Learning to Fly

12. Day Twenty-seven

The observant among you might notice that the numbering of these posts has changed. This is because I changed them. All of them. Day One is the day I started writing about my illness in order to externalise it, as part of the healing process (along with all the pills, dietary changes and exercise protocols). But since I don’t really want to write every single day, there are gaps. Today is day 27, but only my twelfth post. Got it?

This last gap was quite big because I was – once more – busy having a life. Good sign, huh? Several things were on the agenda:

1. the second day of the Nobel Peace Summit;
2. becoming a German;
3. having my 50^th birthday.

All of which were very notable and would deserve a post each, but no time for that, I’m afraid.

Going back to the Nobel Peace Summit, which feels like it was about a year ago, we need to revisit the Berlin Wall again. The title of the Summit was “Breaking Down New Walls for a World without Violence”. As I indicated in my last post, the old Wall actually still needs some demolition work on it, despite the fact that is so hard for tourists to find. And that Wall was the ultimate symbol of the Cold War, which used nuclear weapons to create a prison of fear that held us all in its iron grip. Well, the Wall has gone, but about a third of the nuclear weapons still exist. We have learnt to bury our fear in the unused nuclear bunkers that are now open for viewing by tourists, as though the problem is one we have already dealt with. Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt.

Paolo Cotta-Ramisino from the Pugwash Movement made a very salient point at the Summit. Everywhere, where we find Walls (and I mean Walls with a big “W”), we find nuclear weapons. Just as the Berlin Wall was the location of the nuclear stand-off, we find the same in Israel/Palestine, Kashmir, the Korean Peninsula – impenetrable Walls coupled with a nuclear threat. Taking down those Walls is the first step to resolving the conflict and getting rid of nuclear weapons. The core issue is conflict resolution.

And to resolve conflict, as any six year-old can tell you (because they learn it at school), it is important not to take sides. I add this to what Paolo had to say: “Extended Deterrence” – that is letting your country be a base for US nuclear weapons – is very definitely taking sides. Ergo, if Germany wants to do something about conflict resolution in the most dangerous places in the world, it should get rid of the nuclear weapons based on its soil. Basta.

Gorbachev made another very important point. The militarisation of the planet prevents us from saving it. In order to solve the major problems of our time, like climate change or poverty, we need all our resources and to work together. But instead the military budgets grow, we remain in conflict with one another and we still threaten each other with nuclear annihilation.

The third person I want to mention here, without in any way meaning to say that the others were not worth mentioning, is Annie Lennox, one of my most favourite people. Apart from being a great singer, she has a heart as big as a giraffe’s. The videos she showed of the AIDS catastrophe in South Africa left not one eye dry in the house. Even Wowi, the Mayor of Berlin, was weeping.

I wasn’t so sure whether I should stay for the award of Woman for Peace 2009 that was given to Annie. My feeling was that I had enough grief dealing with the nuclear issue, without enlightening (or burdening) myself with another topic like AIDS. But the truth is, they are all interconnected. We only have to join the dots. What you spend on this, you don’t spend on that. You can solve a problem through love and care, or you can drop a bomb on it, but you can’t do both. Winning hearts and minds while carrying a machine gun does not work. Militarism causes poverty, poor people can’t get education or medical care. The Millenium goals are not the goals of those who want maximum profit. Selling an F-16 fighter plane will earn you more money than digging a well. And so on, and so forth.

Well, we know all that. Like in the Easy Way, the point is not all the reasons that things are bad, but what can we do to get out of the prison? How to rid ourselves of the pathogens and become healthy again (or at last). Mairead Corrigan Maguire says: forget the past, you are not responsible for it; don’t look to the future, it will happen anyway. Live for the moment and enjoy it to the full. Actually, I was so busy listening to what she had to say, I didn’t write it all down, so I can’t be sure I remember it correctly. She was talking to the youth, but I still felt it was a message for all of us.

I dreamt that in order to fly, you just had to slow time down enough not to fall. Sometimes I was even able to do that in my dreams. During the daytime, I tried to slow time down by focussing fully on what was happening at that moment. That means that when I awoke, instead of thinking about what I was going to do that day , I listened to the birds in the garden or the footsteps of my husband in the kitchen, and felt how my body was or smelt coffee brewing. On the bike ride to work, I wouldn’t run over all the work I had to do that day, instead I would notice trees or little animals or how cross people in cars would look, what the weather was like, how the day smelt. Instead of getting places quicker, I wanted to get there slower.

That was a long time ago, before I gave birth. Having a child as a working mother (even a part-time one) speeds time up because you have to get to places on time, quickly and you have to remember all the things that need doing, and there are way many more things to do, and to remember to do. Multi-tasking is not a talent, it is a bare necessity. I would love to be able to just do one thing at a time. But there just isn’t the time.

Now, again, I have the time. Because I am sick. I can choose to use the time to my benefit or to benefit others. I can stay longer in bed after Jaime has gone to school and just lie there listening to the rest of the people in the house slamming doors and running to their cars, shouting at the kids to hurry up. I can read a book or watch a video. I can play Scrabble on the computer with people in other time zones. Jealous? I can work. I can write. And when Jaime comes home, we find time to talk about the day. What he did, what I did. And then we say: what shall we do now?

It is all a question of balance. Equilibrium. That is my weakest point. I am still trying to learn that yoga exercise where you stand on one leg. Hopeless. I always fall over.

If you only care about the world and not yourself, then you will get sick. If you only care about yourself and not the world, the world gets sick. And if you tell me you haven’t got time for both, then learn to fly. But it’s not easy.