Tag: agency
-
If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?
It seems like years ago now when I first read the thought experiment about the drowning child posed by the philosopher Peter Singer. I don’t remember the exact wording but the gist of it was: on seeing a child unable to escape from a shallow pond, you decide not to wade in to rescue it…
-
The poems the earth writes upon the sky
I don’t know… ever since I read Suzanne Simard’s ‘Finding the Mother Tree’ a few years ago, I’ve felt differently about plants -about Nature. Simard, a professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, ‘is known for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks, which has led to…
-
The Angry Bench
Some benches are more than places to rest, more than places with an impressive view; some seem to continually attract the same type of people. Perhaps some benches feel the mood of their occupants; perhaps some of them take on a sort of monochromal agency… I have to admit that my acquaintance with most park…
-
To be, or not…
Perhaps it’s my increasingly autumnal years, but lately I’ve begun to wonder about what extinction really means. Not so much my own, you understand -although that will happen soon enough- but ours. All of us… Extinction has certainly happened before of course. I mean, the Neanderthals went extinct, the Dodos went extinct, the wooly mammoths…
-
Is anything an island entire of itself?
For some reason, I find it interesting that we feel compelled to wrap ourselves in our own unique identity. I assume I am my named island, and forget -or don’t realize- that I am actually ‘a piece of the continent, a part of the main’ as John Donne opined in his famous Meditation (XVII). I…
-
And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees
I’ve always felt a part of Nature, but now that I’m in my autumn years, there seems to be a special urgency to it. Still, the continued rebirth of green each Spring gives me hope; the longevity of trees that will continue to stand long after I cannot, inspires me; or perhaps it is simply…
-
To weep is to make less the depth of grief
To say that emotions are important for us, is a rather trite observation, I suppose -they all seem to have functions although usually so seamlessly woven into the cultural Zeitgeist they defy easy inspection. Happiness seems to serve a fairly obvious purpose, if only as a contrast to its absence; pain (at least when considered…
-
Every offence is not a hate at first
What do you do with a gift from someone you once respected, a gift that seemed freely given at the time, but which turned out to be a mere façade? What do you do with a love turned sour? A love turned selfish? All love is selfish, you say, but it is your experience speaking…
musingsonwomenshealth.com 