I know that when I’m anxious I’m not the wisest or kindest version of myself. Because that is the same for most of us, collapse-anticipators fear how people might make difficult situations a lot worse by delusional or aggressive responses. There are multiple ways of trying to help ourselves think and act more kindly and wisely in future. One way of psychologically preparing ourselves that has stood out for me recently is an examination of our deep stories – about who we are and our role in life. Once we notice such stories, we can choose whether we want to continue living by them or not. One way of discovering such stories is to re-examine our childhoods. I decided to share with you my recent process on that, and what I discovered. That’s partly as an encouragement for you to do the same, and partly for my own benefit of healing through normalising something by sharing it. If such reflection is not new to you, then perhaps this essay will encourage you to try again, as new things can be found depending on our current mind-states and exposure to different philosophies.
I recently hosted documentary film makers at a meditation retreat in a Buddhist temple, here in Bali. They are exploring what can happen when people perceive it’s too late to avert the collapse of modern societies. So they were asking questions about how I became the person I am. It’s the kind of reflection on formative experiences that I ask the participants in my leadership courses to do. But personally, I’d not reflected for a while. As Buddhism includes an understanding of the role of suffering in life, being at the temple meant that I reflected on that. So I dived into my past suffering and how it might have shaped me.
This is not something I talk about much or have written about ever: I was a sickly child, with multiple debilitating conditions. Upon reflection, I discovered my childhood suffering had shaped my adult life in ways that I had not understood before now (in middle age!). You might already know how physical or psychological suffering has shaped your own life’s journey. But for me, this is new. So I’m cautiously optimistic I will now react less unconsciously from old patterns, whenever I experience difficult or worrisome situations in future.
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One major ailment was severe eczema. That came about when a doctor decided to test me for allergies when I was 6 years old. Before pricking my arm with lots of different allergens to ascertain what I was allergic to, my Mum asked whether it was wise to do that. She said my brother had severe eczema, and so asked if this procedure might trigger it in me. His response was “mother, I’m an expert”. The rash he triggered with his test then spread across much of my body and didn’t leave my feet, legs and arms for over 10 years. At times, it was so bad on the backs of my legs that I could not bend my knees. That meant my Mum had to take a lot of time trying to help me cope, including various kinds of bandaging.
Another of my ailments was ‘perennial rhinitis’. That’s a perpetually blocked, itchy, sore and runny nose. Think back to when you had a cold and the hours when your nose is most raw – then imagine that happening many times each week. Sometimes I had fits of sneezing. That could even make me vomit, which freaked out my primary school teachers who would call my Mum to collect me. Hoping it might help, doctors decided to blast bigger holes through my nasal bone. That was a major operation for a 7-year old boy; which means my face isn’t as symmetrical as it once was. Sadly, it did nothing to alleviate the problem.
At the retreat, I reflected on how I might have made sense of my suffering while I was a child, and since. As a kid, I focused on how to get some relief, attempt different approaches to healing, and felt grateful to my carer, Mum. But looking back, it affected me in other ways. Whether it was my itching skin or nose, that meant participating in group activities was not instinctive. I remember how, at times, I had to press my tongue to the roof of my mouth to try to stop myself sneezing. Moving around or talking might set off incessant sneezing. Sometimes the skin disease stopped me from participating in games and sports activities. I was therefore accustomed to a lot of time on my own; observing things, rather than joining in. That also encouraged me to become interested in societal issues and intellectual pursuits.
Around the age of 14 my skin condition eased, and I expressed a lot of my pent-up energy by becoming, in cricket, the fastest bowler in my age group in my region. There was a year when my teachers and coaches were impressed and thought I was a special talent, likely to become a professional sportsman. After all, my Dad had opened the bowling for the British Combined Services, against national cricket teams, including Australia. Unfortunately my body gave way, with back spasms, that made me feel like I had been punched in the back and gut. By 15 years old I was diagnosed with a spinal disease. But the fire of possibility and joy of excelling in something had been lit. Having that suddenly taken away from me meant I channelled that fire into my intellectual pursuits.
I didn’t become resentful or consider it unfair to be suffering in the way I did. But I remember thinking my peers didn’t know how fortunate they were to have, apparently, normally functioning bodies. I also remember how sad it felt to be laughed at or withdrawn from due to my physical problems. I didn’t blame others or myself, but just felt sad at such a situation. Perhaps that sensitised me to how people behave around those who suffer.
