Thought Picnic: Emotional abuse masquerading as peace making

Setting the Thought

One thing I have striven for, and perhaps never fully mastered but have always applied myself to learn, is to have good judgment coupled with the instinct to do what is right. I need to be assured that I am directing my energies towards benefit, not only for myself but also for others.

Then again, regarding the pursuit of happiness I have written about many times before, having material means and provisions is not inherently the main source of happiness; it can also be the cause of great misery.

However, if you find yourself with the opportunity and privilege to make others happy, it is quite likely that you will end up happy as well.

The Responsibility of Cultivating Relationships

You might wonder how the thoughts of the previous paragraphs are connected; I see them in the context of cultivating relationships—some enduring, others fleeting—yet all meaningful for everyone involved.

Imagine the responsibility of a pilot of an aircraft: even if one might say unwittingly, you are in charge of a vehicle worth over 100 million pounds or dollars, but more importantly, you carry a cargo of human lives that you cannot take lightly, numbering around 200.

Appreciating the weight of that responsibility instils discipline, self-control, and the importance of working with your team to ensure your duties are carried out with excellence.

In our endeavours, we may not be pilots, but we are pilots of sorts. Whether as parents, teachers, or professionals in fields like medicine, engineering, law, finance, or the humanities, there is impact, consequence, risk, and reward.

Human lives are affected, and relationships that matter can dissolve through poor judgment, bad faith, a bad attitude, bad behaviour, or simple neglect—failures to recognise and address issues in our development that become disadvantages.

A Consideration of Others

All of this hinges on the issue of consideration—not of ourselves alone, but of others—because how we involve ourselves can affect others more than we realise, often because we are solely focused on ourselves.

This year, during two nuptial preparations, I have observed a profound lack of good judgment and an absolute inability to include important people in planning, organisation, and execution.

This has left relationships strained, with attitudes ranging from nonchalance to indifference from those whose various contributions could have made the events more successful.

We should not delude ourselves with the hubris of thinking we matter more than we do to the couple beginning their lives together. However, there must be a way to address issues before resentment develops from being ignored.

It is merely emotional abuse.

Yet, for those with the greatest influence, tolerating the worst offenders while appealing to the good nature of the offended is not peace-making; it is emotional abuse, emotional blackmail, and worse.

The points I initially intended to address will have to wait for another time because the crucial issue here—emotional abuse—has now become the focal point.

Good judgment fosters the development of relationships, especially when considering how the responsibilities we have, acquire, or are imposed on us can make a significant difference in the overall happiness of all involved.

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - LXXVIII

A spectacle of living

Manchester Presents would be a fitting title for a programme that highlights the intriguing peculiarities of this city, demonstrated through its residents and their way of life and pursuits.

I generally consider myself more of an observer than a participant. Usually, I find out about events in my city long after they happen. If I happen to learn about something before it occurs, I might make a mental note, but due to disinterest or lethargy, it often slips my mind.

However, whenever I step out for something as mundane as shopping for essentials, these encounters make me wonder if there’s more to the beating heart of Manchester—something I have yet to fully grasp after nearly 12 years of living here.

But a polemicist

For example, I was on a bus returning from the shops when a lady of South Asian origin boarded. Stylish and quite sophisticated, her makeup stood out—her eyes accentuated with black markings resembling the upper rim of large, rectangular spectacles.

That alone would have been an interesting story. Then she started to speak—at first I thought she was on a phone call until I realised she was addressing us, the passengers on the lower deck. She wasn’t a preacher, a few of whom I’ve seen, but not in Manchester.

When I understood what she was saying—her somewhat coherent remarks—it was polemical, with references to government involvement in fraud, with the citing of sections and paragraphs too. If I had been paying closer attention earlier, I might have laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Achievement without recognition

If I heard her correctly, she was either a professor of Punjabi literature or a close relative of one, and her father was a renowned professor named Kohli. She even spelt it out. Then she launched into a tirade about prejudice, racism, and not being recognised because she had brown skin.

