Suffering from softness
With Smallsteps "out of commission" with a fever since Sunday, it has been a pretty long week. She is in general, a decent sick kid however and probably complains less when she is ill than when she is full of energy. She still wants to do things, but she is a little slower than normal. As I had deliveries for the first half of the week, my wife was home with her and now that I am on furlough for a couple days, it is my turn so that my wife can get back to work and catch up. It is good in Finland that workplaces give provisions for child illness, but the work doesn't stop in the background.
The fever has been persistent but not consistent, so tomorrow I am going to take Smallsteps to the doctor to see what they think about it. This is a bit of a problem in the times of Covid-19, as a lot of the "flu symptoms" are being pushed to isolation clinics and getting a normal appointment is a challenge.
While she has a fever, it hasn't slowed her down enough to put her into bed and while she has had many ailments in her short life - not much really has. She was inside all of yesterday so as the weather was warm, I took her for a walk outside in the garden to get some fresh air.
We weren't out for long, just enough for her to explore the garden and of course, eat a strawberry each and pick some raspberries. She has liked noting how things have grown or disappeared from the spring through the summer and I think it has been good for her to get an understanding of life cycles.
Kids go through growth spurts, but she seems to have matures a lot in the last three months and has become far more physically capable. I think that having the space to play and run, as well as the new tasks in the garden has helped the physical development, with the responsibility and autonomy she has now, helping with the mental advancement.
She is a lot like me in many respects and this is going to cause her issues later on, but she has the ability to take things seriously, but still hold onto her humor. Even when in pain she is able to find things to smile about and focus her attention on and I hope she can hold onto that for the rest of her life.
There is a difference between pain and suffering and humans can take a lot of pain, but we don't necessarily need to suffer in my opinion. As I see it, suffering is a condition of the mind, not a symptom of pain and therefore it is possible to suffer in the absence of pain. For example, a person can feel no pain, but suffer from depression.
I have lived a relatively pained life and while I suffered a lot when young, I have found ways to overcome most of the suffering, making the pain much easier to manage. I find that the core factor in whether one suffers or overcomes, is the level of victimisation imagined. I find that regardless of overcoming physical conditions, some people will forever suffer as victims, while others will never suffer despite the pain they endure.
These are photos I took from the garden today. Again, it was windy and not ideal for my macros with a shallow depth of field, so you will have to suffer some soft edges.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
You have so much flowers and fruit in your new / old garden! So much to photograph. And eat. Soft edges are beautiful. Just saying.
I hope Smallsteps will be and feel better soon. :)
There is heaps and I am glad at least some of it we have actually eaten. Disappointed that the pear tree didn't grow real fruit, but have enjoyed most of the rest and Smallsteps has loved whatever she can get her hands on.
Depending where they are, soft edges can be beautiful.
Only if you could also grow lingonberry for Smallsteps in your garden. :)
:) the lingonberries are gathered at the summer place by mummi and pappa.
Hello @tarazkp,
I hope your girl gets better very soon.
I very much agree with you, suffering is not synonymous with pain, by making an abstraction between the physical and the mental. But can you really separate the ailments of the mind from those of the body and vice versa, or does it only depend on the intensity with which you feel? Can the mind exist without the body? It is a fascinating subject to philosophize.
Beyond philosophy, it is desirable not to suffer from the combination of both, to lead a healthy life in every way.
By the way, very good photographs.
I am guessing that if control/separation is possible at a low level, it would be possible at a high, depending on "skill" - skill being limited but somewhat learnable. However, this would mean there is still a limitation to the separation due to intensity.
I have a feeling that it can and we would eventually be able to test this, but we aren't close to that yet. If we consider that the body is just a collection of arranged particles, that "platform" should be replicable. However, to trasfer a mind into a different substrate means understanding the mind - which we don't have a very good grasp of... yet.
I get the sense that physical pain is either far worse or far better if a mind can limit the intensity or appearance of suffering. Not that anyone wants to feel negative pain either :)
Nice photography. I tried to use my android phone to click pictures from the surrounding but it never is as expected when compared to my five years old Sony camera. Vibrant colours.
I know i am going into tangent here but growth spurt in young babies is something interesting. My not yet toddler skip all naps and feeding he is supposed to have. And, the doctor said it might be the growth spurt and the evolution of his emotional intelligence.
Yep, these are takien on an Olympus EM-1 that I bought in 2015 - my phone doesn't come close, but it does a good job of faking it for someone who only cares about good enough for Instagram - I care about a bit more depth :)
Children develop in different rhythms that are unique to them - my daughter's first word was at about 10 months, her first steps at 11 months and by two, she could talk with a neurologist about how feelings. However, A friends child at the same age wasn't talking much, but could ice skate and hit a hockey puck :) People are different and kids will move in and out of skill groups constantly. It is amazing to watch.
Smallsteps is a fighter, just like you! I agree that the suffering is mostly in the mind. Once you master your own mind, the sky is the limit.
I loved the pictures! I hope that the doctor appointment will go well!
I started a thing with her early so that when she fell over, she would get up and dust herself off saying, No worries, everyone falls over sometimes. Even when she is bleeding and bruised, it is "just a mark" :D
Wow, you are raising a very strong kid. Hope she gets better real soon.
BTW, you have a really beautiful garden.
