Stress and quality of life

It dawned on me today, floating in the Mediterranean at Cannes, that my memory is severely impacted by the life style I’ve been leading since 1995.  As the warm sun needled my exposed skin and the cool water lapped over me, I stared up into the blue sky and tried to remember my previous trip in July 2006 to the same place – and I could not recall much!  My memory had these little snapshots, but they were link-less, story-less, meaningless in a way. 

As we experience stress, hormones are released in the brain, impacting several structures physically.  If the stress becomes a permanent feature, the chemicals will have a permanent impact on these structures, it seems.  For example, we seem to “blank” out those stressful moments.  The memory is erased before it is created and with it other good things suffer as well.  Over time, no memories are created beyond the superficial. 

Trying to be too many things to too many people at once, living up to the expectations I created, being manipulated by unscrupulous people with power over me (financially for example) had created a zombie! 

I designed this zombie by creating an untenable vision for myself and I informed other people of it.  Some of them now use this as the whips and stirrups to control my will and direction.  I have become a slave, relentlessly trying to be more than what is human, constantly hearing only those words that tell me I am not good enough. 

Time flashes by.  I have no anchor points in memory, nothing to fill the days, running on empty I urge myself into every future moment, responding with the intellect of a smart robot, but without soul, without the passion and integrity of wisdom.  Wisdom comes with real lived age, not with time passing under self-induced memory inhibiting drugs.

What am I saying?  The time has come to stop the bus, to get off, to stroll through the park, to smell the wood and the grass, to see the insects, to hear the far-off voices of people in love, to look at the sky, to see the faces in the clouds, to share stories, to laugh, to be quiet, to think about God, to listen, to love in a simple way, to consider what I consume to sustain me, to live by the second, to suspend time and to die with grace. 

My task is simple: take the first step and get off the bus.  It has consequences, I realize that, but what if I do not do this now, will I have another moment of clarity under a black-blue sky, immersed in the substance that is us….?

Where are you today?  Are you reaching for the bell to signal departure at the next stop, or are you too busy worrying about what to do next to keep your bus rolling?  Are you grazing like a sheep, focused on the next tuft of grass, or are you looking up to see the next field of green?

I recall the words of “Wish You Were Here” suddenly:

So,

So you think you can tell

Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field

from a cold steel rail?

A smile from a veil?

Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade

your heroes for ghosts? 
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange

a walk-on part in the war

for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,

year after year,

Running over the same old ground. 
What have you found?

The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

Wind mills and the sun

I have written previously about the concepts for sustainable power. The only real source of sustainable power available to us is the sun. I suppose one must also consider the possibility of generating power from tidal activity, energy that is driven by the lunar-terrestrial system, but I have not seen too many success stories in that area. So I guess it is reasonable to consider the sun for now as the only candidate.

It drives the climate system and thus winds and rain. Rivers may be used for hydro-electric power and winds may be harvested by wind generators. We can use the direct energy of the sun to heat solar heaters and to cook food in the heat of solar collectors, or we can use photo-voltaic cells to change light into electricity. Heliostats can be used to drive turbines for generation of electricity. Quite a diverse range of options provided we are willing to consider them all carefully. It seems though that we have all sorts of issues with some of these options, like the fact that many people dislike wind farms. They claim that it disturbs the landscape. I suppose it is true that one could find it disturbing to see these machines all over the place, but at the same time we have no problem with the aesthetic disaster posed by steel power cable pylons, or coal fired power stations belching smoke. People consider hydro-power, but often forget the impact of building weirs and channeling systems in fragile river eco systems to tap into the energy.

The point is that everything has a price: what we need is to develop an unbiased score card for all these alternatives to fossil fuels. Communities must consider the costs of being completely reliant on the electricity network or to be part of a system that supplies much of what is needed around where they live. The video on this page was recorded close to Shrivenham. It shows the turbines on the Westmill wind farm that belongs to a co-operative of 2400 members. What can we do in our own communities to lighten the burden on our planet?