Your Last Hope

“You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope.”

“Of course, we’re fickle stupid beings, with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although, who knows? Maybe this time, we’ll learn.”

                                                                                                     —The Hunger Games

If you look at these two photos, it would appear not much has changed in four years.  Sure, different people in each, but both with a look of despair and loss.  It looks as if their whole lives hinged on an election, someone who would save them from the other, or better yet, save them from themselves.

Mirror Images 2020—2016

Yet, despite different people on opposite sides of their religion’s spectrum, both end in this sense of despair and defeat, as if their own savior had been crucified.  Chants of “crucify her, crucify her!” followed the same, “crucify him, crucify him!”

If history teaches anything, though, crucifying is rarely the answer.  Even what we have hated the most finds a way to resurrect, the very thing which was a threat to our own power and belief system, finds a way to manifest itself over and over again.  “Maybe this time, we’ll learn.”

Probably not.  We rarely do.

You know why?  We’ve come to believe that the people in the two photos are different from one another.  We’ve allowed ourselves to be conditioned to believing they’re the “enemy” needing to be destroyed.  “They” are the obstruction to a vision, whether real or not, that we hold so tightly to of who we’re supposed to be and we fail to see our mutual despair, hurt, and pain. 

We inevitably become what we hate.  The cycle continues.

What I am most grateful for is travel.  The opportunity to travel to varying parts of the world, especially some of the poorest of the poor, have opened my eyes to another world.  There’s a stark difference, though, when you travel to such places. 

Despite the circumstances which we’d deem less than human, there is very little despair.  In the simplest of people and “you don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope”.

Here, though, pain and suffering continue to be passed from one generation to the next.  Despair tossed like a hot potato and whoever comes up short carries the burden for their time before the game once again begins.

The ball only seems to get heavier with time, piling on lost dreams, visions of a country which never were, resentments, failed expectations, grievances which may be grounded in reality or not, mistrust, the aged story of the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s carries on, like two families who only know each other through their judgment, fear, and the unknown.

Better yet, what they’ve been told and taught about the other.  Often coming through voices manipulating our pain for their own personal gain.

There comes a time, though, when we must reckon with ourselves.  In a nation priding itself on possibility, despair mustn’t be a reality.

Reality is all we have but we prefer the illusions and even delusions, at times, rather than dealing with this pain and suffering which continues to drive our decisions.  When we fail to deal with the pain, we inevitably transmit it onto the other, the perceived enemy.

We blame.  We allow ourselves to be victims.  We abort our own lives.

We get caught up in a hope rooted in a past or a hope rooted solely in the future all to avoid the pain of today, the pain of this moment in time.

There should be no surprise, when we view this reality through the human condition, as to why one is elected and not the other, one accepted while the other rejected.  It’s merely the passing of the ball, the burden, onto the other.

We find ourselves at a time in which pausing and reflecting are a necessary pursuit.  If you were the one four years ago or feeling the sting right now, we need to ask ourselves, “Why?”

Why is there so much despair?

Why do we cling so tightly and to what?

What is it we believe we need to be saved from?

Who are you, and even more so, who am I through you?

The voices of crucifixion are intentional.  They’re placed there by those craving power.  It is the timeless voice which works the best to divide the people, to shame people, and yet a people who have more in common than not.

Your religion, a hard pill to swallow, has failed you, over and over again.

The path forward is an interior one.  The superficialities of issues and culture wars only cause war with ourselves out of threat of a future damnation.  The path is one of dialogue, especially with the unknown.

The path to healing and wholeness will always take you where you most fear to go, the hell of your own pain and suffering.

For many, you’re already there.  It feels like despair.

Your choice?

What you decide to do with it.

Transmit or transform.

“Maybe this time we’ll learn.”

Terror of the Dark Night

It comes in the form of feeling trapped. For anyone who knows my story, you know I nearly lost my life whitewater rafting more than fifteen years ago now. I will never forget the feeling, the feeling of being trapped. For me, it’s the experience of anxiety. Sure, there are many other manifestations of anxiety in people’s lives. I can simply speak of my own experience. It’s the feeling of drowning, for others, death, still others, trapped in a confined place, a closet, the sense of losing it all, things falling apart around me, the loss of control. The way it becomes embodied in our lives, because it does take shape in the body, are far too numerous to spell out here. Anyone who is at least somewhat self-aware knows and understands, to some degree, how it becomes manifest.

I still remember being called by a funeral director asking if I could come to a cemetery while a body is being transferred from underground into a mausoleum. As I began talking to the daughter of the one being exhumed, I began to understand its link to anxiety and an irrational fear. Here she was, making an expensive decision, based on her own fear. This was not the first, but now going to be the third burial place for her mother’s burial. To the rational mind we’d automatically deduce she’s crazy, and on some level, it is a madness or an insanity knowing we make decisions all the time out of irrational fears. She insisted to me her mother was claustrophobic and needed to be exhumed from the ground while never recognizing a mausoleum isn’t much different, going from one enclosed “resting” place to another. It was clear the daughter was not getting much rest herself.

