Tolerance

Ministerial Meandering

Tolerance

You were probably expecting a rant, right?  That’s usually what you get when I’m on about people who annoy me; after all, when you can fly like an eagle - why should we be surrounded by turkeys?  But maybe - just maybe - I’m trying to see something more accommodating in myself.

This Tuesday Graham and I went to Glenwood Care Home.  I have visited more than once in the past, but this was a venture of a different kind.  We took along our Sunday service on a USB stick, and played it to the residents through their TV screen.  Eighteen people had been wheeled into one room, all facing in different directions, placed there by staff who had little idea of what was intended, nor, indeed, much knowledge of English - but that is where immigrant staff find themselves often - whatever the status of their home country qualifications.  It is sad, and an indictment of this country that well-qualified nurses frequently find themselves as care home assistants, when they are really more than able to hold down a job of significantly more responsibility.  But that’s the ‘Canadian system’ for you - and then the government whines that it doesn’t have enough medical and nursing staff.  Hey ho.

It was also sad to see that so many of the 18 folk who came would have been more at home in Minters than a residential home, and that little effort was made to stimulate them.  I inwardly shuddered to view myself in such a predicament in a few years’ time.  Only one lady had a visitor, and I knew them both.  He constantly rubbed her shoulders, and if he stopped for a rest too long, she would start to cry for his attention again.  Their dog was also a welcome visitor for several of the residents.

As the service progressed on the television, one or two - or perhaps it was several - folk indicated that they wished to be moved out from this excessive intrusion on their space and time, and so were wheeled off to another area in the extensive hall where they could, once more, stare vacantly at a patch of wall.  How many, I wondered, might be ‘shut in’ with their own thoughts and no longer having the capacity to express them?  I know that Graham’s wife has also been ‘away’ from him mentally for some years now, but he visits her regularly - even though it is doubtful if she even knows he has been.  “I know, though”, he tells me, “and that’s what matters.”

Such tolerance, compassion, and patience humbles me.  I can barely exhibit such a degree with people who are normally ‘compos mentis’ - whatever we think that may mean these days.  Definitions suggest it means being ‘in full control of one’s mind’.  I think that’s wonderful, having read a bit of Carl Jung on the subject of what the mind may, or may not, be.

So when a bakkie (‘truck’ to you) decided to drive aggressively at me and then flip me the bird yesterday, following up with an offensive text to my phone - I declined to enter into a battle of wits with a clearly unarmed opponent, and hit ‘Delete and Report Spam’ instead.  I thought I had done rather well on the tolerance stakes for once!

Philip+