gold stones and dry air; babysitting a family friend's three-year-old son and having long and puzzling conversations during which neither of us was quite sure we were understood by the other.I sketch a lot, and I do watercolors outside, and I take photos. These images (of nearby hills, of houses I have lived in, of streets I have walked down) show up in my dreams, and I reinterpret the reinterpreted. I spend a lot of time trying to make stories that create some sort of sense or resolution from terrible things I read in the news; many of the inner worlds that I write about come from asking the question, "In what kind of world would this terrible thing never happen?" I read books and I try to include authors I hate. I spend a lot of time on the internet researching architecture and design and social justice and other topics that don't have any connection to my everyday life. I look at hundreds of pictures every day.I suppose it would accurate to say that I subscribe to the jumble-box theory of inspiration: if you only absorb enough media, introduce enough diversity of shards of ideas into your brain, they will eventually smash all together and you will develop a original(ish) and authentic language of your own, mosaic of bright and sometimes indistinguishable pieces."All You Can Do is Swim in the Problem Until Your Subconscious Finally Forges a Solution."I work for an engineering firm that produces wireless products. As engineers, we're tasked with producing new things with a minimum of new ideas. The latter restriction makes for safer design and brings things to market quickly and efficiently. Even with that limitation, there's still a place for innovation in this process. That's the exciting part and every engineer lives to find simple, elegant solutions to difficult problems.Many of us take our lead from Thomas Edison and his well-quoted "genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration" line. We've learned that the 99% perspiration requirement seems to be essential to any creative solution. All my engineering associates said the same thing - you have to totally and painfully immerse yourself in a problem long before a solution becomes obvious.That immersion process rarely provides an answer by itself - few of us sit at our desks and pound our way to a creative solution through sheer perseverance. It's only by living with the problem day in and day out that allows you to accumulate the bits and pieces that you'll ultimately need to find a solution. Only after repeatedly soaking in the problem will you have enough insight to be able to solve it.Once all that juice is stored up, you are at least prepared for those random moments when inspiration does strike. Inspiration comes to engineers like it comes to everyone else - in the shower, while taking a walk, in dreamland - some time when you aren't actively thinking of the problem.As far as I can tell the inspiration part of the process can't be forced. All you can do is swim in the problem until your subconscious finally joins the disparate pieces together and forges a solution. Conversely, just expecting inspiration to come into play without the necessary work up front doesn't seem to work very well either. There seems to be no way around Edison's perspiration edict.There's probably no new insight here but at least it's useful to put the process into words."I Am Agog With The Power of Serendipity"I am agog with the power of serendipity.Serendipity, the happy accident, has driven much of my research and much of my publication. My first book, on the work of police officers and social workers, emerged entirely because a student of mine was a police officer--a sergeant, in fact--who invited me for a ride-a-long one night. In time, after many rides and much observation, I hit on the notion that on the scene, at the spot of an incident that a police officer was working, it is best to consider the police officer in exactly the same terms that we analyze small group leaders: as people exercising power and discretion to achieve some socially approved end. In fact, I can still place myself in the exact spot I was in when this idea hit me: riding in a police car at 2 am one morning, driving under the overpass of a yet-unfinished interstate. It was a "Eureka" moment.A later book, on the American militia movement, was informed by the entirely happy accident (at least for me) that I moved to Spokane, WA, to take a temporary position at Eastern Washington University at the exact moment that the Randy Weaver standoff took place in neighboring Idaho. My surprise at the sympathy with which Randy Weaver was treated in the local media led me to ask that most important of political questions: why do people like something I find abhorrent? Answering that question took several years and a survey of the militia movement from Ruby Ridge to Homeland Security ... but I got to an answer that, at least, satisfied me.Of course, as Ben Hogan once said of golf, it might be a game of luck but the more I practice the luckier I get. It is one thing to be hit by serendipity and another to be ready for it. An open mind, a big reading list, and a curiosity about the world around me has, I think, put me in a position such that when those serendipitous moments come, I am at least partially prepared to be struck by them.Then comes the hardest part: making the words come out in a way that makes the thoughts in my head correspond with the squiggles on the page. Which takes a whole lot more inspiration and, indeed, a heck of a lot of mental perspiration."Inspiration is 80% Mental, 40% Physical"Football is 80 percent mental and 40 percent physical.