As I sit and write this blog I can hear my heart pounding away. It sounds like the noise made by young men who have their car stereo on maximum bass. The whole car vibrates. That’s how my heart feels and sounds. I sit with a patient in the quietness of my treatment room and long for a radio in the background. Or some white noise. Just to neutralise the sound I think my heart is making and which I’m sure they can also hear. (So far none of my patients have commented on it and I haven’t found the courage to mention it to them. Perhaps I should put a note on the bottom of my bills. “Dear patient, the noise you may well be able to hear in this session is my heart. Do not  be alarmed. I am not about to have a heart attack in the session. It can be spoken about!”)

And I’m furious. Nobody consulted me. Nobody said “Terry. We’re going to give you a very unusual heart condition. It affects 3 people per 100,000 of the population. But you have been chosen.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the way it goes.”

Well, no thank you. There must be deserving people out there who could make good use of such a “gift”.  Some people who are thoroughly bad, cruel and nasty. Or people who would welcome the chance to demonstrate their faith and commitment. (I don’t think I’m the former and I’ve done the latter far too often.)

If one reads Facebook it’s full of people posting their positive thoughts and messages. One such runs “A child is like a butterfly in the wind. Some can fly higher than others but each one flies the best it can…” It’s as though we’re scared of anger, fury, ire and that whole family. A friend is doing a Positive Psychology degree and complains frequently of this same phenomenon. Anger etc are seen as “bad”-bad intrinsically and bad morally. One’s glass should always be half full, seems to be the message of the moment. I love the sequence in the film Network where Howard Beale has had enough of everything and declares “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it.”

Which brings me to my point. Sometimes we have to be as mad as hell .To rage against the dying of the light. It’s only that energy that gets us out of bed in the morning.