What Is Trauma? 13

So, we are all traumatized.  Every last one of us.  By virtue of being human.  For our long and difficult history.  For all the problems that we cause ourselves, one another and this earth that is our home.  We have fought, warred, starved, exploited, raped, overrun, cheated, enslaved and bombed our way through history.  We are now seven and a half billion strong on this planet.  The highest human population ever in recorded or unrecorded history.  We have become like a plague, an infestation of giant cockroaches on this planet.  We have become the greatest danger to ourselves, other life forms and this very planet.

We are all wounded, exhausted.  Traumatized.  PTSD occurrences are statistically meaningless.  Those who are diagnosed with the disorder are not necessarily sicker than the general population.  Rather, we are either poor liars or less able to adapt to the lie that everyone is expected to adhere to. 

What should this all mean to us? 

I think that, first of all, we need to consider all the unhealthy ways in which we cope: addictions and addictive behaviours, violence, escape, rampant consumerism, individualism, social conformity, culture of rape and pornography, avoidance behaviours, competitiveness, tribalism, passivity...

There are likely many others.  But the question to me is: how can we make life better, or at least less intolerable? 

I think that first of all we need to reset our moral compass, or obtain one.  We need to come up with a universal ethic that is immune to the subtle lies of cultural relativism.  This isn't to say that we should ram Christianity or Islam or Buddhism down everyone's throat, rather we need to carefully select and adapt from all the world's religious, philosophical and ethical systems of thought to find that which is enduring and permanent, and use this as a lodestone for creating and resetting our moral compass.

Love is such a universal value.  I am going to, for now, Gentle Reader, betray my Christian prejudice and quote from the Christian apostle, Saint Paul of Tarsus:

If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

This is of course the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

Christian or not, we need to apply these words to our daily lives if we are to see and become the change that we desire to see in this world.  Based upon the beautiful truth of these words we must think out and live out our way of living with one another and caring for one another.  These are the healing words of love.

We are all traumatized and we all carry incredible burdens and baggage as we struggle through life.  I think that even if a few of us begin to really apply these words to our lives we will be empowered to offer the care, support and healing to one another that can help undo and redeem the misery we have brought upon ourselves and our world.

As a mental health worker who happens also to be a Christian (and vice-versa) this is how I have chosen to live and how I have chosen to inform my professional work.  And taking these words of love as divine mandate I will continue to stumble my way forward, making mistakes, stumbling, at times falling, but getting up again and carrying on, one step at a time.

Gentle Reader, Will you join me in this quest?