Brian

A collegue that I worked with for the past four years committed suicide on Sunday. My manager asked me to say something at his memorial and to relate an episode, an anecdote, a story. Where does one start though? It is like those competitions where you have to describe something intricate like love or hate in ten words or less. 

Brian was different, a shy soft spoken guy who were always willing to travel, always willing to assist, always smiling. The one photo on our notice board shows him at the Potjiekos competition, smiling and being happy. I will forever have that picture in my head.

Susan Cain wrote in her book “Quiet” that:

“Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.”

We wear our loudness as a badge of honour, our cynicism as a weapon, our outspokenness as a charm. It is understandable. Most of us have seen things in our lives that will haunt us forever. But in this culture of brash extrovert survival, we sometimes neglect to make a little space and time for those who are not like the rest: The quiet observers, the shy analysts.

People are quick to classify themselves as drivers. Those who get things do regardless of circumstances, regardless of the cost to people’s emotions and feelings. That is being said explicitly, but the inference is there. "I do not take no for an answer" "It is my way or the highway" "I am driver" "I will succeed".

And in all this Brian still stood out as an excellent investigator, someone who used his traits to obtain valuable information and to gain the trust of witnesses. He never destroyed a phone in anger, he never swore, he never became angry. He was empathetic and sympathetic. A rare soul in this world that we created, our fortress of noise which we build to hide away our emotions and true personalities, scared that our inner vulnerabilities and insecurities will be exposed and maligned.

And yet Brian always remained himself, steadfast in a barrage and deluge of noise.

I have been in a similar position as Brian. With just one little movement, one single breath separating one from this life and whatever it is people believe in. It is a dark, terrifying and very lonely place where phantoms and ghouls of one’s own creation dictate the way forward.

We will never know why he did what he did. Some will say that what he did was the coward’s way out. But in the end he was a very brave soul. He held out, he tried to keep going, he tried to live for such a long time, despite the excruciating almost debilitating pain which took over his whole being.

Almost with something akin to false Victorian bashfulness we skirt around terms like mental illness and depression. It is something that is a shame, a sign of weakness at best, a wallowing in selfish despair at worst. Both ends of the spectrum presuppose that a depressed individual has control over his or her moods and choices. But what people do not realise is that when you are in its clutches, you cannot choose. You cannot act. You cannot think.

In her book Night Falls Fast Dr Kay Redfield Jamison described this as follows:

“When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or non-existent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. ‘This is my last experiment,’ wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. ‘If there is any eternal torment worse than mine I’ll have to be shown.”

So Brian was probably in excruciating emotional pain. And that pain cannot be eased by codeine or morphine or aspirin. How do you describe your emotional pain in terms that people can understand? You cannot point at a broken limb, a gushing wound or a badly discoloured bruise.

So please do not blame him or be angry with him. Let us rather be honest about this illness that claims more lives every year than the war in Afghanistan. Let us accept that we do not have the answers. As Dr Jamison said:

“Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and best of bad possibilities, and any attempt by the living to chart this final terrain of a life can be only a sketch, maddeningly incomplete.”

Let us not define Brian’s life in terms of the way he died. Let us remember him as the sensitive, quiet soul with the beautiful smile, cigarette in hand, laughing in a knowing way at our complaints, curses and shouts.

And let us use this as a vehicle to understanding. Understanding that depression can strike anyone, that it is an illness. And that if it strike, it is not a shame but rather an illness that can and should be treated by professionals.

And above all, let us celebrate life.

3 December 2013

Women in War

A couple of weeks ago a friend invited me to a social paintball game. Now the previous time I played paintball I was 10 years younger and 30 kilos lighter. I also just want to take the opportunity to inform the  people who mistook my cries of pain every time a ball hit me that it was not an Amazonian or Pict war cry. It was just me screaming like a girl.

This time it was different. First off I had a mother of an automatic gun. Strange how you feel less vulnerable with a massive automatic in your hands. Which begs the question does size and caliber really matter? My answer is an unequivocal yes.

For the first two games I cowered in a bunker. And lo and behold, some sniper with a gun, or maker in paintball parlance, which if I would guess shot .68 cal boomerang balls, hit me in the shoulder.

Then something happened: During the last two games something in my mind changed and it changed from survival mode to attack like a madwoman mode. I ran out, sprayed my opponents with paint balls, dived very  graciously (as gracious as a 40 something overweight woman can be) for cover. And wow, what a rush.

