Building On Trauma 6

Everything has cracks in it.  That's how the light gets through.  I think many of my Canadian Gentle Readers will recognize those words written by the late Leonard Cohen.  It comes very close to what I mean about building on trauma.

There is no such thing as perfection and this is something that can never be achieved, apart, perhaps, from being a perfect douchebag.  While trauma is not the same thing as imperfection, it certainly plays a role.  We are all flawed, perhaps hopelessly, but perhaps we could think of it as being hopefully flawed. 

Regardless of what we are unable to achieve in this cruel and brutal Darwinist reality that is global capitalism, we can always become better people.  I don't mean better in the sense of stronger or of turning into high achievers or of becoming more competitive.  This kind of thinking badly needs to be turned on its head.

Trauma, the imperfections, the cracks as they are, opens us up.  We will not become better workers, or better looking people, or successful lovers, and this is certainly not going to make us wealthy.  Trauma has nothing to do with survival of the fittest and everything to do with making us more human.

Think of our lives from start to finish.  Even the act of conception springs from a form of trauma because the vagina must be penetrated (in most cases) by a penis and even with both partners being totally willing and good game and giving, this is still traumatic.  It is one foreign body penetrating another. 

The fetus comes to term following gestation and then comes the trauma of birth.  For the newly emerged baby this most be nothing but terrifying, emerging from the dark, warm safety of the womb into a cold, unloving and brightly lit world.  Surviving infancy and early childhood is going to be traumatic.  Has anyone ever seen a baby that never cries?  Totally dependent on the mercy and good will of one, preferably two, adults who often don't have a clue what they're doing or how to raise a child.  Teething?  Learning to walk, falling down and getting up again?

Then there's the terror of becoming socialized and just hope that your little bundle of joy is nowhere on the Asperger's-Autism spectrum or it's trouble here sports fans.  Daycare, preschool, kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school, trade, technical, college, university, losing one's virginity, dating, fitting in with peers, drugs, alcohol, pop culture, politics, the Internet, the work world, marriage, children, old age, illness and death.

We are never promised a cakewalk.  And real life, even in its bland first world ordinariness is still one scary and horrifying ride not for the faint of heart.

Add in the variables: chronic or terminal illness, mental health disorders, brain injury, child-abuse, sexual abuse, poverty,  racism, homophobia, hate, poor-bashing, alcoholism, drug abuse and addiction, or simply being too unusual or too gifted to really belong anywhere, or all of the above, and then, you are really screwed.

If it wasn't for those variables of trauma we would have no culture, nor much impetus for compassion, empathy and caregiving.  There would be no impetus of growth or improvement.  There would be no real sense of the importance of gratitude, of living in the eternal now, of the importance of loving one another.

We have little option but to build on trauma.  It is one of the most fundamental facts of our human existence.  It is never going to go away.  Why not make friends with our trauma and exploit to the max all those cracks, big and small that are always letting the light in?