I also learned that my will power can fix some things, but not others. I knew that some of the skin problem came from my scratching. By the age of 17, I became very focused on not scratching through use of my own will power. I even became angry at the rashes and slapped them, when they itched, as part of this process. The pain from slapping a sore bit of my skin would make the itch go away for a while. That change in my behaviour coincided with the eczema finally receding. Perhaps it helped.
From a teenager onwards I believed it would be wrong to have my own children, because they would likely have this same suffering, and that would put a strain on their mother. Therefore, going into parenthood with that risk felt to me like it would be a betrayal of my future partner. So the whole idea of growing up normally, with a wife and kids, was displaced from my sense of my future. Looking back, I see how my illnesses also made me suspicious of doctors and the medical system, as they either caused my problems, didn’t help, or made them worse.
Patterns learned in childhood
Another implication of this childhood suffering became clear during the meditation weekend. It is something more awkward for me to recognise. As I saw other children live life without my difficulties, I perceived them to be insulated from hardship, not realising their comforts, and more easily affected by the hiccups in life than myself. That was projection, but it was true for me, although subconsciously, as I didn’t see it until decades later. I now recognise that I made sense of this unusual suffering by thinking it would be my role in life to give my attention to the pain and suffering in the world. I thought that I could cope more than others, as I had already coped with suffering. I do not recall anyone talking to me about how anyone who suffers for an extended period of time tries to make sense of their suffering, either consciously or not. In my case, at the time, I was seeking a story of meaning and purpose in the world, and so my awareness of difficulty and my ‘courage’ meant I invented a role for myself in the rest of my life. Due to my studies, interest in world affairs, and the environmental news hitting the headlines in the late 1980s, I soon perceived environmental damage and the hurt it caused people as something I would work on. Perhaps due to my somewhat disembodied way of living, my response to a world of suffering was to become very intellectual. I didn’t go off and become a hands-on conservationist, for example, and instead applied myself to how to change thinking and policies.
Thanks to backpacking across Europe and Egypt, by the age of 19 I discovered that living without wall-to-wall carpets and in warm weather reduced my symptoms massively. Consequently, I knew I would end up living outside the UK. I felt an exuberance in me about life when I had no eczema or rhinitis: I didn’t need much else in order to feel happy. That is probably why I never developed any major desires for owning houses, cars and suchlike… just give me the joy of peaceful skin, a pain free back and air flowing freely through my nose, and I can be content.
I wonder what might have happened if I’d had more ‘presence of mind’ when younger, and a greater ability to think beyond my own suffering. Might I have tried to warn others about the dangers of allergy skin tests? As this happened to me, it must have happened to others, and with a similar lack of warning or informed consent. But the issue was so emotionally difficult for me, that once over the suffering, I hadn’t wanted to think about it. When writing this essay, I searched this matter for the first time in my life, and discovered these skin tests are still performed for assessing allergies, with a perfunctory warning (on a website) about possible skin reactions.
My lack of action helps me to understand why many parents of children injured by experimental pharmaceuticals, and the children themselves, have not sought public attention. So I have huge respect for them when they come forward, and risk a rather deranged hostility from a population manipulated by corporate propaganda (see this TV segment on injured children). My own childhood injury is probably why I felt moved in 2021 to bring attention to the negative cost/benefit ratio of mRNA jabs for children, despite the vilification that would generate from some of big Pharma’s loudest champions (or chumps). I hope those of us who raised the alarm may have helped to prevent injury to some children. I also hope more people will come to realise that questioning the post-2020 orthodoxy on pandemics can indicate a greater concern for effective public health interventions, not less.
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Rethinking suffering in an age of disruption and collapse
I respect who I have become and what I have sought to do. I wouldn’t want to be different. If I hadn’t had my childhood ailments I’d not be the person I am today. However, my suffering was severe. And to cope with it, I see that I became a disembodied intellectual, manic achiever, and was imbalanced in life. It took me a long while as an adult to be able to calm down, inhabit my body, be relaxed around people, and participate more fully rather than observe. That is an ongoing process. The realisations I had at the temple also helped me to understand why, over the decades, I kept one part of my attention on the extremely bad and worrying news and science on the planetary environment. On the surface, I was striving to be successful and make a decent contribution to the world. But another part of me was considering what might be too painful for most of us to consider. Once I finally took some time away from my rather manic striving to be both helpful and responsible, I was able to turn to the darker analysis of the planetary predicament. After concluding we are in an era of societal collapse, my zealous intellectualising on the subject has mirrored my past intellectualising as a way of coping with my pain (et voila… the book Breaking Together!).
