I never before thought that helping a friend deal with a broken heart could make me feel so good. But today for me it signified business as usual, trauma I have at least some experience dealing with. It was a moment of humanity, universal humanity, a moment that has put the past week in much needed persective.
Thursday afternoon I was confronted with a confession of horrific crimes and was shown things I would never have believed possible. I've been grappling with the things I saw and heard ever since, because, not to sound melodramatic, I can never look at the world the same way again. Today I realized that for better or worse, human pain and love are much the same, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you've done. It may very well be impossible to take away a person's humanity. Perhaps temporarily, but not in the long run. Even a refugee, even an ex-combatant, even an international volunteer - we are all, and always will be, human. But at the same time, we must humanize ourselves, the only person you can truly, ultimately depend upon is yourself.
Maybe this doesn't make any sense because it is certainly vague. But what I've learned, among other things, is that trauma is relative: pretty much everyone here has experienced significant trauma, and yet they experience love and hate, empowerment and frustration, much as anyone else. A broken heart is a broken heart, whether it belongs to a spoiled and protected white person in America or a traumatized black person in Africa. And what that also means is that even when the world is falling apart, when people are starving and sick with malaria and trying to succeed with business and deal with their traumatized pasts and afraid to sleep in their own homes and every other problem you can imagine, people still fall in love, people still get worked up emotionally about boyfriends and girlfriends, there's even space in the mind to think about stupid little crushes. Even in the most extreme of conditions, some things in life go on as normal. And that, that is comforting.
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Explorations and observations of the world
3 comments:
We arevery touched by your diary of today. Thought you would go into some detail about this experience but apparently you are leting that go for another time. We are reading on. Very emotional readng. gma and gpa
Ar, this is exactly what I needed to read today. Thank you so much.
Yes, what an important observation. Although different people have different ways of getting their needs met, the needs are essentially the same -- for affiliation, love and affection, attention, self-esteem, control of our own lives, recognition, etc., to say nothing of the basic needs of survival. Too bad so much energy is put into recognizing differences rather than similarities. What a different world it could be...
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