Tag Archives: acceptance

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Acknowledging the Mind’s Eye

Sometimes, in the midst of a problem –in the midst of an era- the resolution derives not so much from the answer as from the acknowledgement that there is an issue to begin with. I find it interesting that Nature has given us an ability to adapt more efficiently -to ignore, I suppose- that which arises gradually than that which falls upon us as an event –interesting, because that allows us to discount something until it results in complications. Difficulties. It is the Janus view of evolution, I suppose.

An article in the BBC news alerted me to one novel approach to encourage acknowledgment of an issue that has plagued some societies for what seems to be millennia: sex selection –or perhaps, more honestly,  destruction:  www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-37034444

It got me thinking… We tend to cherish and preserve what we value; we neglect, or abandon that which we don’t. Denigrate it, even. Perhaps an occasional nudge in the ribs may cause us to look around and see where we have wandered –realize that there is really no need to stand so close to the edge.

But it does give one pause for thought –how do some of these things become imbedded in a culture? Surely they don’t start out as intentionally malevolent. Or is that being revisionist and unduly naïve? I’d like to think that some of the customs, however egregious we find them now, were products of a different time when other priorities required precedence. Confusing times, perhaps, when we barely knew who we were in our overarching need to identify and fend off them. Troubling times beneath the roiling waters in which we are just beginning to be able, however slowly, to surface for air.

And the problem, as always for those of us less afflicted, is acknowledgement –recognition that there is more to do. There is always more to do…

Despite being a gynaecologist for more years than I can remember, I suppose I have always lived in a man’s world. It’s hard not to wear the clothes you were assigned. And yet, every so often, that usually-locked door is knocked ajar briefly, and the light from within is blinding. Unintentionally heuristic.

I was sitting in a busy coffee shop recently and managed to find a tiny unoccupied table against a windowless and shadowed wall in the corner. Perhaps it camouflaged me -made my presence less noticeable, my gender less obtrusive- but as I sat there staring silently at the busy room, fragments of conversation from the next table floated past like dust motes in the feeble light. Two women were catching up on their lives. I didn’t mean to listen, but sometimes words are beacons: currents, vacuuming up the air between –meant to be heard, meant to inform. It’s hard to ignore words when you sit in shadows.

“And so how is Janice doing now?” a grey-haired woman in pigtails wearing black track pants and a yellow sweat shirt asked between gulps of coffee and grabs for the oversized chocolate cookies she had balanced precariously on her plate. She clearly had little need of more calories, but the presence of her more sizeable friend likely justified the debauch in her mind. It works for all of us, I think.

Her friend just shrugged amicably. “You know what it’s like, Dory,” she said, and launched into her bagel as if she were packing a box. “Kids are kids…”

Dory munched softly on a cookie and considered the issue. “She’s hardly a kid, now, Alice. She’s, what, seventeen?”

Alice nodded her head equally thoughtfully and her long dark hair slid back and forth over her shoulders like a wash cloth. Although considerable larger than her friend, she carried her weight gracefully, and with the gravitas that suggested a person of authority. Dressed in what seemed in the dim light to be an expensive white silk blouse I could make out little ruffs on each wrist. I don’t normally notice such things, but with each movement of her arms, they risked coating themselves with cream cheese from an impertinent bagel, now lying in fragments in front of her. “Eighteen…” She took a delicate sip from her coffee and sat back on her chair as if the subject required a little more thought.

“Still, she should know where she’s headed by now…” Dory left the question of direction open, but her eyes betrayed her opinion. “I mean, who she is…” she added, italics begging for attention.

Alice sighed and leaned forward again to pack another item into her waiting mouth. “I think she’s always known.”

“And how about you?”

Alice smiled and nodded. “Some things a mother just knows, Dory.”

Dory was obviously trying to understand, but her confusion was apparent, even to accidental eyes watching from the shade. She shook her head, disapproval hovering over her like a cloud. “Did you ever to speak to her about it, Alice?”

Alice’s eyebrows both rose at the same time. “Whatever for, Dory?” she said, genuinely puzzled at the remark.

It caused Dory to sigh rather more loudly than necessary. “Well, I would have thought…”

Alice refurbished the smile she’d sacrificed to the bagel and leaned an elbow on the table. “Thought what?”

Dory straightened her back like a boxer ready to receive a blow. “Well… that…”

“That my daughter would think the same way as her mother? She learned the Theory of Mind when she was five, Dory.” Her friend visibly winced at that. “The world is different for each of us, Dor,” she said, reaching out and grasping Dory’s hand. “And the question should not be why, but rather, how can I best negotiate it…?”

