I am finding life tough right now. Cognitive impairment is high and very difficult to deal with. I am forgetting how to do or manage my life on an hour by hour basis. I recently ran out of gas, but was unable to connect the loss of heating, the immediate problem, with the solution, check whether I had any gas on the meter. My brain said, ‘the boilers broken’ and it took a family member to work the problem through with me over the phone and it took time because I couldn’t relay or relate to the situation in a coherent way. So something that should have been blindingly obvious became something insoluble for me.
This is not good. However, I am surrounded by heroes so all is not lost and my heating is back on.
But, it is distressing and that’s a problem.
I am also in the early days of daily hospital visits for radiotherapy and it’s a big deal, especially when you throw in being seriously cognitively challenged, so the big question is, how can I make the most of it, instead of getting messed up about it?
I have an answer.
Add colour. Back to my roots. Get Hippy. Dress for success…
If you’re old enough, you’ll remember when we changed the world. We didn’t change the system, though we wanted to, but the culture. It was a time of immense optimism, even though there was a brutal criminal war of aggression going on in Vietnam, using the most inhuman, evil, weapons, and the cold war was at its height and we had no way of knowing if any of us would survive. Those times changed me forever and it lives on inside me, informing my life, every day.
The system is even more rotten now than it was then, but where’s the optimism, the modern world is as dull as ditch water, it’s got no guts and no soul and no fun and I really can’t stand it any more, it’s sick and it’s time I threw off the togs of today for yesteryear because if they do nothing else, they’ll be fun.
Remember when drugs were good and clean and war was bad? Now they’ve got a war on drugs, because they love a good war, oh yes they do.
I was so naive then, I didn’t know a damned thing and it didn’t matter, though I was hungry. I was young at a time when being young was amazing, not noses to the grindstone and the ridiculous nonsense that if you miss a week at school you’ll be damaged for life.
But the biggest thing of all was that we believed in ourselves because it never occurred to us not to, even though I was as depressed as hell, because the system was shit and I had a whole lot of growing up to do to realise the system has always been shit. We stood for something else and it hasn’t gone away because we believe in humanity and the system believes in profit and greed.
This damned cancer nearly killed me and the treatment is brutal and aggressive, but life is still amazing and always will be. So it’s a fight… so what? It’s always been a fight, the only issue is whether we’re up for it with every nerve and sinew and every fibre of our being, because I damned well know I am and that’s all that matters. For fun, for being, for the hell of it, because we’re here. The Hippy era ended when the system ate it, for greed, for possession, for profit, but it lives on in our hearts, exactly as it should – Colourfully.
Keith Lindsay-Cameron aka Keith Ordinary Guy. 11 January 2021.
Conspiracy of Kindness 