-Steve Emtman, former NFL defensive lineman, Little GiantsLike many mid to late 20 somethings, I learned most of my life lessons from two sports films: The Sandlot andLittle Giants. I was 9 years old when former overall first pick Steve Emtman hopped off John Madden's bus to inspire the Little Giants before they took to the field against the Little Cowboys. Even though I knew Emtman never mastered the principle of addition, his sincerity in delivering his signature line left a lasting impression.At 27 years old, I spend most of my time thinking about how to persuade people to read and engage online content, be it a tweet or a piece of longform journalism. My best ideas are 80% mental and 40% physical. Well, roughly at least. My 9 year old self was much better at arithmetic.40% PhysicalIt is not easy to be in a proper physical state. Leaving the office for a leisurely walk outside isn't enough. When I am struggling to define a problem or am unable to draft a complete answer, I need to wear myself down. For example, I'll run 5 to 6 miles and then attempt to 3 to 4 sets of push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups. This is how I clear my head. I am usually juggling multiple thoughts at once and the best way to prepare myself mentally is to exhaust myself physically.Exercise is relaxing, but it can be debilitating if I forget to stretch. I never took to yoga, but I am a fan of spending 20 minutes tugging at my ankles or pulling an elbow. Time permitting, a hot shower can help, but I rarely have a eureka moment in the shower. Showers are more likely to echo shards of previous ideas. I use this time to take a mental nap since I'm functionally on autopilot.80% Mental20% pressure 30% existing knowledge 10% connecting the dots 20% feedback = 80% mental.Eureka moments do not occur in a vacuum. My trigger is pressure. Deadlines motivate. With the threat of impending failure, I think about what I already know and what currently fascinates me. The more I already know, the better caliber ideas I generate. An array of datapoints -- anecdotal or statistical -- builds the foundation for an idea. If you don't know anything about a subject, chances are you won't think of a great idea. Life isn't Good Will Hunting where strangers stroll into a classroom and complete complex equations.Do not silo your brain. I find myself at my most creative when I am connecting disparate things. How should I connect this blog post about reality television with a Congressional Budget Office white paper on home foreclosures? I am envious of designers who draw inspiration from a variety of sources: photography, textile patterns, medieval architecture, 1990s Geocities sites and the like. Inspiration needs room to breathe. I create this space by combining what I am working on with what I like.For example, if I was tasked with doubling the number of viewers for this blog post about creativity, I would survey my existing knowledge base about promoting digital content in light of where I currently enjoy spending my time. Right now, I'm fascinated by The Verge (tech website), Buzzfeed Politics, the Q&A network Quora, The Atlantic Wire's media diets, SBNation's YouTube channel, Byliner's longform publications, the comedy podcast network Earwolf, Storifies compiled by The New York Times' Brian Stelter, Google's magazine Think Quarterly, the music sharing site ThisIsMyJam and a few others.Using pen and paper or a whiteboard, I'll map out what I know with what I like. This process generates workable to occasionally great ideas. Sometimes I'll use mind maps. Sometimes I'll write lists. It depends on my mood and the subject matter. It is more important to put forward ideas instead of fretting about the best process to organize thought. Do what comes naturally.I'll share these ideas with co-workers, friends, strangers on Twitter and anyone else I think who would be helpful and/or interested. My eureka moment is most likely to occur when I'm defending an idea and someone's comment reveals that last kernel necessary to complete my thought. Or at least I've convinced myself I posses the right question or answer.The dirty secret to inspiration is that it great ideas are never complete. Figuring out a solution superior to your previous answer is exhilarating, but it is foolish to think this is the best possible idea imaginable. Pressure is essential to acceptance. It is dangerous to endlessly pursue what we think is genius at the expense of great. I admire the hacker ethic because what society commonly hails as genius is most likely an iteration of a series of good ideas.The 120% EthicDo not take the previous as an excuse to settle for a half baked idea. Deadlines do not justify bad work. The "Emtman