Accept life’s limitations to stay sane

BEING slightly incapacitated post hip operation has forced me to sit still for once. That in turn makes you think.

Four weeks on (down to one stick and starting slow, unsupported steps) I’ve discovered the effects of a major operation are far more than physical.

Like most journalists I’m obsessed with news, but in the past four weeks I’ve even switched the News At Ten off before the end.

Why? Because when you feel vulnerable (post-op emotions fluctuate wildly) you look at the world in a different light, unable to tolerate its wickedness and stupidity.

All the suffering we currently see on the news is caused by human anger, greed, hunger for power, ethnic hatred, vile exploitation — and all the other evils that cause the torment and death of the innocent.

When I was younger I always tried to see solutions. Now in the silence of my room I just despair. Closer to home, you witness the posturing vanity of politicians such as Nicola Sturgeon and John McDonnell (I’ll stop there, or I could fill half the page) and wonder what happened to ideas of duty and the greater good of the people, rather than self-interest and vaulting ambition.

Pah! They make me sick — from privileged Lords to blinkered nincompoops colluding in the death of the Labour Party.

With more time than ever to read two newspapers a day, seven days a week, I’m turning into ‘Disgusted of Bath’ — and wondering why the common sense most of us try to use to cope with our lives doesn’t hold much sway in politics, business or the Bank of England.

What’s more, being vulnerable forces the realisation, ‘This is what it will be like when I’m old.’ It’s a sobering thought.

So must it all end in despair and disappointment, frustration and anger? Of course not. Life offers many consolations.

But just as you have to live with the weakness of your body, to keep sane you must also accept that not everything can be fixed.