Despite her accent, she exhibited every sign of a good education, with flawless grammar and a conviction in her delivery that persisted until she disembarked. It seemed she was making a case—perhaps a grievance or an injustice still bothering her.

Upon reflection, I suspected she might have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice influenced by prejudice, racism, workplace harassment, maybe denied promotion—situations often encountered in academia—and this appeared to have affected her mental health, reflected in her behaviour on the bus.

May she find peace

At the very least, she probably needs therapy. I was quite concerned about her, and I’m somewhat relieved that no one tried to silence her. As disturbing as it was, we simply let her vent her spleen, though there was more to it than met the eye. I sincerely hope she receives the help she needs.

For a lady who, by her bearing, could be of a certain age above the golden jubilee, there’s little to distinguish eccentricity from being sectioned. On that spectrum, she seems closer to the latter. I truly hope she finds peace.

Meanwhile, no face masks seen, but some of us are still taking Coronavirus booster jabs.

Essential Snobbery 101: Judicial ire for communal warmth

No sense of consequence

The motivations behind certain actions just escape me, whether it is for clicks on social media or personal thrills, a communal and societal pact seems to have been broken.

That awareness of action and consequence is lost in a reckless belief that there is no one to hold you accountable and no time for anyone to investigate the situation.

Two incidents have brought the law into the lives of some thrill-seekers with far-reaching implications.

Even with the advent of TikTok, which can produce useful content with a bit of imagination, malevolence for laughs and shockability appear to be more attractive. The lure of going viral is irresistible.

No concern at all

For example, two teenagers are facing the law at Stratford Magistrate Court because they threw a large seat off the top floor of a crowded shopping mall as an internet prank, which did go viral.

When confronted and questioned by the police, the boy who threw the seat said, "It's not that deep, it did not hit no-one.” [BBC News: Boy admits throwing seat off Westfield's top floor]

While there is a real chance that if the seat had hit someone, it could have caused serious injury or death, we might be getting ahead of ourselves. The key question is why the boys believed they could achieve anything by hurling a large seat off the top floor of a shopping centre, whether it was crowded or not.

What kind of pastime could have occupied their minds enough to dissuade them from such an act? We may never get the answer, but there is no reason why they should escape punishment for this egregious act, which showed a complete lack of understanding of the harm it could cause innocent people in a public space.

A chop for gaol

Additionally, as for escaping punishment, two men have just received four years and three months each for cutting down a tree.

Just a tree, but that tree—the Sycamore Gap tree—is a renowned sight, over a century old and near Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. [The Guardian: Two men behind ‘senseless’ felling of Sycamore Gap tree jailed for more than four years]

Their quest for notoriety, recorded on a mobile phone as one used a chainsaw to fell the tree in minutes, shows they travelled 40 minutes at night, then walked through a storm for another 20 minutes from a car park to conduct this pointless act.

What kind of thrill could they have been seeking in their apparently restless lives that this tree became their target for reckless vandalism? Though in court, before turning against each other, they acknowledged that what they had done was being covered in the news.

The importance of community

Despite any mitigation that might temper justice with mercy, many seem unable to foresee the consequences of impulsive actions, showing a lack of deep thought about our deeds.

Furthermore, there is little consideration of how our actions might impact, offend, upset, or harm others. This reflects a selfish society.

If only there were a sense of community in these individuals’ minds, perhaps they would have realised their actions were wrong and chosen to find another way to contribute positively rather than to harm.

The point is recognising others, like not littering, keeping noise down in residential areas at night, wearing headphones on public transport, or avoiding reckless stunts on the main road—are fundamental signs of respect.

Surely, there is an unwritten code of conduct, learned at home and reinforced at school, based on the simple principle of treating others as you wish to be treated.

Maybe it is asking too much of that African proverb, “A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” What price some pay for that need for warmth, which can often lead to the unnecessary heat of judicial retribution.

