Og the dog off for a swim

Nothing works. I’ve tried shaking my head like Og the dog after a swim. I’ve tried tipping my head to one side and then the other. All to no avail. My brain is still brimming over. Usually when something goes in one ear, another thing falls out the other. But not at the moment. So many possibilities and consequences.

At school when we all wanted to be first in the dining hall there was so much pushing and shoving that nobody made it through the door at all. That’s what my head’s like: full of one the one hand … and on the other … Like people who have so much to say, it all comes out jumbled.

They say we have free will. Pish and piffle! One of the characters in the film Shadowlands (CS Lewis and Joy Gresham), says ‘we read to know we’re not alone’. I read Richard Rohr and often think ‘yes! finally I find someone who knows what I think better than I do.’ He writes: We are all conditioned, programmed, wounded, addicted, repetitive, habituated and compulsive in our brain processes—which indeed largely determines the content of what gets in and what stays out. True free will is largely a myth, as most of us initially operate almost entirely out of conditioning and culture.

When I was a student on the Obstetrics and Gynaecology rotation, a wise obstetrician* said that the best line of treatment more often than not is Masterly Inactivity (and he spoke the capitals). This is not bad advice for me at the moment. If in doubt do nowt. Who or what will be a midwife for my brain?

* He was on hand when SWMBO came to be delivered of our daughter in 1975. We then moved to Nottingham, and found that he had too, so he was in charge of the emergence of the two boys into daylight as well. They’re all October birthdays. It’s called the rhythm method of conception.