In the end our team lost to a very experienced team of hard core paint ballers. Age should not matter. Ok, they were 9, 10 and 12 years old. Fierce little pre teens I tell you.

But it was as if something primal came out. Being in the moment, throwing caution to the wind, enjoying a little bit of peace and quiet in such a hectic world, where racing thoughts are the norm. Such a bunch of contradictions but hey, so be it. It was just a game.

But during my research into the role of women in war (that sounds profound but I was actually looking for a name for our new paintball team) I came across some fascinating facts. If one listens to the mostly American debates about the role of women in war, one would tend to think that women's only role in combat in the past was either as nurses or as prostitutes. Strange that, women are always depicted as either saintly or fiends from hell. Another debate.

During the Second World War the Soviets had women flying bombers, they had snipers and they had all women military units. The Night Witches flew sorties and bomb the Germans and the 1077th Anti Aircraft Regiment took on a whole German Panzer Division. The women of the 1077th was all very young, untrained and ill equipped but at the Siege of Stalingrad they turned their anti aircraft weapons on the advancing German army, not stopping until their whole Regiment was wiped out by the Germans.

So besides Boudicea, Joan of Arc (who was depicted as a raving lunatic in the Mila Jovovich movie) there are a lot of examples of women fighting in active combat: The Soviet Battalion of Death, the Cuban Shock Battalion etc.

Are women more fragile than men? That debate is still raging. Are women more at risk for atrocities committed against them when they are captured? Men are also at risk for inhumane torture and even rape.

But in the end, I believe the fighting spirit is the same. Most humans will fight with everything they have to protect that which is precious to them and what they believe is right.

My experience in martial arts taught me that women are much more fierce during competitions than their male counterparts. You should see them rumble. Maybe the same is true of war. Hopefully we will never have to find out though.

Photos

I am fascinated by photography. Maybe it is the way is which a split second is captured and nuances which might be missed by the human eye, are frozen on paper (or the electronic equivalent of papyrus sheets).

This morning I stumbled across this picture of the Empress Dowager Cixi. Traditionally, as I understand it, Chinese women did not have a lot of scope to advance as they were, like the ancient Roman women subject to a fierce patriarchal system. However, Cixi managed to become one of the most powerful women in China, ruling first through her son and after his death, through her nephew. Interesting that there were in history so many powerful women "behind the throne." 

This picture is utterly fascinating. She looks like a slip of a girl but her eyes speak of determination and ambition.

(This picture was posted on http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-rare-photographs-19th-century-chinese-women?image=10. There are several other fascinating photos on the site.)

The lure of imaginary demons

“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.” 
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

I have yet to see anything so-called supernatural in my life. And I have been looking for a long time, in churches and temples and circles, following ley lines and spirals. But these days I am more fascinated by the natural world and nature. Why do you want to proof the existence of ghosts when you can look at nebulae and coral reefs and magnificent mountain ranges?

Our world is being overrun by pseudo-medicine, pseudo-scientists and even religious superstitions. Suddenly there is a devil behind every bush. Suddenly people are avid believers in archaic texts like "Demonology" by King James. They believe that there are evil spirits inhabiting inanimate objects; they believe that ordinary people are being possessed by spirits who then make them do atrocious things like murdering their parents or setting friends alight. People believe that if anything good happens in their lives it is the result of belief in a specific deity, but when something bad happens it is because of their own human frailties and failures (referred to under the collective, vague term "sin").

In times of difficulty, be it economical, physical, emotional, people hark back to the belief that they are being punished by the divine being that they worship. Strange that, why would you choose to worship a vengeful god? If a god is omnipotent and loving, surely they will understand the reasons why you did something. And if they knew the reasons, if they understand fully, why punish you? And should the punishment not fit the crime? And what is the punishment exactly because in none of the holy texts of different religions that I've read, is the punishment described. I would have expected at least some sort of clarity, IE if you steal a goat you will be struck by chicken pox; steal a cow and your wife will desert you; if you kill someone, you will be struck by lightning.

Do I believe? Yes, I do but that which I believe in is too big for my human mind to comprehend so I try not to label it. The arrogance of humans are staggering. Some will state that what I do is not in accordance to God's will (God being the Abrahamic deity of the Old Testament). My first reaction is, how can you know what a god thinks? How can you elevate yourself to the level of an omnipotent being who created heaven and earth and tell me what that deity supposedly thinks? And how dare you question me and my life and my choices and shower me with fire and brimstone filled hatred and judgment? Because you decided to create a god in your own image?