Thought Picnic: There is always someone worse off than you

 In the shoes of another

“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” Helen Keller

I stepped out this evening because I had a craving for hash browns which would normally be served as part of an English breakfast meal. I care nothing for having at supper, what should be had for breakfast.

A younger man met me to ask for alms and we both recognised each other, because over the last 18 months or so, I have been opportuned to facilitate boarding, meals, and other things that could alleviate his situation.

As I had no change, but was going to the local supermarket, I asked if he would want something to eat from there. I had not noticed that he always hid his right arm. This time as we conversed because he was aware I had cancer; he decided to show me his right arm.

Changing a congenital narrative

A condition from birth meant the bones in his arm were poorly formed and the hospital had decided to amputate the arm. He left the care of the hospital because he was not ready to deal with an amputation, but the hand was hanging of the arm, limp, swollen and could develop into a serious life-threatening condition as sepsis or worse.

That had me concerned that I advised him to seek further medical supervision based on how the possible loss of the arm might impact his quality of life. Introducing some humour, I suggested if he had a hook for a right hand, he might get to share thrilling stories with kids, because the state of the limb at this time did not offer any utility or confidence to his situation.

Nipping it in the bud

In a moment of self-deprecation, I averred that I would not want to be the making of a nursery rhyme that ran along the lines of

He was a tall and big man, it would seem,
But the walnut of his prostate was the end of him.

What can be dealt with before it becomes too serious to manage is best dealt with now. We got a meal, a snack and drinks before we parted ways. He said he would return to hospital to see what can be done for him.

I thought about how fortunate I have been, even after two episodes of cancer, no precarity, deprivation, or adversity, I have ever experienced compares to any extent, the challenges this man has seen in his own life. I hope I give him some encouragement that things can change, but anytime I see him, whatever I can do to help him, I would do.

There is always someone worse off that you, count your blessings and be grateful for who you are, and what you have.

A realisation of poorly availing oneself of support systems

The after-cancer misconceptions

There is one blessing of effective recuperation that allows many to perceive one's apparent return to normalcy in most activities, suggests the illness suffered was not that serious.

Let me put it back in context, when I received a diagnosis leading to a prognosis almost 16 years ago, my consultant clearly stated in uncertain terms that if I could not tolerate the treatment, which was chemotherapy, I had probably 5 weeks to live.

In that state, I had already lost a quarter of my normal body weight, and I was in literally unmanageable pain, because I did not tolerate morphine that well.

My left foot was seething with fungating tumours, with two of my toes, the largest and the next about to fall off. However, because I was blogging through the experience, some people thought I was just having a bed rest.

Once again, I appreciate many may have no concept of what cancer is, and how it affects, the spirit, the mind, and more evidently, the body. It is a nasty malfunction in the body that in many cases leads to death. This is not to exaggerate the effect of cancer, but it should not be brushed away with indifference, because one has survived and is thriving after a cancer diagnosis.

It is a serious disease

For those of us fortunate to come out at the other end, to tell our stories, we are no better than those who succumbed to the disease. In my view, it is the medical personnel that battles cancer bringing the body of knowledge acquired from treating cancer to bear on our ailing bodies.

It is the same with my second encounter with cancer, I felt quite different because it was invisible and painless, yet deadly. It was blood tests that informed the need for an MRI scan and then a biopsy of my prostate gland showed cancerous cells for which the consultant recommended immediate active treatment.

This was not a mild headache needing an analgesic, every treatment was radical and impactful with sometimes debilitating and lingering side effects.

Nine months after I completed radiotherapy, my normal voice is in the forgotten past, urinary and bowel issues persist, night-time insomnia upsets my sleeping patterns that certain days at work find little verve or strength to perform in the afternoons.

Reviewing the support systems

Much as I tried to manage my return to work with the support of experts, by sheer personality and will, I fear I might have exerted myself to the extent that leaves me wondering if I have poorly managed things. My sense of independence tends to dispense of the reliance on support systems long before I have fully benefited from what it all has to offer.

