When I was finished writing up my rather long and winding meanderings about control or no control, about being able to determine one’s life or being a pawn in someone’s much larger game plan, I had another thought which is much shorter, much more pragmatic, and much more to the point. So here it is:

If you get sick you get treated for that sickness. If you have cancer, you get cancer treatment; if you have a kidney problem, you will be treated in a renal clinic. If you have a brain injury in Ireland, you have a right to appropriate treatment lasting three months. That’s it. Until you receive that treatment, you are kept in an acute ward; after that treatment, if your condition continues, you are transferred back to that acute ward or you are sent to a home. As simple and as horrific as that.

So, following this short intro, here is tonight’s earlier update.

“God exists. It’s not you. So just relax.” That’s what a priest once said to Matteo Renzi, Italy’s new prime minister, according to a recent article in Der Spiegel, a German weekly news magazine. I really like that. It’s short. It’s to the point. Give up the illusion of control.

Pádraig had a more ‘normal’ day today. Or maybe his interaction with us, the doctors and nurses has become something that has become almost ‘normal’. Again, this interaction is not much more than reacting in a basic, but nonetheless significant, way to very simple stimuli or requests. Of course, we would like to see more of this interaction and would do anything to make that happen. He has not eaten anything in more than eight months, not tasted any kind of food in all that time. I have no idea what that means, but it’s an incredible deprivation of very basic senses.

Control, or rather the lack of it (you are not God) is sometimes hard to accept. Because we are being told multiple times every day that we can get anything we want and that we can be anybody we want to be: we just have to put on the right deodorant, wear the right clothes, drive the right car, eat the right food, spend our holidays in the right resort. So we become frustrated, because we don’t have enough money for this particular perfume, we cannot afford these really nice jeans, we are still driving the 07 banger, and we have to spend our holidays with the in-laws in the country.

Now, if it was true that God exists, that He was not me or you or one of us, then I could truly relax. No need to worry. No reason to try and influence things that God had already figured out anyway. Trying to control anything when control itself is an illusion would, indeed, be pathological.

Mozart: Die Zauberflöte

Today’s German Music Tip
W. A. Mozart, Die Zauberflöte (from the 2006 Festival in Salzburg). You’ll need 3 hours to watch this – but it’s sheer pleasure. If you don’t have 3 hours, listen to Edita Gruberova singing in 1971 one of the most famous Aria from that opera: “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen”. Translate that.
What’s hot
Signs
What’s cold
Certainty
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Mensch Meier! Hab’ ich gar nicht dran gedacht zu kaufen! (When you are stopped on the S-Bahn by a conductor / ticket controller and asked for your ticket.)

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