equation" is actually kind of beautiful in a cheesy inspirational halftime speech sort of way. Inspiration is tied to effort. Sitting on the couch playing video games will more often than not, fail to produce good ideas, let alone great ideas, on its own. Relaxing is important. Clearing one's mind is critical. Refusing to put in the effort and expecting genius only works in the movies."Creativity Is A Social Phenomenon"My best ideas come through communicating with others. For me, creativity is a social phenomenon.I spend a good deal of my time honing my thoughts (alone) - thinking, reading, observing. The goal of this is to clearly define logical relationships between events, which is really just the concept of causality (cause and effect).The real creative side comes about though social interaction. Interaction required individual thought to be restructured, so that another can clearly understand your conscience. This restructuring process produces a more clear and often enhanced version of the original logical relationships. This has led me to believe that there is significant value for a firm in investing in human capital. When I'm surrounded by smart people, it makes me smarter. This is nothing new, but it works for me!"The Best Thing I've Done Is Create A Little Book of Ideas"I find that keeping as busy as possible charges my brain for those inevitable times of the day when you can be alone and think- and those times I savour. Not to be crude, but when I'm in the loo is a good one. Or travelling between places on the tube or the train. Driving helps a lot.As others have said, sleep helps, but I use it more when I'm grappling with an issue or a problem or something really important. Often, when I have an assignment or a job application due, I sleep on it before handing it in, and inevitably wake up with several minor- yet crucial- adjustments that can mean all the difference.The best thing I've done in the past 3-4 years is create a little book of ideas. It now exists both in my tasks list on Gmail and in a hardcover copybook by my bed. I write everything in there- a different way of designing metro systems based on polar coordinates rather than the Cartesian coordinates that have been favoured traditionally; or an innovative new business idea for hot drinks that are healthy for you. To focus my mind, I used the first page to outline a "bucket list", so that my ideas matched my life goals. I read it again every so often to centre my thinking and, despite the chatter of normal life, remind myself of what's truly important for me to achieve."How Do You Get To Eureka? I'm Not So Sure You Can Force It"My earliest memory of this "Eureka Moment" dates back to when I was a child. I must've been in the 1st or 2nd grade. I was drawing a figure of some sort... something alien, perhaps from some movie I had seen; it was very organic. In any case I was stuck on the eye, I remember constantly erasing and redrawing, the tooth of the paper all but gone. My classmate Isis unexpectedly bumps my arm. I lose my patience, I yelled at her. Then I looked back down at my paper and alas the perfect stroke was created. A happy accident as they say.More than a decade has passed and now my creativity is constantly being challenged. I'm a graphic designer now and often if not most times, my answer comes from some serendipitous moment. My best designs, photos, and yes, illustrative strokes aren't usually premeditated, but are more-so formed from random quirks in sketches or in visual inspirations that set off a spark, the answer I've been looking for.So to answer the question: How do you get to eureka? I'm not so sure you can force it. At least I've never been able to. I'm not saying an outside force needs to motivate your decisions, but you need to be ready and able to accept something as a great idea on a moment's whim. What's meant to be will come to pass and hopefully something serendipitous will come by your way."How Do You Get to Eureka? You Don't. You Let It Get to You."There's no formula, equation or repeatable scenario to creativity, to finding that "next big idea." Ideas are stubborn, strong. They take their time brewing - like all good things - before spewing over, leaving you to pick up the scraps that remain and reassemble the mess. The mess is madness, yes, but part of the beauty comes in creating something out of all those limp lost thoughts, bringing them to life. If your "great idea" dangles just out of reach, eluding you, refusing to be caught, begin again. Start over, with lots of little thoughts. Collect them, everywhere you go. Store them in some dark corner, and wait. Wait and watch. Watch as that corner grows and explodes into light. Watch as the walls crumble, down. Then search through that rubble and build something new - when the wall falls, when you least expect it, you'll know what to do.How do you get to eureka? You don't. You let it get to you.Share your creativity secrets in the comment section, submit a post on Tumblr, or tweet your thoughts to us with the hashtag #InnovationWeek. We'll compile your answers into a post later this week. (The longer and smarter you write, the more likely it is that we'll publish you.)
