"read my mind" ...

... is a song by The Killers and probably one of my favourite songs at the moment - it always brings a smile to my face when it plays on my ipod as I walk up towards the hospital in the glorious autumn sunshine ...

... it asks this question "Can you read my mind?" and one of the classic questions in Psychiatry is "do you think people can read your mind?" (for the non-medics: thought broadcast is one of Schneider's symptoms of first rank for schizophrenia). Most people just look at me as if I am mad ...

But how would one feel if people can truly read your mind? Most people will probably shrink from such an idea, as no one wants their inner thought to be known to all, as it may reveal how shallow/deep/lonely/envious/funny/sarcastic we are ... It also renders conversations to be meaningless (as you can read everything off a speech bubble and the conversation will take on so many tangles, spreading like a spider web). We all have listened to people revealing their deepest fears/latest invention/new-found-absolutely-can-do-no-wrongs-other-half, when we are secretly thinking what to order from the menu ...

Yet, what if we can select whom we reveal our thoughts to? What will happen then? Will it make life easier, more bearable? When we can "tell" a passerby how much we love their gorgeous blue shoes, our parents how much we appreciate their sacrifices, our friends how much our lives have shined because of their lights, the person how much we have liked them since the beginning of time, those we have hurt along the way how truly sorry we are ...

But as Dana Gioia wrote,

"So much of what we live goes on inside–
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead."

flowers ...

~ by Wendy Cope

"Some men never think of it.
You did. You'd come along
And say you'd nearly bought me flowers
But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts -
The sort that minds like ours
Dream up incessantly. You thought
I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile.
But, look, the flowers you nearly bought
have lasted all this while."