I'm feeling pretty bad at the moment for several reasons. I lost a patient on Boxing day, a little boy. I cried but I'm used to it. It is my job.
I felt so sorry for his parents who are inconsolable.
I bottle a lot of this up because it is none of your business.
I cope because that is what I do.
Today is my 60th birthday. Not bad for a first suicide attempt at 13.
Not bad for gang raped at 16.
Not bad for a drunk.
I had lots of messages from friends and family. For the first time in my life I had friends from Aus and all places OS text me, call me, email me.
I normally feel suicidal on my birthday.
Always have. Nothing to celebrate but didn't kill myself last year. may have tried, f ucked up again.
This birthday is different. I'm happy but reflective.
There is a long way to go and I have new challenges that I want to greet and meet.
I have friends that I love deeply and although I let them down at times I just hope they forgive me.
I was given a tiny bottle of whisky as a present. Just as good because I used to drink whiskey from pint glasses
And of course I reflect.
This is a famous reflection by Carl Sagan.
You can source it by wikipedi etc. Carl did not copyright it. It is his and his alone.
For all my failings I hope I occasionally help.
I do love you all.
Reflections on a Mote of Dust
-- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
With my love and blessings to all of you
Cindy James
