The girl on the train

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2 June

England & Wales is a separate legal jurisdiction from Scotland, with its own laws, courts, Acts of Parliament.

It used to be said, in the early 1990s, that it was a principle of the law of England & Wales that, if one saw a child drowning in a puddle of water (i.e. one could intervene and save him or her without hurting oneself), one was under no obligation to prevent it happening.

I have no idea whether that is still so, and, of course, the law assumed the legal fiction of a stranger, whereas a parent would owe different duties. Curious that Lord Denning was at pains to point out the Biblical origins of the law, but this inhumane example showed otherwise, a callous version of the travellers who went by on the other side of the road in the parable of the so-called good Samaritan (the whole point of the parable was to answer the question Who is my neighbour ?, duties to whom some were seeking to avoid).

At any rate, a child standing and playing on the lap of a woman (who turned out to be her grandmother) was taking too much interest in the nearby open window, one of those narrow ones that flaps down at the top of a larger pane. I kept conceiving of her fingers being in the way if the violent wake of an intercity train passing caused the window to snap shut, or, as she seemed to be doing at one point, of pushing it shut it on her own hand with the help of turbulence.

After we stopped at one station and some hesitation, I felt that I couldn't stand back in the face of what might happen, and, if it did happen, would be deeply damaging to a young child and her fingers, so I approached the woman and, prefacing my remark with the wish that I hoped I wasn't interfering, shared my fears. She then shared them with the girl, and urged the reluctant girl to wave to the man (she never did, but she smiled).

If I'd been asked why, or thanked too much, I'd have said that I would hope that anyone would do the same, even in the keep-myself-to-myself days of train travel when we look at each other and pretend that we haven't, etc.

But I do hope that, that anyone else, seeing the risk, might have dared say something, and have thought nothing special of wanting to avoid a harm to the livelihood of a young life.

Later, after a tiring walk in which I was pulling a case on its wheels, I was kindly offered a lift to the village where the driver also lived. I do not see that, as some would, as karma, but the two were clearly related as acts of care for another.


If such kindnesses happened all the time, would we need to think of talking of karma ?


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Mental ill-health is exactly like a broken leg !

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2 November

If you've had chicken-pox, can you remember what it is like ? Or something else that you can compare with, say, having a bad dose of the flu ?

Does it make sense to compare one illness with another, so why is it a truism that depression isn't like a broken leg, because people can't see it ?

If you had appendicitis and had to have your redundant works removed, it's true that people wouldn't claim that you were shamming and just had to buck your ideas up, since you'd been admitted to hospital and they can credit that you have had surgery. Or wouldn't they ? Maybe they had ideas about how quickly you should be recovered, and didn't value how you or your medical advisers said that you should be acting and what you could or could not do and when?

So is a broken leg just a different case altogether from clinical depression, just because whatever the modern equivalent of a plaster-cast is on your leg and can be seen ? That as against feeling no value or warmth in the world, that you are worthless, and that there is nothing to live for.

Yes, we can see that your leg isn't (fully) functional, that you are using a crutch, but some officious, judgement-making person will - sooner or later - enquire how you came to break it : woe betide you, in the sympathy stakes, if it was on a skiing-trip, because you've clearly - the judgement goes - got too much money, and got what you deserved by doing something dangerous. (Forget the circularity that thinks what happened is proof that skiing is inherently dangerous, rather than any statistics as to how many broken legs per 1,000 novices.)

Because, with health, we all Get what we deserved - not quite, any longer (more often than not), in the This is God's punishment sort of way, but because (call it karma or come-uppance) we superstitiously and almost subconsciously believe that Things happen for a reason : whole films have been based on the premise, let alone novels or plays, or bigoted newspaper-columns.


Taking this back to the question broken leg versus clinical depression:


1. Assertion : people can see a broken leg

Well, when you've first fallen, or whatever happened, you might suspect a broken leg when there isn't one, or be surprised to be told that it is broken - it's a medic telling you whether it's broken or not that clinches it.

Same with depression. Someone who is depressed can quite typically, if it's never happened before (they've had glum days, as we all have, but nothing like this, this absence of feeling), not know that it is depression either. Maybe just been dragging oneself into work, but feeling really cold and isolated inside, and starting to drink to cope with it.

2. Assertion : because people can see a broken leg...

I have no idea what it is like to have a broken leg - the pain, the immobility, the disablement, etc. Sure, I know what a shooting pain in my back feels like, if I've put it out, but does anyone else who isn't a back-sufferer (albeit a part-time one) have any notion?

I have dropped descriptions above of what clinical depression is like : the sense of feeling an outsider to one's own life, of looking on one's family, responsibilities and hobbies and not caring about them or being able to derive any pleasure from thinking about them, of - depending on how it catches one - sleeping for England, or being so anxious and screwed up that sleep will not easily come.

These feeling, sensations, hurts, as with the other person who once broke a leg or once had or does have a bad back, will only mean much to anyone who has experienced them.


3. Assertion : because they can see a broken leg, they know what it's like

Really? If you've never had to use a crutch or a pair of them, you have a perfect conception of what becomes difficult, painful or impossible? I don't think so, and no more do I think so with depression.

Maybe not the person on crutches, or the person going through the hell of nothing mattering and everything viscerally feeling like rubbish, but someone who's been through that can tell you, the observer, what it's really like. If, as the observer, you love that person, maybe, with imagination, compassion and a lot of thinking yourself into someone else's shoes, you can understand what it's like:

Not ask the person with a broken leg to do something that is going to hurt a lot, or expect the person who is depressed to be as chatty as you are and be pleased to be alive, but be with that person where he or she is, not where we think that he or she ought to be.

That is caring in its full sense, not the cheapened one that wants to feel better about someone else (whatever he cost to him or her), and that is what it really means, using that other much misused word, to be concerned about him or her : to put those persons' feelings, needs and interests first, whether they cannot bend to reach something, or cannot get out of bed to-day to save their life.


Broken leg = visible suffering? No, I don't think so.


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