Certain motivations have given way to lethargy, the mix of the political leading the technical in my workplace can exacerbate stress.

What I must avoid at all costs is a relapse and I do not think I am doing enough as both the cancer support nurse consultant and occupational health specialist have notified me of their intention to close my file, as I have recently not leant on them for support in the last couple of months.

From a medical standpoint, I have not been discharged by the oncologist or the urologist, their schedule is to monitor my situation for another two years.

One would think these support systems should run in tandem, but that does not seem to be the case. My response to them would offer thanks and express my concerns.

As for me, each day is a blessing, and things would only get better. I have promised myself; I would rather be able than be a person with disabilities due to my circumstances, but I should do that in view of the limitations borne by my condition.

Thought Picnic: Just trying to be human

Usually totally misread

The way it creeps upon you is strange and unsettling; I try to keep constant what I can control, while letting go of the things that seem expendable, as much as possible. I suppose people see in me a disposition that never suggests I could be as vulnerable, so when I do feel it, it is often read as something else.

I was shocked when I was asked if I had an idea to end it all; though I’ve faced overwhelming situations, I have opposed them firmly with positivity and hope. What I want to be remembered for is quite different from what that might suggest. Put that under the rubric of concern, I was advised.

I am aware that I always want to tell a better story. Those who think they know me rarely sense that sometimes I’m not feeling social or wanting to go out. Usually, when I am alone, I am more of a loner, an introvert, even if I express myself too candidly with words, generally well put together.

What I really feel

Yet, to the question about how I do feel in myself, I can never be negative, even if I do not feel the way I want to feel. It’s an intrusive but understandable question, yet even in my relationships, you’d hardly see past the surface; genuine closeness and physical intimacy are needed to see beneath.

By pressing on, I have avoided exposing my vulnerability, lack of desire, or disinterest. That feels like a luxury I can ill afford, given the demands placed on me to respond, engage, reach out, contribute, be present, and consider others' perspectives, often at the expense of myself.

There was a time I could shut myself away completely — curtains drawn, indoors for days, like Miss Havisham, who’s never stopped her clocks — but no one truly understands that need for occasional hibernation. Yes, I do value solitude and being alone.

I have lost my weakness

Much of this stems from repeated experiences of abandonment across different stages of life, including during illness, where my coping mechanism masks deeper suffering. Even my way of recovering downplays the seriousness of what I face; what people see and what is real are often different.

Heck, Akin, you had a malignant cancer diagnosis just over a year ago, and during those critical moments — from diagnosis, decisions, to treatment while working every day — you faced it largely alone.

I didn’t take a break until a month after radiotherapy, as I realised I had exhausted much resilience and needed someone to lean on, despite many challenges and the feeling that seeking help was somehow wrong.

We are never depressed

There’s so much I want to say, but I can’t put it into words. I have weaknesses easily overlooked because of the 'firstborn syndrome' and the idea that I am a pillar of strength. It’s a constant struggle to live up to that myth, as if I’m superhuman, when I am simply human.

We are never truly depressed — this would be an incomplete reflection, and I don’t want to be scrutinised or given poor advice based on assumptions. We don’t all fit preconceptions or boxes, but others rarely understand when someone’s difference doesn’t match their frame of reference.

How many allowances can be made for others? In the depths of the night, I hear a cry: “Please, don’t forget me.” Just as I want to reply, “Hold yourself together,” I realise I have to cater to these pleas — and it’s a pipe dream to think I’ll always be looked after.

I am tired, not of living, but of constantly meeting others’ expectations, which strains my mental resources, making me want to retreat into my own cocoon. Obligations, responsibilities, duties, commitments, demands — all of it. Yes, that sense of depression can creep in strange and unsettling ways.

Lest I forget, Africans are never depressed when you have the weight of expectations pressing down on you.