I am sharing this partly because it has become increasingly clear to me that so much understanding of who we are being can be discovered through a calm reflection on our life’s experiences, and that process is never fully complete. Such reflection can lead to an awareness of our patterns which then mean they don’t drive our behaviours. Instead, we can choose whether we wish to continue them or not. Another reason for sharing these reflections is because they have revealed to me the transformative power of pain and suffering in my own life. I would not be who I am if it wasn’t for the troubles that I just summarised. I think that is important for more of us to recognise as we enter an era for humanity which will witness increasing amounts of pain and suffering, alongside the death of the narrative of perpetual progress. That means each of us is going to experience more difficulties and anxieties over the coming years. Personally, I have found Buddhist philosophy and practice to be helpful as I recognise that worrying situation for me, my loved ones and the wider human race.
Buddhism teaches us that pain and misfortune is normal in life, along with a fundamental unsatisfactoriness about life (such as the fact that suffering, loss, ageing and death exist). Pain is necessary for the body to function. Our emotional suffering due to our compassion for beings that are in physical or mental distress is also necessary for us to function in social groups. But our suffering is made worse by our cravings and aversions. By that, I mean we want good things to remain and bad things to go away. More deeply, most of us want to continue to exist, at least for now. Such wishes conflict with the impermanent nature of reality. That’s a cause for a subtle unsatisfactoriness that we can feel about life. With that in mind, we can aim to become less automatic in how we consider, experience and react to change, to pain and to misfortune. We can notice our reactions, including any habits of distraction. Cultivating our tolerance and equanimity would be the opposite of a trauma response to change, pain and misfortune. Rather than just theorising about this, Buddhism invites us to practise slowing down and watching our experiences, thoughts, feelings and sensations, so that we can be more of a witnesser of the way all of these interact inside us. That is one purpose for insight meditation.
These are the reasons why I value Buddhist philosophy and practice as more of us enter an era of increased change, anxiety, pain, and misfortune. I also hope for a dialogue about what increased amounts of suffering might do, at a collective level, for the human race. In the same way that by not recognising how suffering influenced me over the years, I was not conscious of how that was affecting my life choices, I think we, collectively, could be helped by being open about, and exploring, the nature of our suffering.
I am a novice in Buddhist philosophy and practice, but might share more thoughts on this blog as I continue on this path. That is because, already, I see how it could help us in even more ways than improving our understanding of suffering. Not only does it offer the possibility for more equanimity, but it enables us to be more present to the situation as it unfolds around us, rather than retreating into delusions. Its emphasis on the oneness of all existence can help reduce the intensity of our existential dread, as well as invite a sense of universal love and therefore positive action in the world. That recognition of oneness can also lead us to appreciate how negative action arises from circumstances that might have made us behave that way if we experienced those circumstances. Therefore, there is a sense of pre-forgiveness which can help alleviate any feelings of blame or shame, which, conversely, can help us identify fault more easily and accurately. Buddhist philosophy also regards humans as inherently good, with an original innocence (the Brahma Vihara), and so that can invite us to consider how to heal or remove the impediments to us being helpful to each other. The absence of the concept of a human-like God that thinks about and controls all of creation, rather than being the consciousness throughout all of that creation, including us, can also release us from assumptions that the ongoing destruction is God’s will, or our fault for not following God’s law. In some minds, not all, such stories about God can take us away from an engaged compassionate presence and response to difficult situations as they unfold.
Perhaps I will soon write less about collapse, as I seek more balance in my life and not be trapped in habits learned in childhood. However, whenever I write about such matters, I will now know I am honouring both the suffering of that young child, and how he sought to find a way of coping by finding meaning and purpose from within that suffering.
“As long as space endures. As long as sentient beings remain. May I too live to dispel the miseries of the world.” (Generating the Mind for Enlightenment | The 14th Dalai Lama)
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