I am grateful that things haven't got worse faster. I know, I'm making Murphy sound like an optimist, but I am thinking of the harm-reduction model, here. This has not been one of my better days. But things could have got much worse. I slept poorly, getting up before four am following less than three hours sleep, then after breakfast, rested another three hours in my reclining chair. Then, on my way to work and throughout the day I was putting up with some people's appalling behaviour in public, and there was even a confrontation this morning which, fortunately, didn't get worse. After that I got to work with the client from hell.
I got through it all, remarking to my supervisor during our meeting today that, by all odds, I really ought to be in a much shittier mood than I really was today. I got through it. And as a treat, I got home early and unwound with a pot of homemade cocoa and a long, luxurious nap with my pot and mug of hot chocolate in easy reach.
Sometimes, that's the best we can do, Gentle Reader. Just get through the day, try to remember to smile, and to show some kindness to others. And to remember to laugh at ourselves, which on days like this can be particularly difficult, since we tend to take ourselves particularly seriously on our bad days, and maybe that's what helps make the bad day seem even worse.
Sometimes harm-reduction is the best we can do, whether it's providing clean rigs and safe-injection sites to addicts, or simply doing what we can to make things as comfortable and enjoyable as possible, even as they get irrevocably worse. Sometimes our interactions with one another have to be palliative. I have worked in palliative care. One of my clients was in the final stages of cancer. He was an alcoholic and only able to take liquid nourishment, so I would go to the local liquor store every week to pick up a bottle of Napoleon brandy with which I would generously spike my client's twice daily can of Ensure. (It made for a delicious cocktail, by the way, and yes, I know, because I tried it myself!) My client's suffering was eased considerably and he loved his Ensure cocktail. This I gave him till just the day before he died.
Sometimes we don't need to be challenged to make the effort to change, for the simple reason that we've run out of energy and resources. There is a particularly fascistic attitude in our contemporary mental health treatment philosophy that places on some of our clients unrealistic and cruel expectations of recovery and wellness. They are simply not ready, they are not there. They need first to be comforted and to be made comfortable, then we might gently introduce ideas towards wellness that they can absorb, or at least consider, without taking offense if in the meantime they simply leave our brilliant ideas for them in their own interior rolodex and just move on with them.
I think there are ways we can do this for one another in the every day. Simply to think before we judge and to really consider what the most loving thing might be to do. Sometimes a kick in the ass. Sometimes just a hug. Sometimes both?
I don't know what kind of direction things are going to take in my community, my city, province, country, in the world. Things often seem to be going from bad to worse to dangerous and frightening. Maybe it is unrealistic to hope for change in our world, such change as to make saving the environment, achieving social justice, economic equality and personal freedom for all the mainstays of our brave new world. One giant and eternal Kumbayah moment. Or maybe none of this will ever happen, we will all remain just too corrupt, selfish, fearful and lazy to want to be the change we desire to see, and down the big toilet hole we go. If we are going to descend, let's make it comfortable and enjoyable for each other, and maybe in our experiments with showing love and kindness we might even discover some ways of reversing the decline, maybe even before it's too late.
We really need to take greater care of one another.
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