Spaces without balance

The shift has occurred

I came across an article, a commentary on how organisations, establishments, and corporations are lacking in accommodation and inclusiveness. Sadly, given the direction of our public conversation, we are expected to promote and reinforce a particular perspective or risk ostracism.

Having experienced times of political correctness, which evolved into woke culture, and now the topical issues of identity and how diversity can imply exclusion, one might wonder what has changed in our discourse that no-platforming and cancelling have become more common, along with the need to punish those who dare to think differently and voice those thoughts.

The balance has tipped towards an unrelenting intolerance of broader perspectives and dialogue. For instance, my idea of safe spaces used to be forums with a range of viewpoints available for all participants to consider, regardless of their beliefs. However, what currently exists is a safe space not to feel uncomfortable or challenged; rather, it is a space to reinforce biases instead of questioning preconceived notions.

Can we think for ourselves?

The brave space to dissent and debate respectfully without being disagreeable has been lost to a different kind of safe space. It is safe for the timid or entitled, but unsafe for the brave.

Grievance, offence, upset, and outrage often dominate, at the expense of open-mindedness and tolerance of opposing viewpoints. As a result, we fail to step into another's shoes because we believe we are already wearing the most uncomfortable shoes imaginable.

How we arrived at this unidimensional situation involves curating inputs, confirming biases, a lack of curiosity, and perhaps a lazy mind as well. Meanwhile, certain purveyors of extreme perspectives stand to benefit from homogenising and intensifying positions that leave no room for compromise or consensus. We are unwittingly pawns on their vast chessboard of power, profit, and politics.

We must ask ourselves whether we are still thinking for ourselves or have become subsumed into the malign thought processes of others. In voicing these thoughts, we become megaphones for ideas we would have once rejected.

We are not the same

This debate is ongoing in Australia, where those involved have initially faced punishment but then found themselves reprieved through legal actions and protests. It is a debate we should be having across the Western world, as exemplified in this excerpt from the article.

“All right-minded organisations try to make their workforce more diverse. But are we going to accept people from different ethnic and political backgrounds only to the extent that they behave like middle-class white people? That is, those who dominate our culture largely as a result of their luck, and who have not got a family legacy of colonisation, war, trauma and holocaust?

Sometimes, encounters in brave spaces might lead to us changing our minds, or question our own assumptions.” [The Guardian: Opinion: The ABC and Creative Australia panicked in the face of controversy. These vital institutions must not be so timid. - Margaret Simons]

Talent rarely shown

Telling Good Stories

Brian is a brilliant writer, but it took him a while to start blogging. There is much about Brian's experiences and background that enriches the fabric of our humanity. Still, we often hesitate to use our voices and express ourselves, especially when we truly have something to say.

Everyone has a story, and that story comes alive through its telling. The way life, experience, perspective, and how similarly observed situations can create totally different narratives—and beyond that, the influences of people, places, or events—make for every unique viewpoint. Isn’t that what diversity is all about?

Impactful Without Fuss

While he doesn’t write very often, I could miss something he has written for up to a week. I have a feed from his blog on mine; I should check it more regularly for those unexpected updates. There is also an attitude to his writing; he never promotes his blogs nor seeks feedback in the way I do. Within hours of posting a blog, I would seek his opinion.

He simply waits patiently; he knows I will eventually read the blog and probably comment too. I wish he wrote more often, but skill and quality aren’t necessarily shown by quantity. Whenever he writes, it’s a pleasure to read.

Brian's Point of View is where you’ll find him.

The price of not forgetting

Mind what you show

A while ago, I saw something both unusual and attractive in a face online, and did wonder who it was. I was gripped by curiosity but unaware of the tools at my fingertips to satisfy it.

In one of those events of one thing leading to another online, I happened upon PimEyes, a website that thralls the Internet for image similarities, it uses a form of Artificial Intelligence and for the free product, it is good.