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Sunday, 18 March 2012
I am moving this blog to Wordpress
This is not because I no longer like Posterous. Far from it. It is because of the recent decision by Twitter to buy Posterous, or, in effect, their top level staff. (You can read about this on any number of Posterous blog forums). For the time being Posterous will go on being Posterous as we have known and loved it. But sooner or later, it will get run down. Everybody is saying so.
So while the going is still good I have moved the bulk of my posts from www.anthonywilsonpoetry.com and www.lovefornow.posterous.com to the new wordpress site.
Please do visit it, watch it grow, make comments, and above all subscribe to it. Wordpress make all of these actions incredibly easy, which is the point, after all.
Thank you and goodbye (for now)
Anthony
Wednesday, 14 March 2012
The Write Team: Creativity, Confidence and Challenge
Yesterday I had the pleasure of giving a talk at the University of Exeter's CREATEseminar with Emma Metcalfe of Bath Festivals' Write Team on the impact of creative writers working in schools.
In particular we drew attention to the difference the project made to pupils' confidence and to changes in practice in participating schools.
You can read the outline of our talk below.
Click on the following links for more details of the Write Team, including free downloadable resources and anthologies of students' work.
Click here to view a video about the work of Bath Festivals' education projects, including the Write Team.
Click here to download the full research report on the Write Team project.
Friday, 9 March 2012
Lifesaving Poems: Kenneth Koch's 'To My Heart at the Close of Day'
But somehow I managed not to say that I love the work of Kenneth Koch. I know this because I was irritated with myself on the drive back from the school: how could I have forgotten him, especially when I managed to remember to mention his colleagues James Schuyler, John Ashbery and Frank O' Hara?
I first came across this poem in the review of New Addresses, from which it comes, by Mark Halliday in Poetry Review (posted at the bottom of this piece). If you will forgive the pun, I felt it was the game-changer. There is something more than autumnal about the piece, the voice dropping to a conversational murmur which is intimate and troubled. In a poem about a summer pastime which is played out on a grand scale in front of crowds, this is refreshingly ironic.
I think the poem is playful on other levels (please forgive that pun also). I think Koch is playing with his public persona of 'wackiness'. Read the first four and a half lines out loud: there is more than a hint of Edward Lear about them. I think those famous 'contemporaries' of his also ghost this poem, with the inevitable comparisons that were and are and probably always will be made between that famous school of New Yorkers, who were after all friends who supported and encouraged each other.
I delight in this poem, even though I know next to nothing about baseball. Underneath all of these plays for attention, the poem unleashes the twin terrors of a ball coming 'smashing toward you' in the 'sudden' darkness. The 'great step' we take toward it may indeed be a 'thrill', but the poem is careful not to prescribe anything so definite as an outcome.
Finally I think Koch is playing with the idea of poems being words that can knock you for six (forgive the pun). That is what this one does to me.
To My Heart at the Close of Day
At dusk light you come to bat
As George Trakl might put it. How are you doing
Aside from that, aside from the fact
That you are at bat? What balls are you going to hit
Into the outfield, what runs will you score,
And do you think you ever will, eventually,
Bat one out of the park? That would be a thrill
To you and your contemporaries! Your mighty posture
Takes its stand in my chest and swing swing swing
You warm up, then you take a great step
Forward as the ball comes smashing toward you, home
Plate. And suddenly it is evening.
Kenneth Koch, from New Addresses (Knopf, 2001)
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Lifesaving Poems: Sharon Olds's 'Looking at Them Asleep'
I found this poem in a collection of poems called The Matter of This World in a second hand bookshop next to Berwick on Tweed station. It was pretty much falling apart at the seams then, and has completley disintegrated now. I still have it. It may be one of my favourite books of all time.
The first British publication of poems by Sharon Olds, it reminds me of a very particular time in my life, that of looking after and administering to the needs of my two young children. Parallel to this era, but not separated from it, was another kind of enterprise altogether, that of reading and writing as much poetry as possible.
I am not really sure if you can ever replicate the sheer hunger, obsession, desire and compulsion of your first serial encounters with poetry, at the point when you know you need it to breathe and make sense of who you are as much as you do food and a roof over your head.
The closest thing I can compare it to is the love -animal, pre-verbal- that consumes you if and when you first have children. You tiptoe into their rooms at night, just to check that they are still breathing. Sometimes you wake them up, just in case. It is just like tinkering with a poem, getting up early or staying up late to delete just one more adjective, or comma, in case you get hit by a bus on your way to work the following morning only for the world to laugh at your incomplete and amateur work.
