NHS Squeeze: Will It Mean More Work And Fewer Resources For Carers?

I came across the following in Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millennium, by the 14th Dalai Lama. It is an interesting description of the ethics of caring for ourselves and others and the authenticity of happiness that is grounded in qualities such as love, compassion, patience and tolerance.

Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.

 

Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others' happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace -- anxiety, doubt, disappointment -- these things are definitely less. In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense.

 

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It's Carers Week!

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It's Carers Week so Hugh Marriott was on BBC's Breakfast this morning. Hugh wrote The Selfish Pig's Guide to Caring. Hugh famously styled himself as a "selfish pig" for his bouts of resentment as a carer and his repeated wish that things could be different.

Hugh writes lightly about the shock of realising that his emotions of frustration, anger and resentment are common to many carers with a feeling that life has been permanently stalled and that they have become invisible: as he said, "We all had another agenda". He has devised his own acronym, Person I Give Love & Endless Therapy to (P.I.G.L.E.T), Hugh writes about his experiences caring for his wife who has Huntingdon's Disease. He writes about the common struggles with Social Services, care assessments, hospitals, Benefit Agencies and all of the other departments who seem to have an input into the lives of carers and the people for whom they care but without seeming to make a significant contribution to quality of life. Reading through these accounts, it is obvious why Carers UK argues that carers Human Rights are breached on a regular basis.

I'm running a couple of Happystance workshops this week - I'm looking forward to them and hope that the carers enjoy them as much as I do.

Ethics, Happiness and Caring