Hello again, from London UK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

           Another reader has emailed to ask, “I don’t have prostate cancer, but get very depressed. How on earth do you cope as antidepressants don’t seem to help me.”. I have tried to answer this question before, but, as my mother used to say, if you think something is worth saying, it has to be worth repeating...

            For a start, I don’t avoid depression altogether; some days I feel very low and too near the edge of some psychological abyss for comfort. The poetry blogs help by way of creative therapy to keep despair at bay, and I would recommend it for anyone who has to cope wit any form of illness, be it a form of cancer or whatever. You don’t have to write poetry, of course; gardening, knitting... these can be as effective a means of distracting a person from everyday stress as any of the arts. Simply walking and taking in our surroundings can also provide a healthy distraction, often triggering precious memories of yesteryear. (I don’t entirely agree with those who take the view that looking back is pointless, the only way is forward.)

            Sadly, prostate cancer can affect the memory, as in my case, to such an extent that if I imagine mind-body-spirit as building, it feels like huge parts of my life are being removed, brick by brick. It is a frustrating and distressing experience, but one has to learn to live with it, and creative therapy encourages a positive-thinking mindset that can provide a way forward when, at times, there may well not seem to be one.

            A positive-thinking mindset can help us through any life-crisis if we but take a step back from it, take deep breaths, consider firstly its nature and causes and then how we might alleviate both our own distress and that of those closest to us. There are no easy answers but there is always a way forward; even if the only way forward looks likely to end in death, we can at least prepare ourselves for it. Those who have a strong religious faith, can take comfort and strength from it; those who cannot relate and therefore don’t subscribe to any religion can at least reconcile themselves to resting in pace. Me? As a Pantheist, I believe that God is nature; having not only always felt a strong affinity with nature, but also taken an indefinable sense of spirituality from it, I cannot believe that it means me harm.

            Mortality’s closes ally and human beings’ weakest link it is fear. Lose our fear of death, and it can only lose the battle for our lives while. the human spirit is left to win the war for an after-life of sorts, depending how we envisage it. I, personally, as regular readers well know, like to believe there have been more positives than negatives in my life; although the first may neither excuse nor compensate for the latter, I can only hope it is the latter that will endure in the mind-body-spirits of those to whom I have tried to pass those same positives on to remain an influence for the better and passed on, in turn, to others.

            Such is the posthumous consciousness that, rightly or wrongly, I envisage as a form of after-life; as positive a view of mortality as I can envisage.

            As for concepts of Heaven and Hell, I suspect many if not most of us experience both, each in our own way as we go though life. Death has to bring peace - especially for any among us who have felt constantly at war with our inner selves, for whatever reason – or life itself becomes but passing of seasons between birth and death, make what we will of them... or not, as the case may be.

            Whenever I have been close to nature, as man and boy, I’ve experienced a spirituality that reassures me as much now as it did years ago. A religious leader once told me that “Faith defies reason and logic, dependent as it is on true Belief, and therein lies its strength...”       Who’s to say that one Belief is truer than another? 

Bye folks, , take care, be sure to nurture a positive-thinking mindset and I'll be back with a poem soon, 

Hugs, 

Roger