Dory tried to smile, but even from the shadows I could see her lips twitching with the effort. “Do you think if…” But she was clearly too embarrassed to finish her thought –and anyway, I could see Alice shaking her head and squeezing her hand affectionately.

“Somethings just are, Dory. And my main duty as a mother is to help her to accept them.” She let go of Dory’s hand and picked up her coffee for a sip. “And to help others to accept her…”

“But…” There was a hint of helplessness in that one word.

“But what’s not to love, eh?” she said, glancing towards the door and standing up to wave at a smiling teenager gliding towards them like a boat about to dock. And then Janice waved back, just like anybody else…

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As I Age

As I age, it becomes increasingly clear to me that Life is far more complicated than I could ever have suspected. It is like a stew where I keep finding new ingredients –some to my liking, and some… Well, let’s just characterize them as unexpected -mysterious strangers that surface from time to time, wreak havoc, then disappear again like shadows on a moonless night.

Social movements are often like that –or, rather, social solutions. Society changes over time and it has been the fashion of late, to see this as an evolutionary adaptation to underlying conditions –the slow but steady metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly. And yet, sometimes the change is more abrupt -a mutation- and we are forced to deal with the consequences. When things around us change, we attempt to keep up –or at least, like the Red Queen in Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, find ourselves running faster and faster to stay in the same place.

And one manifestation of this is the need to preserve a thin weft of values as a template during the inchoate and often thread-bare interregnum. I’m thinking, of course, about the age-old philosophical conundrum of whether we should tolerate the intolerant –and if so, then how? And at what price the compromise? One example from many: the need to establish special female-only transportation in the city of Zhengzhou in eastern China to help women feel safe from sexual harassment. To guard them. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-36169029  Of course, the problem is by no means unique to China -other countries have discovered the same need and arrived at similar solutions.

But it seems to me that the issue is far more complex than these solutions might suggest. This gender issue, in some ways is not dissimilar to the racial problems that surfaced so violently in the last century in America. To think that having different buses for people of colour would salve the problem was proven to be naïve, and in itself discriminatory.

It comes down to the difference between toleration and acceptance: putting up with something that might not actually be approved of –enduring it: ‘toleration is directed by an agent toward something perceived as negative. It would be odd to say, for example, that someone has a high tolerance for pleasure’; versus  Acceptance: acknowledging and welcoming something as itself; permission versus approval. A power struggle either deferred, or shared.

To equivocate for a moment, should we tolerate mere tolerance, or accept it…? As an interim solution, of course. In other words, is it better to have the segregated buses for women, say, than groping and intimidation on more inclusive public transit? To say that there should not be sexual harassment is all well and good, but it ignores the present reality –there is, and to ignore it would therefore be akin to tolerating it. So are we  trapped in a never-ending game of chase-your-tail, forever condemned to wander the Mobius strip looking for an exit?

Perhaps it might be helpful to distinguish the component parts of the issue (I have adapted some principles from the peer-reviewed Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/tolerati/#SH4a).  It seems to me that there is a difference between the more superficial and emotional response to whatever is being tolerated (Let’s call this the Reactive Stage) –the need to separate the aggrieved from the aggressor, for example- and the Rational Stage: the more dispassionate and reasoned analysis of the problem –if indeed such an analysis is feasible, or could even be rationally justified. In other words, on what grounds does the prejudice in question continue to exist? Is it remediable, or inevitable? Should we be forced to retreat behind our own societal boundaries and accept the relativistic excuses proffered that we simply can’t superimpose our own values on those who are not like us? That we, in fact, do not understand –nor likely ever will, since we are other?

Or, closer to home, can we ever hope to change attitudes such as disrespect and insensitivity to aspects of personal autonomy that have been entrenched –and indeed accepted- for countless unquestioning generations -that, until recently, were not even considered problems requiring solutions?

Well, societies do alter as time and members change; I’m not sure we could characterize the alterations as necessarily evolutionary, or teleologically driven, but certainly the initial reactive and then the more rational stages can often be discerned. The societal attitudes towards Gay rights, for example, have undergone major shifts within the past few years –even the initial toleration, which was rare in past decades, is now remodelling itself as acceptance.

So what -if anything- has Age taught me? What has the passage of years and the successive unfolding of events disclosed? Well, it has become clear that in the long run, our enemies become our friends; that we seek and find compromises satisfactory to each –bargains that in due course cease to be seen as concessions by either party, but rather as amicable balance; that Force only suppresses while it is being applied; and that discussion is inevitable and infinitely preferable to confrontation. We may not be able to evince our much-touted rationality in all things, but we are all eventually susceptible –amenable even- to accommodation.

