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read between the lines
today's pick i picked up an interesting read today i found at Popular. not only did i pick an undefeated mind by kua ee hock up, i actually finished it (in three hours). the last book i actually read and finished at the bookstore was daniel tammet's born on a blue day: a memoir of aspergers and an extraordinary mind back in june, so for this book to have hooked me it must have been something special, which it was. few books interest me long enough to finish them on the spot these days.an undefeated mind is basically a doctor's short journal of part of his rounds at woodbridge hospital (now the IMH). okay, so his writing wasn't 'fantabulous', but it was definitely insightful in terms of interacting mental patients. i totally agree when he says there's this stigma attached with the patient forever once he's been admitted, and that the next time there's a commotion or a fight he's gonna be the 'bad guy' the police detain. in fact in the ending, the reader finds out that muthu, a recovering mental patient, was not suffering from imagined "morbid jealousy" when he suspected that his wife was having an affair (he took a taxi back without permission and found her and his neighbour in the act of copulating). the book also gives readers a peek at the dedication and compassion these doctors, nurses and porters have, working in a place where the stigma even extends to them instead of just their patients (examples were being labelled the "mad doctor" or "nutty nurse"). i like the fact that the author highlighted how such people viewed their patients: as people with personal lives, not just textbook problems to be solved. i can definitely relate to that, since i've hung out with mentally-challenged people before. there were quite a number of them in my old church and even though they had flaws, it was kind of hypocritical to see most church members avoiding them, brushing them off or not taking them seriously whenever they spoke. okay, so i admit, all of them were clingy, but it was kind of understandable since people literally ran away from them or responded like they didn't really care about their opinions...and aside from a particularly dirty-minded man who used to come up after service, shake and rub my hand in a disgusting way after i played the piano, they were perfectly sane people to talk to, once you figured out what level (of comprehension) to communicate to them with. it's not like they were crazy or stupid (if they were, they wouldn't have been released onto the streets). sure, they had their shortcomings (i know of one who liked to think he was a famous author and used to hand out books and articles not written by him -- he cancelled the authors' names and replaced them with his own), but once you could sort of show them and reach that level where they felt they could trust you, they tended not to exhibit their unlikeable tendencies, or to exhibit them less. as for those for whom miscommunication was a common thing amongst other people, i found out through time that prayer and confronting the person directly and telling them what was really going on were the best ways to resolve issues. there was a lady who was overly sensitive towards everyone's actions and anything deemed as ignorance would cause her to think so and so didn't like or had a grudge against her. the above method seemed to help a lot when speaking to her. i've also volunteered occasionally (more so when i was younger) at the local spastic association home for children (and a few teens or adults)...and i definitely enjoyed their presence and watching them progress. i guess i see myself in these people and thus feel a greater need to reach out to them and befriend them. their clingy tendencies seem to be an exaggerated version of who i used to be. i mean, i know what it's like to have people not believe or take you seriously, to have people who walk the other direction when they see your face, to feel like nobody cares if you live or die and you're just this third wheel who seems to serve no helpful purpose in life. unfortunately, most people seem to have the opposite mindset. even christians, which is what pisses me off when i observe them in action. a lot of people like to give up on 'hopeless cases' while forgetting that we serve a god of hope for whom "impossible is nothing", to quote the adidas advertisements. |
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