We are supposed to try and live a good life, not to harm ourselves or other people or the environment. We are supposed to be loving and supportive of one another, not bomb the crap out of our neighbours. And one does not need to attend a church to be a decent human being. So, to everyone who ever tried to convert me, I accept that you tried to do that out of love and concern. But it is not going to happen in this lifetime.

The power of doing nothing

So the powers that be decided to send me on a women’s development course. The thinking behind the course is that women, although good at what they do, do not have the natural ability to progress past the glass ceiling. Apparently, women are bad at networking, bad at self promotion and generally bad at blowing their own horns. (Horror of horror, the glass ceiling still exists although HR denies any knowledge of it. But they will investigate.)

This blog is not about the course as it is quite valuable and it teaches a load of useful skills. By useful I mean useful in the corporate sense. It will not teach you how to survive after you voluntarily parachuted into the last virgin jungle on earth inhabited by cannibals. Those skills are taught by Bear Grylls. (Or maybe not.) But then a lot of people will argue that surviving the Bora Kora Tribe of Cannibals is still a lot easier than surviving a supreptious knife-to-the-back attack of that career minded bitch smiling innocently at you at the coffee machine.

Part of the development course involved identifying your strengths.  And based on a 10 minute questionnaire, all humanity is divided into the following categories: The drivers, the analytic ones, the empathetic ones ....sorry, can’t remember the rest. I have always been plagued by adult ADHD except when it comes to memorising the sequence of songs on ABBA albums or the names of books written by Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson.

It appears that most of the people in my development course are what the people in the know refer to as “Drivers.” Those people who in corporate jargon “get the job done.” In ordinary language people who obsess over every little detail, micro manage their teams into asylums (I still like the word. The term “mental health institution” does not conjure up the same sense of dread as the word “asylum.”), hardly ever smiles (except when they greet the client) and colour code their closets.

And then, behold, the Drivers smirked and smiled in a knowingly way, knowing that they are the chosen ones, the superior beings, the ones who will take this accounting firm to the next level of success and world domination. And the rest of us cringed, struggling to admit that our closets are a mess and that we go on holidays without booking accommodation prior to our arrival at our chosen destination.

The tyranny of the drivers and the tyranny of the morning people seem to rule this world. If you do not arrive in Johannesburg, after a 2 hour drive from Pretoria because of horrendous traffic, bright eyed and bushy tailed, you are not regarded as an asset to the firm. If you cannot function without 2 cups of filter coffee, you are not deemed to be worthy of the term “team player.” Sigh.

But is there something to be said for doing nothing. For not necessarily making things happen. For sometimes just letting go? And not worrying about the outcome? Gasp, shock, horror, exclaimed the Drivers.

I tend to fix things. I try to get dying bees to fly again by giving them sugary water in a tea spoon. (A couple probably gave me a bee zap sign, a tiny, extending, quivering bee middle finger. “Just bloody let me die in peace, human”). When my best friend and my then main squeeze decided to hook up, I tried to mend the friendship. When friends turned against me, I tried to do everything in my power to fix it. When my family became embroiled in a huge fight I arranged a dinner for everyone, getting them to make up. When my co-workers are unhappy I try to mediate and fix things. But then something happened and this past weekend and I decided to do nothing about it, despite the hurtfulness of what was said.

And it set me free. I realised that I do not have to fix everything, make everything better for other people, try to understand why they act in a certain way. Not only because of the mere impossibility of succeeding in my endeavours and in the process setting myself up for perpetual failure but because I am just so tired of doing it.

That one moment of not reacting, not fixing, not doing, set me free. It was the most amazing liberation since the day that I decided that I am not a Christian anymore and that I do not have to set my foot in any church, ever again.

Does the act of trying to do something act as a way to ignore the true facts of the matter? Does doing something delay the onset of that realisation of the heart sinking, painful inevitable truth of things? Until you've stopped trying, you do not have to deal with the outcome of a matter. So even the most futile efforts is better than facing what is inevitable.

That is why people pray, that is why they sign useless online petitions. Then they do not have to deal with anything because, in their thinking, there is still the opportunity for change.

Maybe it is time that I should stop doing things, stop trying to fix things. And it is not necessarily a bad thing. Only when you stop will you be able to contemplate and deal with the truth.