There is something rather dictatorial about the title of this week’s postcard, but it was prompted by one of the doctors at The Hove Practice on Church Road, Dr Ellie Deane-Bowers. We were chatting about the after-effects of major surgery, and I recounted my conversation with Professor Hugh Perry, Emeritus Professor of Experimental Neuropathology at the University of Southampton, who had worked with Celina’s father in Rio de Janeiro. We had lunch with him and his wife Jess in May 2024 (See PC 388 Lymington) and, having never met me before, he asked for my ‘potted history’; where I was born, what I had done etc.
“I was born in Bath (blah blah) ……. In 2013 I had a triple heart bypass …..”. Hugh took a step backwards and looked at me anew. It seems that most people, 85% (?), become rather risk-averse, withdrawn from full-on activities, after major surgery. I had met a few of them in the Moulsecomb Leisure Centre on the east side of Brighton, where I went for a series of rehabilitation sessions after my bypass. “Hey! Take it easy; you’re sweating” said one of my fellow participants! He clearly was in that 85% category. There was no reason from a physical point of view to take it easy; as Jonathan Hyde my heart surgeon said: ‘good for 30 years’. So, it’s purely mental, the development of habits that restrict, that close one down, that make you live less than you’re physically capable of.
I asked a fellow yogi, Ian, his take on why we stop attempting something. “Fear!” was his immediate response and he promised to expand this idea when I asked: “Fear of what?”
Rather reflected what Marianne Williamson had written (See PC 205 First Steps): “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. ….. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne suggests we fear our own power, our own innate ability to do something if we wish to. Certainly, the fear of failure is a possibility. We all know the apocryphal story of Thomas Edison who tried 99 times to make a light bulb filament burn brightly, before the 100th attempt that worked. Another American, George Washington, claimed ‘Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses,’ so the failure is self-inflicted through lack of accountability rather than lack of ability.
How do you know you can’t do something unless you try it? Four years ago, I wrote a postcard titled ‘Why You Should Try Something Different …. Ceroc?’ (PC 192 from August 2020). Maybe we don’t try things, in this case Ceroc, aka Modern Jive, because we’re worried what others will think?
The late Ken Robinson’s life’s work (PC 195) was to encourage individuals to find the one element that makes them tick, makes them want to get up and grab life, to live more. Please, if you haven’t already, read his book ‘The Element’. Isn’t everyone capable of being a writer, a musician, businessperson, sportsperson, or doing any of the myriad of things humans do? Some will be more successful at something than others – so we need to find our own personal element or elements.
Of course, someone might have been so traumatised by some experience that they carry that burden, that trauma with them every day, every week; the trauma acts as an anchor and prevents present and future action. The suggestion in Timeline Therapy is that we attach emotions of fear, sadness, anger and guilt to past events and that we wear these emotions in the present. There was a good line in some TV drama: “Whatever darkness you’re hiding, it’s written all over your face.” So, to ‘live more’ we need, through therapy, to detach these unwanted emotions from our past. Makes sense, I think; no one really wants to ‘live less’, surely?
I was talking to a clinical psychologist the other day; at some point in the conversation, I told him of the sudden death of a friend’s sister at the age of 59. Incidentally this tragedy had reminded me of Victoria, the sister of a good friend, who had died aged just 60 (See PC 22 Life is Uncertain). It’s always interesting to hear people’s reactions, but I was shocked by his: “Illness and death stalk us always”. Maybe it’s true but it’s so morbid, would not be my immediate response to someone’s personal tragedy.
A recent Times article about lust and libido by Jean-Claude Chalmet, a psychotherapist, raised many interesting issues, but one particularly relevant for this postcard. Under a sub-title ‘….. but do look after yourself and your body’, he writes: “I notice among my clients, and particularly in men, that if they let themselves go physically, they also let go of their needs and desires. It’s often because there’s been a realisation in midlife that they haven’t lived, they’ve merely existed. They’ve had an unfulfilling career, a marriage that has become operational (sic). Now, learning to live looks arduous and disinterest becomes their armour because they think it’s too late. This bitterness and ‘beer belly’ combination kills libido in a couple.” The message is clear; stop existing, start living.
Ian again: “Is fear the biggest inhibitor or the biggest motivator? If something scares the living daylights out of you, if you’re brave enough to pursue it, it can give you the biggest reward and often the biggest opportunity to develop as a person.” There will always be uncertainty in life, whether it’s moving up to a new school, finding your feet in university, earning money and growing as a person, developing relationships, parenting, coping with the loss of loved ones, whatever, that’s a given.
And Ian reminded me that we are born with only two innate hard-wired fears designed for survival, the fear of falling and the fear of loud noise. These instinctive responses instantly trigger the fight-or-flight mechanism!
I will continue these themes in a future postcard.
Richard 3rd April 2026
Hove
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