It is a real problem for many, even on a societal level and begins to become all the more evident the further we embark on unchartered, or as we like to define everything, unprecedented, territory with the coronavirus pandemic. Very little is spoken of about mental health during this crisis but all seems to be surfacing the longer we find ourselves confined to a particular place. Again, there is the feeling of being trapped, cornered, confined, loss of control, aggressively moving itself to the surface. Unfortunately, we all find ways to keep it locked inside, but in some ways, now being confined to places, the external world has met up with the internal world we learned to avoid. We do it through overwork, eating, drinking, gluing ourselves to phones and pads, all to take “the edge” off in order to relax. It’s always been there but the pandemic is forcing us to slow ourselves and no longer run from our own pain and fear finding themselves bubbling to the surface.

Now I am not a mental health professional but I am a self-aware individual who’s done a lot of work on himself and understands the interior landscape. I, too, like many still run at times from my own pain. More often than not it’s because I’m just not ready to look at it but know it’s there. The easiest way we learn to deal with it is blame everyone else for our problems. It’s a good indicator of someone who has not done the hard, interior work. We even see this played out on a large scale when we blame, ridicule, put down, others because of our own inability to take responsibility for where are lives are at and an underlying resentment also feeding into our anxiousness. Most successful corporations are aware of the human condition and even hire psychologists to assist in their success. Steve Jobs never hid the fact of the inception of Apple coming from biblical reference and the unsettlement within human beings to want more.

Now we find ourselves at this crossroad, however, when we can begin to turn the system on its head because it has taken advantage of the weakness of our humanity. It’s one thing as an individual to tackle our own uneasiness, angst, or anxiety which remains the great “invisible enemy” in which we are at “war” with on a daily basis. It’s there and now is beginning to surface. We need to keep ourselves busy, it appears, get back to normal and work, so we can avoid the interior reality all the more. What we seem to fail to see is the energy required to blame, to remain victim, as if someone else is still responsible for our lives. Why on earth would we want to go to our grave miserable having never lived the life we wanted to live? There is a great freedom when we finally recognize the war we fight is against ourselves and no one else.

I think about all the energy I expended fighting everyone else. It’s not to say there aren’t times for it, but generally speaking the damage it does to my health and well-being, including my mental health, is a toll all too expensive. I understand it’s a painful process entering into your own anxiety and pain, but it is a necessary one as individuals and as a nation. If we don’t stop the blame game soon, the anxiety will only continue to deepen, the pain widens, and the feeling as if we are suffocating ourselves, as respiratory diseases do, will only begin to intensify. As a country we have shown our pride, but pride too has a dark side. It is the avoidance of our arrogance and ignorance as if we know better than the world and everyone else and our inability to say we need help. How many avoid the care of a mental health professional simply out of pride? The price, your own well-being. Is it worth it?  Ask for help.

Anxiety and pain are real and has an impact on our lives which goes unnoticed and unrecognized. If this time of quarantine and physical distancing should teach us anything, it’s the wake up call we should have anticipated for a long time. It’s not God smiting us for some bizarre reason, that too is blame. It’s not someone trying to do us in, that’s conspiracy. It’s not the world against me, that’s pride. It is, however, the world we have created and have bought into as being “The American Way”. If you still feel you’re not responsible, well, hopefully one day you’ll move beyond the stage of denial. It is after all a grieving process we find ourselves going through these days. Denial is everywhere around us and within us, avoiding the harsh reality that life isn’t always the way we dreamed or expected. It’s only when we move to the stage of acceptance where we can finally say, “you know what, that’s ok.” I no longer need to fight or blame but rather recognize and accept we are complicated people of both great joy and pain, victim and victor, winner and loser, and all the other paradoxes which make up the human condition.

Do yourself a favor. In this time of pandemic, look at it is opportunity, even our inability to gather as faith communities. We focus too much on the inconveniences of life. There are certainly economic and personal implications. We mustn’t deny it. However, there is also plenty of opportunity. We were designed for simplicity and not just from material things, but all we hold onto. Take the time to journal and write about your own pain, where life seemed to have treated you wrongly, the incessant uneasiness within yourself, the times you can’t breathe, all of it.  Go for a walk in nature and allow it to speak and allow yourself to listen. It’s the pain often making the decisions of holding you back from the life you had wanted and desired. In the end, we aren’t much different than the daughter unearthing her mother over and over again. We all just find different ways of doing it in order to avoid the most fragile part of what makes us human, our pain, hurt, and anxieties.

Use this time to go there and then you will find hope in the midst of pandemic and see just how much you’ve allowed yourself to be bamboozled by a ruthless world not because they’re out to get you and destroy you, but rather because it’s a world which hurts and acts out of the same place as your own pain, hurt, fears, and anxiety. There is already an anchor within you waiting to hold you down in the storm rather than being swept away in despair and depression. “Do not let your hearts be troubled…” It is, after all, a matter of the heart we need to learn to deal with for it is the heart which holds the pain and our head, our ego, trying at all cost to avoid, blame, and make us victim. No one can make the decision for you, not even me, all I can do is act as a guide on this journey to self-awareness. If anything, it will change the way you see the world and yourself. In the end, it’s all we can really ask for ourselves, for we need to fear the “terror of the night”.