In The Hands Of Others

I've had some long-awaited hospital tests today, and they seem to have gone well.  I shall need to wait for detailed results which should arrive in about a week's time, but nothing untoward showed up on the day.

I can have nothing but praise for the kind and efficient way in which I was treated at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital Treatment Unit.  My tests were quickly completed, after everything had been thoroughly explained to me and all the preparations had been carefully completed, and all the way through I was looked after very well indeed.  There was a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere - all of it so helpful:  I came in to have these tests in a fairly positive frame of mind, but that won't have been true of everyone they will have seen today.  Some will have been worried, some frightened, and the calmness and kindness with which they will have been received is of vital importance.

All of us there today will have shared the one basic experience of having been, for that time, completely in the hands of others.  That experience is deepened by the fact of having to leave even our own clothes behind, to be dressed in the anonymity of a blue hospital gown, and to be exposed and handled in ways we would not normally choose.  One is uncomfortably aware, going in, of surrendering for that short while all pretence of being in control of one's own destiny . . . but of course, that is equally true, though not always so readily recognized, in many of the events of our lives.  For example, as we travelled in to the hospital this morning on the bus, my wife and I were completely dependent on the skill and ability and safety-consciousness of our driver, as were all the other people on the bus.  Even now, I can only write this because others make it possible - I don't have the ability to build or programme a computer, or for that matter to produce and supply the electricity to make it run.

We are inter-dependent, none of us "an island entire unto himself", and it's good from time to time to remember that - or, as I was today, to be forcibly reminded of it by having to surrender my body into the care of others.  Without what others give and do, our lives would be so much the poorer;  and may we in our turn aim always to live so that others may be lifted, enthused and enriched by our endeavour.