Only connect...

I'm fairly open and honest about my diabetes and have been ever since I was diagnosed aged 15. As a diabetic, you don't really have much of a choice about being up front about it; when you're injecting yourself to bring your blood sugars down after a meal or cramming glucose into your face because your blood sugars are plummeting between meals - people tend to notice.

Ask non diabetics to tell you what they know about the condition and the answer is generally something like, "You can't eat sweet things and it must be a bit of an irritation" - both of which are somewhat wide of the mark. I often wonder why people don't understand diabetes better; it's not as if it's a rare condition - most people know someone who's diabetic (even if that is their Nan).

I've read two quite wonderful blog posts in the last couple of days from Matt's I Have No Idea and from Kristian's Sex, drugs and sausage rolls. Matt's is entitled Gary Speed but discusses Matt's experience of depression and Kristian's is entitled When failure is not an option and discusses Kristian's HIV experience. They are quite wonderful because of one thing that they both have in common: honesty.

Diabetes, depression and HIV infection share a number of attributes: all are chronic conditions which need to be managed, all are misunderstood to an extent and all require honesty; honesty with oneself to effectively manage the condition and honesty with others to promote a better understanding.

I wrote here recently in a post entitled Nobody's perfect... that life scars us from our first gasp to our last rattle. This scarring (along with the experience it brings), I argued, should be valued. I have a wealth of insight and experience as a result of living with diabetes. I know that Matt and Kristian will have their own insights and experiences from living with depression and living with HIV.

Life is often described as a journey - a cliché but a useful metaphor. One of the main things we all have in common is that we are all on different journeys. Your journey may be wildly different to mine in many respects but not so different that I can't benefit from the experiences you've had on your journey.

EM Forster wrote, "Only connect" as the epigraph to Howards End, advocating a bringing together of different elements and thereby promoting a higher understanding. The first step down that road is honesty - about who we are and what we've experienced. Here, in Matt's and Kristian's blogs, you have two people talking honestly about their experiences.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
- Howards End

Today is World AIDS Day. Let's live in fragments no longer.

Today's run at 18:01
Distance	4.26 km	Time	22:22
Pace	5:14 min/km	Cadence	81 spm