I did find the face and just the other pictures and URLs you could not visit on the free version was revelatory. Let's just say you do not want to put pictures online on sites and profiles that could leave you compromised.

That it out of face

The same happened with a chap with totally enviable model looks, I found out where he took his modelling pictures from one of the URL results, but some other pictures were in flagrante dilecto, giving full expression to his sexual proclivities.

The prude in me did wonder how such a beautiful man could be up to such naughtiness. Even in my wildest years, my nudity never included a face, which must be a law, a rule never to be broken regardless of your state of sobriety, except where that is your clear intention.

It’s somewhere online

However, more pertinent was the impression of the Internet never forgetting, when a website I used for a core part of work research went offline months ago.

As I needed information only it could provide, in simplicity, I found the Wayback Machine, a website that does a sweep of the Internet, it periodically captures literally anything published online, it is an internet archiving resource. I was back in my element for the recall of an essential service.

My blog started in December 2003, hosted by a local company in Scotland that I thought I was supporting until they decided they found no more pleasure in hosting blogs in mid-2010. The harsher lesson was they used proprietary tools which made it impossible to migrate my blog to another hosting provider.

We were given 18 months to do whatever we could to get our content off before the hosting facility closed down in 2012. It took a good few weeks to copy each of the over 1,500 blogs to another location, but I lost the images, internal links, and interactions in comments.

Publish and be damned

Imagine, 13 years later, I plugged my old URL in the Wayback Machine and up came captures from 2003 to 2012, including comments.

All was not lost, just somewhere, if you knew where to find it. That is both a solution and a problem, how you can find what you thought you had lost, but worse still is what others can find that you had totally forgotten, you had done.

When Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was being blackmailed to be left out of the saucy memoirs of his mistress Harriette Wilson, he retorted, “Publish and be damned.” The publisher Joseph Stockdale did publish, but retribution came through others who ruined him with libel suits.

To many of us, there is probably no fear of libel or defamation, just the unfortunate situation of someone being able to dig up something from the past and make it relevant to the present, at a point of ascendancy, that you might have to relinquish an honour, an accolade, or a position in ignominy.

Think about what you post or court controversy at your peril.

A fair friar

Hark the hack

It amused me when a notice went out with one of those words that confused homophones with synonyms, ending up in a malapropism. Workmen had sown material that a seamstress might have sewn into fabric, causing safety issues.

That such mistakes seem to jump out of the seam of the misuse of words is something I cannot help; I see words in patterns, and if something does not fit, it is at once obvious. The workmen were not farmers; I should not be looking for seeds, whether they would have heeded this issue clearly enough not to mistake their screwdrivers for needles, is another matter.

However, this thought was sown in mock criticism of my kitchen acumen, where traditional cooking methods honed through observation and application found the ridicule of trendy experiences.

Cooked in preserve

The stove, with its reliability, an old steamer abandoned after it stopped working, a whisking hook lost in the exhaustion of kneading dough, or slow cookers aplenty abroad, the expansion of one's culinary repertoire had barely suffered the onslaught of modernity, and the food was still good to taste after all the striving.

Having pooh-poohed the advent of the air fryer, the needling that followed, compounded over days, led to relent. There was no compliment on offer without having gained another to complement the electrical goods.

Chopped in searing

We trundled round the front of the building, maybe quite a stretch for peace to reign and a box too large to bear even evoked visions of Africa; women with babies on their backs and basins on their heads, bare feet making steps on concrete or macadamised pavements, we found a convenience that could be out of place in Manchester, if you cared that much.

The operator took the flesh and bone and placed them in the apparatus. A few touches on the top, chops, time, and start, were for 15 minutes what sent the trusty oven to Coventry. Though, for roughage, it was the steamer in full regalia, a role no other could play better, we were once damned with praise, an acquisition that might be exercised in culinary achievement yet unrealised.

The fair friar indeed had successfully proselytised and won a convert, that her sacrifice, which felt like a punishment, was soon redeemed in the serving of a meal.