In a world of uncertainty I know one thing for sure, the older I get the weirder my thoughts get. I’ll give you one example that struck me as I was watching TV the other day. It was a programme about a hospital garden designed specifically to accommodate spinal injury victims, many of whom were wheelchair users. The design could be summed up as wide, concrete paths winding through beds of flowers. This description barely does the garden justice but it will do for now.
Maybe it was because of my MRI scans and a follow-up visit I’ve got booked in to see a spinal specialist in a week or so’s time that led me to the rather unwelcome thought – that could be me in a wheelchair if I continue to have increasing difficulty in walking.
The point of this is not that I had this quite negative thought in the first place but rather my reaction to the thought. Which was, should I be rejecting such thoughts as unnecessarily negative and gloomy or welcome these thoughts as a way of becoming more familiar and hence at ease with this as a future situation. That’s a long question and a big thought although as I say a somewhat strange one.
I suppose it links to a broader strategy for dealing with negative thoughts – push them away and pretend they don’t exist or welcome them in so you can deal with them. I’ve had a few negative thoughts about retirement or more accurately old age recently. They have been linked primarily to my increasing health issues but are also broader than this, but I’m not going into them now. In the old days, i.e. my working days I would have recommended to clients that they embrace the problem/s, write them down, tease them apart, look for solutions to each part, set small, actionable targets etc. etc. You know all the sensible things psychologists, as a matter of course, recommend.
The strange thing is that, as I have got older and life has seemed somewhat more challenging, I am less and less inclined to walk down this well-trodden path. These days I’m leaning towards burying my metaphorical head in the metaphorical sand and pretending these difficulties do not exist. True, I do still try and focus on the positive bits of my life and indeed to be grateful for them, but the bad bits I try and ignore.
Which brings me back, not neatly at all, to the issue about wheelchairs (as above) and me being in one. And the question as to whether I should have the thought in the tent (what tent is that you ask?) where I can get to know it and become more at ease with it or outside lurking, there, but unrecognised, and, as such, a source of unease and even discontent.
I think, having thought about this, I’ll go for my usual strategy – worry about this monster when I have to and in the meantime pretend it doesn’t apply to me. Of course I might be wrong and I could change my mind. But at this point I will stick with it generally as well as it applies to the specific wheelchair question. God that was a ramble. I often have no idea with some blogs what I am going to write about at the start, with this one it’s the end and I still have no idea.