Altered Perspectives

 By now I am getting used to living with a new time horizon. It has some surprising benefits. 

A few months ago I suppose I looked at things across a horizon of twenty or thirty years. When I read the obituaries of rich white men, most of them seem to last into their nineties nowadays and I guessed that would probably apply to me as well. That changed overnight with the cancer diagnosis.

 

Our timeline is still completely uncertain, and we still don’t have a stable diagnosis, leading the doctors to avoid any questions about how things may develop or how quickly. But a bell curve with a mean of twenty or thirty years has surely morphed into one where years have been replaced by months or even weeks.

 

It has surprised me how quickly I have been able to come to terms with this new reality, and surprised and impressed even more how my wife seems to have been able to achieve the same. One key to it seems to be our emotional journey.

 

We decided early on that anger and bitterness were not going to take us anywhere helpful, and we were able to move past those emotions very quickly. Sadness and fear are helpful and can be embraced, but then placed into a perspective that stops them dominating our thoughts, except on days when these emotions become triggered. If we can move past those, the next set of emotions are more positive, including thankfulness but also happiness and joy. I am currently doing daily homework tracking my emotions for my therapist, and somehow I find that happiness is dominating my daily scribbles.

 

The final stage involves acceptance and peace. These were harder for a time, mainly because of the emotional supercharging of the steroid medication. But this week I was tapered down to 2mg per day, and that seems to have done the trick, at last restoring my energy to within more normal parameters. Long may that last.

 

My desire for legacy projects and daily closure of activities has not abated, and I am comfortable with that, understanding what may lay just around the corner. I find great joy when achieving a permanent simplification of a part of my life. But I have noticed a few other interesting changes in my attitudes as well, ones that may have relevance to people in less extreme situations.

 

The more trivial changes are not really surprising. I find it easier to treat myself. With a twenty year time horizon and living in the USA the spectre of possible diabetes is always present, leading to many trade offs of exercise and diet. Strangely, in the new situation swimming has changed from a chore to a pure pleasure. As for food and drink, my taste buds have become more active, and diabetes is no longer so scary a prospect. I went a full year without buying any Trader Joe ice cream but that sacrifice does not seem so valuable now. I will often treat myself to a second cup of coffee. If I fancy a pain au chocolat or a sourdough loaf from the French bakery then I will go shopping for them. We have got into the habit of eating out more too. Many places in Manhattan serve a Sunday brunch, and I no longer seem to resent forking out $25 for some eggs that I routinely prepare myself for breakfast for a few cents.

 

More interesting may be my attitude to the news and current affairs. I devour The Economist as avidly as ever, but I find many Newshour stories less interesting, especially those that just seem to complain about Republicans. But I notice that since my diagnosis I feel much more positive about the news. It is possible that November was simply a great month for good news, but I am not sure how much this is about the news or how much about me.

 

Netanyahu aside, populists had a terrible November and it is possible that the tide may be turning. Bolsonaro lost, the EU is slowly corralling Orban, Modi is showing a more balanced side, and, most visible of all, the Trump wave is finally over. Decisive in that is the abandonment by Rupert Murdoch, a blow from which there is no recovery.

 

The climate summit was not a great success, but 2022 will go down as a decisive year in any case as a bi-product of the Ukraine war, because Europe’s lead in finally weaning itself off Russian oil and gas will be emulated elsewhere.

 

Then there is Russia and Ukraine. Putin is coming under more and more pressure at home as his erstwhile allies start to desert him and facts on the ground stack up to undermine his narrative. He is looking for a way out now, and NATO continues to play the war with impressive expertise, adding confidence to how the endgame can be managed.

 

The UN has had a great few months as well, supported ably by the US State department. Human suffering in many regions can be mitigated by the grain and fertiliser deals in Ukraine and by fragile peace deals in Ethiopia, Yemen and elsewhere. Tony Blinken could be my candidate for statesman of the year, but what we are really witnessing is the slow return of competence to US foreign policy after the willful destruction of the Trump years.

 

Most interesting as usual is China, and here Blinken has blotted his copybook with the unjustified and counter-productive technology sanctions announced a couple of months ago. But even here I am delighted to see the rest of the world pushing back effectively, starting with Olaf Scholz and followed up at the G20 by Indonesia and other Asian nations. Perhaps this destructive new cold war can be averted after all.

 

China is certainly playing its part. Having rescued the world from the financial crisis in 2009, the last month has seen the beginning of a repeat performance, with decisive moves to fix the broken property market and now the timely moderation of Covid policies. I sense the 2023 recession in the rest of the world may be shorter and milder as a result, and perhaps the US will yield some ground back to China as a reward.

 

The Economist special report in October about China’s goals was the best journalism I have read in 2022. What shines through is the overall goal of equitable development. Having lifted half a billion out of poverty in one generation, all policy is designed to take out another half a billion in the next generation, while helping to develop other countries at the same time. These goals are pursued by an efficient civil service that shows the capacity to learn.

 

Compare this with America’s goals. The most powerful people in the US are probably Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Binyamin Netanyahu and some hedge fund managers. Their goals are overwhelmingly to manipulate public opinion to retain unjust power and wealth. They are top dogs and want to stay that way, just as colonialists have throughout history.

 

One of these systems is called communism and the other democracy. Each has its flaws. The Chinese make mistakes and are unjust to their own minorities. But if you start from their goals and their ability to execute, I think I will reluctantly back their approach over the broken alternative offered by the US – 2022 and Blinken notwithstanding.

 

This sunny view of the news is surely biased, and I wonder how much comes from my generally altered set of perspectives. It is easier to be relaxed about climate change when you don’t expect to be around to witness much of the damage, and it is easier to feel less concern about populists when there seems less danger of being alive and suffering under their spell twenty years from now.

 

I also wonder whether the emotional journey concerning my disease has had a spin-off benefit in my attitude to news. What are Murdoch and the others trying to instil in us? It starts with anger and resentment, and moves from there to sadness and fear. These are exactly the emotions that I am working hard to move past, and perhaps we can all try to take the same attitude when confronted with populism. Life is certainly sunnier when we can reach thankfulness, happiness and even peace.

 

Medical science is a good place to start when looking for something to be thankful about, and you can find stories in the (non-populist) news to engender a torrent of thankfulness.