Nothing prepares you for it and nothing comes close to taking over your life in the same way again, not even illness or death. It is not a choice, finally, like falling in love. It is beyond that, existing somewhere in and outside of ourselves 'deep in unconsciousness' and 'anxious and crystally in all this darkness'.
Looking at Them Asleep
When I come home late at night and go in to kiss the children,
I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,
her face deep in unconsciousness – so
deeply centred she is in her dark self,
her mouth slightly puffed like one sated
but slightly pouted like one who hasn’t had enough,
her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the
iris around to face the back of her head,
they eyeball marble-naked under that
thick satisfied desiring lid,
she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion
and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,
one knee up as if he is climbing
sharp stairs up into the night,
and under his thin quivering eyelids you
know his eyes are wide open and
staring and glazed, the blue in them so
anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his
mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb
and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled
and pale, his long fingers curved,
his hand open, and in the center of each hand
the dry dirty boyish palm
resting like a cookie. I look at him in his
quest, the thin muscles of his arms
passionate and tense, I look at her with her
face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,
content, content – and I know if I wake her she’ll
smile and turn her face toward me though
half asleep and open her eyes and I
know if I wake him he’ll jerk and say Don’t and sit
up and stare about him in the blue
unrecognition, oh my Lord how I
know these two. When love comes to me and says
What do you know, I say, This girl, this boy.
Sharon Olds from The Matter of This World
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Lifesaving Poems: Julia Darling's 'Chemotherapy' vs 'Psalm 102'
I was astonished to find in an old diary today that by 8 March 2006, less than one month after I was diagnosed with cancer, I had already been given two infusions of chemotherapy. The speed of the cycles of my particular treatment was due to my successful volunteering to take part in a randomised control trial testing the efficacy of a cycle of 14 days against 21 days, or, in the jargon, 'CHOP-R 14 vs 21'.
It is odd what you remember. The twenty tiny cherry-red pills I had to swallow with milk during for five days after each infusion. (These were steroids. They were deeply un-fun, let me tell you). The Piriton chaser injection just ahead of the main infusion, 'to send you away with the fairies, my lover', as one nurse put it. She wasn't wrong.
Most of all I remember the swathes of bright blue clothing every nurse had to wrap themselves in each time they began the course of injections. When I asked why this was necessary I was told it was because the chemicals were so poisonous they would burn through ordinary clothing if spilt. 'And to clean it up we would have to shut the whole ward down. For a day.'
Mostly I looked forward to being away with the fairies.
I had come across Julia Darling's marvellous poem 'Chemotherapy' nearly a year before I fully understood what she was talking about. There is not much I need to add to it, except to say I think 'the smallest things are gifts' sums up for me the entire universe of pain, gratitude, suffering, relief, anxiety and humour which the word 'cancer' registers in me.
Chemotherapy
I did not imagine being bald
at forty four. I didn’t have a plan.
Perhaps a scar or two from growing old,
hot flushes. I’d sit fluttering a fan.
But I am bald, and hardly ever walk
by day, I’m the invalid of these rooms.
stirring soups, awake in the half dark,
not answering the phone when it rings.
I never thought that life could get this small,
that I would care so much about a cup,
the taste of tea, the texture of a shawl,
and whether or not I should get up.
I’m not unhappy. I have learnt to drift
and sip. The smallest things are gifts.
from Sudden Collapses in Public Places (Arc, 2003)
I did not come across Psalm 102 ('A prayer of an afflicted man. When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord') until some after my treatment had ended. Again, I do not think it needs much explication. My first reaction to it was -how did the psalmist know how to describe the bodily reaction to chemotherapy thousands of years before it was invented?
Psalm 102
Hear my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry for help come to you.
Do not hide your face from me
when I am in distress.
Turn your ear to me;
when I call, answer me quickly.
For my days vanish like smoke;
my bones burn like glowing embers.
My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my food.
Because of my loud groaning
I am reduced to skin and bones.
I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.
I lie awake; I have become
like a bird alone on a housetop.
(1-7)