I hope she is strong - though I am not sure if I am raising her, or she me :)
lol, it's good to be an old kid😜
Excellent photographs! I glanced at that first one as I paused from reading the text. I thought it was a high altitude view of a coastline and couldn't figure out what was in front of the boat.
There is a huge difference between suffering and dealing with pain. I've known people that took the chemical way out (drugs-prescribed and not) then use the pain as the rationalization for victimhood. I've known people that suffer hard to imagine pain everyday and soldier along to the best of their ability.
I know which of the above choices I choose to spend time with...
I really hope smallsteps is OK. Really nothing like having a sick child to see how your (my) mental health is.
Ha, I didn't see that til you mentioned it. It reminded me of the machines from the Matrix.
One of my friends here who passed away (@wolfhart) battled pain for years until cancer finally took him. Not once did I ever hear him really complain about the pain, his lot in life, his exposure to chemicals while serving and was always polite and friendly, despite his own conditions. People like him are rare.
She'll be fine soon enough - she seems to get these fevers often though -it is a bit of a worry.
Be ultra careful at the doctor's place, as this covid thing is all over. We have our doctor's number, as he is also a friend and I call him when I need to.
Luckily I have managed to banish thoughts about my daily pains from my mind a long time ago and now they have become normal to me. Yes at times I stumble a bit, but if anyone laughs, I simply laugh with them and continue on my way. At times I have to sit immediately and if no chair is available, such as inside a shopping center, I simply sit on the floor and act like an old hippie hahaha.
Those photos are great Btw!
Here's one for smallsteps from my post today.
A male Carpenter bee at a flower!
We hope and pray that smallsteps will get sorted at the doctor!
This reminds me of a friend of mine when I was in my early 20s. She was a tall print model, gorgeous... fell over often in public (hence not a catwalk model :D ). She would laugh it off every time.
That is a cool shot!
Shame, I can imagine how she felt, but like I said, over time one gets used to it.
I still get many surprises when I try to do something that I used to do effortlessly and nowadays it turns out almost in a disaster hahaha.
Just the other day, I picked up a big flower pot to move it to a different position. Long story short, I slipped, the pot fell and broke and I had to plant the flower hahaha. (struggled 2 days with backpain) lol.
Lesson: Stop thinking that you are still young hahaha
One of the things that attracts me most from your writing is the ability to make analogies, @tarakzp. Starting to talk about your daughter's fever, and then talking about suffering and life, seems to me to be a skill that few people have. I congratulate you. I hope that @Smallsteps will get better soon and that everything will be a passing flu. As for you, great images and good text. I would love to live in a garden with so many colors. Nice evening.
I don't have much time in my life to sit down and think, so I think on the run - this means that my own life experience is heavy in my content - I prefer it this way.
How are things with you at the moment?
I'm sorry she isn't feeling well. I know it has to be hard to watch her be sick and just doing the best you can, but not having a magic wand to fix her, nor psychic spyglass to even know what's wrong. Even just with my dog, who is injured right now, it is incredibly stressful trying to do best by someone depending on you who you love. I can only imagine how much more intense that is as a parent. But I guess that forces you parents to develop a resiliency and perspective on child illnesses that those of us who haven't parented may not have developed.
I can recall the first time I spent a considerable amount of time around any of my nieces/nephews and one got sick. My 3 year old nephew was so sick he wouldn't eat for days. I'm the one who finally insisted we take him to the ER. No one else wanted to take him, saying he would get better with the rest, fluids, and food alone. Well turns out the doctor said pretty much the same thing. I apologized profusely to everyone for making such a big deal about it. (I was so stressed by it all I just had to insist we go.) They were all gracious, saying they knew I wasn't used to sick children because I didn't have any, and that they knew I just cared about him, and it was okay.
Props to you parents. Gosh, what a hard job.
Well, if you are anything like my wife with our dog... it is similar :) Hope yours is doing better.
It does I think - being a parent has changed me in various ways, relaxed me a bit more.
I can imagine being in a position of not having kids but being around sick kids is really difficult. It can seem perhaps like the parents are being complacent. For us, Smallsteps had issues at birth and as new parents, this was a nightmare situation - and for us, it was incredibly hard. Hypothetically if we had a second and the same thing happened, we would be much better prepped for it.
This is why younger children are so much smarter, better and well-developed emotionally than their older siblings - parents leave them alone more ;D
Yeah, I think that "parents leave them alone more" is a really powerful observation.
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Beautiful photos! Specially loved that spidery-white-spore thing that drifts on the wind. What's it called anyway? I've seen it before but cannot really recall its name.
Do you have a fruit forest setup in the backyard by any chance? I've seen some videos on youtube, permaculture fruit forests are getting popular. I myself want to make one.
May she recover soon. How old is she?
Those cherries with the light shining through them! Are they cherries? Anyway that last photo is a brilliant shot XD
Poor small, hope she gets better soon! I remember flu seasons and having kids constantly (and never being able to decide whether one after another was better as it was a lighter workload but dragged out for longer or better to have them all done at once which was a ridiculous amount of work but for a shorter period of time). Good for their immune system, it's only the youngest that's picking stuff up semi-regularly now and the big two rarely get sick at all now.
Small will probably come out the toughest little nut of all XD
Waw, very beautiful photos. health for your daughter and you patience, patience and once again patience.