Omnia vincit amor, I suppose.

 

 

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To Have, or not to Have

There are two worlds out there, two Magisteria. Two contrasting inclinations that pass each other on the street without a wave. Strangers who sometimes know each other well. They sit, unwittingly close to each other, in the waiting room of my office. They chat and smile obligingly, trusting that their ignorance of the other is no impediment to friendship, however brief. Indeed, there is no barrier, only a perspectival boundary: Weltanschauung.

And yet, I don’t want to make too much of the difference; it is often in flux, and can mutate even as we watch –Time has a way of adjusting viewpoints,  justifying decisions. We all try to vindicate ourselves in the end. Validation requires exculpation, does it not? Absolution in the eyes of those who matter…

So the stronger the tradition, the societal apologue, the more the justification and guilt assigned to those who stray from it. There is a sort of canniness in the collective –or at least strength. Acceptance… And it is easier to regress to the mean, than defy the group. Especially when it comes to attitudes towards pregnancy –or more specifically, the decision whether or not to have a baby.

I’ve just read an incredibly powerful  book, whose title captures some of the agony and guilt attending those who dare to deviate from societal expectations: Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed. It is a collection of 16 well-written and generally thoughtful essays -13 from women, and 3 from men- about choosing not to have children. None are from paedophobes; and only a few are from those who decry the notion of pregnancy in others. They are not outliers –except perhaps on a carefully constructed Bell Curve- nor could they be construed as deviant. Each has merely made a personal decision not to accept the tyranny of the Norm.

The essays took me back to the early days of my practice, when, as a newly minted obstetrician, the very idea that someone would not want to have a child at some stage in her life, was anathema… Well, perhaps curious would describe it better –memorable, at any rate. And yet, it was not unknown. It was always a difficult decision in those faraway times to accede to a request for sterilization in a young woman. Contraception, yes, and although this closed the door effectively, it did not lock it. We were suffocatingly parental in those days: we knew she might change her mind –she was young and inexperienced, after all. Like a child, she had to be protected; it was our responsibility to keep her future mutable and open. We –society- were the guardians of that door…

But there are surely two issues at play here. It is one thing to criticize a decision made prematurely –before the kaleidoscope of life has fully displayed, when the future is more chiaroscuroid, more obscure and uncertain- and another developed in that fullness of time when a considered, even retrospective analysis of the factors leading to the choice can bear fruit.

This, too, can seem arbitrary, I realize. Is there a difference between a thoughtful twenty-five year old woman who -in her mind at any rate- has weighed the risks and benefits of having a baby and decided against it, and a forty-five year old who, on looking back at the way her life has unfolded, is grateful and reconciled to never having a child? It is a vexing question on several levels, I think.

In these days of autonomy and non-maleficence when it is considered medically paternalistic and politically incorrect to suggest that a decision need not be vetted by experience, we forget the other ethical duty of a health care provider at our –her- peril: beneficence –serving the best interests of the patient. It seems to me that this entails both a mature and non-directive dialogue and a list of other, more malleable options that would not only adequately serve her needs, but would also allow for change at any stage. Some form of reliable and non-intrusive contraception, for example, might respect her desire to avoid pregnancy, and yet enable some flexibility should she change her mind, or harden her decision for a permanent solution.

But I have to confess that I am still troubled. On the one hand, it seems to me that wisdom is the ability to judge a situation based both on knowledge of what it entails, as well as experience of how it usually turned out in the past. It is why elders were revered in the days before the plethora of information technology that assails us today. I am trying not to be Ludditic here but what the elders contributed, that Google often does not, is digestion. Analysis over time and place. Evaluation. Information can be coloured by current trends and bent by traditional assumptions –but of course so can needs. We must not forget that.

I have always been leery of ‘facts’ divorced from context. Are they then still facts or do they inhabit some terra incognita we have yet to fully occupy? A territory of collation, a thesaurus that is able to list endless variations on whatever theme we decide applies to us, so we can pick and choose the reality we prefer?

It is not the decision to have, or not to have a child that should preoccupy us, but rather the reason it has been chosen. And for such an important life-changing resolution, the depth and –dare I say- maturity of  thought that has gone into the consideration is paramount. It is not, nor should be allowed to fall under, the purview of political correctness and thereby escape a more cautious and examined approach. There is no correct answer, no unquestionable myth that can justify any position. We may have a spur to prick the sides of our intent, to paraphrase Hamlet, but it is a different one for each of us. We must take care that we, and those we counsel, are not –Hamlet again- hoisted with our own petards.