what to do in the face of global trauma

It's been a rough few months in the world. Maybe years, even but it feels like the violence and sadness is increasing. With multiple mass-killings, an attempted military coup and promises of the death penalty; police murders and police murdered, these few weeks have been brutal. People everywhere are hurting or scared or angry. It's overwhelming, and while many people's minds are turning away, others are turning towards answers. What can we do? How do we overcome this violent and frightening chapter in our collective lives?

Love.

We overcome it with love. In fact we don't so much overcome as live it. There is no use in distracting ourselves, hiding the news from our children; finding people to blame or people to save us. We have to turn our faces towards the horror and walk right through it, with love.

These things are happening because we live in a global culture that separates instead of loving. Think of the perpetrators of the attacks. They're usually portrayed as either outcasts acting from personal frustrations, or as cohesive groups fighting for or against other groups. Most of the perpetrators have at some point been disenfranchised in some way. Murder hurts. The act of murder is a horrifyingly painful act for the perpetrator. S/he loses everything in the process. As various people keep saying in the media, you don't give up everything to commit murder unless you feel you have nothing to lose. That goes for individuals shooting their lovers as much as it goes for cops shooting citizens as much as it goes for presidents calling for capital punishment and kids strangling their friends in dark corners at school. Did you hear the voices on the 911 call from the cops being shot in Louisiana? Do you read the emotion in the inflamed and judgemental posts on social media? They're scared shitless. Why do these people have so much to fear? Why do people feel they have nothing to lose? Because we've ostracized them.

In the very basic fabric of our education, legal, political, faith and social systems we separate. We separate by grading our children and measuring them against an ideal, so that some come out on top and some don't, and all of them come out fighting to succeed against the others. We separate by splitting people into victims and perpetrators, winners and losers, left- and right-brained, healthy and unhealthy, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer, empowered and disenfranchised, upper, middle and lower, black, red, white, yellow and blue. We have developed highly intricate and sophisticated ways of categorizing ourselves and then manipulating the systems we made to come out on top, or at least a little higher than the next guy, on whatever ladder we're climbing. We have so many ways of separating ourselves that it has become nearly impossible to see ourselves in others.

That would be compassion: To see somebody so much that when they hurt, you hurt. Not that you feel empathy for their pain, but that you actually feel the pain. Compassion is when you see that you and the other are the same. Love is when you transcend that compassion so that it isn't even a consideration anymore. It just is, as the way of being, because you love.

Love does not depend upon the other fitting into your categories, or upon you understanding their motives and desires. It just is. When a baby is born a mother (often) experiences true love. With such a deep physical connection to this being, we understand that despite the brief but growing separation of our bodies, we are still the same being. When we lay our babies to sleep and walk away we can feel their presence in our hearts, many of us know instinctively when they begin to wake or to need us. That is love. That is when we lose the separation and logical categorization and simply are one with the other. We have to learn to know that oneness in everything.

It's going to be a long journey for us humans to transcend the systems we've created for ourselves, and grow through compassion to oneness - to love. But we're already on the journey, whether we know it or not. In so many ways we are learning and teaching each other to see. Whether you're transcending social norms by reaching open arms out to help the people you're afraid of instead of turning away, or trading goods in an open market with farmers and crafts-people instead of supporting money-centred corporations; whether you're looking with an open mind at a small ecosystem in your back yard, opening your mouth to participate in discussion or to sing with others, opening your door to strangers, or stepping out of the rat-race and into an open meditation session - you are opening. As we open our eyes and hearts and minds and arms to let each other in, we are transcending the separation. We are learning to see and to appreciate the sameness of everything.

As parents, we have an opportunity to look at our children with open minds; to work on opening ourselves instead of closing our children. Remember when people told you to imagine that the other person was you, and to treat them as you would want to be treated, yourself? It's still good advice, but the truth is that other person is you. When you hurt them, you hurt you. When you look for differences or create separation of values, ideals, or presence, you break a piece of yourself. When you open your heart to them, you learn to see the connection that was there before. It's always there. We just have to re-learn to see it.

We have to love.

a piece of yourself

Me!

I come from the gentry. Literally. Or to be accurate, from nobility. When I went to an art academy in the Netherlands, one of my first professors recognized my name and bowed his head, asking if I was a duchess. NO! I sputtered! I come from a trailer in the woods in Canada!! We heat with a wood stove!

Cut to that trailer in the woods in Canada. It's twenty-two years later, now, and I am raising my children here. I live a highly privileged life, not only because my parents rent this place to us at a fraction of the price others pay to rent on this island (if it wasn't for this, we wouldn't afford to live here at all), but also because I'm the gentry in a place that's quickly becoming gentrified. We are in the slow process of converting this trailer to a beautiful home.

I can go to the cove (our local 'downtown' area) in one of three ways and get three distinct reactions:

I can go in 'town clothes' (you know... the fancy clothes that make me look like a middle-class mom from the burbs...), and all the other middle-class people wearing clean shirts and hairdos will smile at me or politely say hello; ask me how I'm doing, etc. This is the 'me' who is usually on my way to the mainland to shop with the other suburban moms at Superstore and look all towny in my town clothes. I wear big black boots just to feel like there's still a bit of me in me. And because I'm kind of scared, actually.

I can go in my usual clothes (dirty jeans, lumber jacket, and often a bandana), and people dressed similarly will say hello, as they lean out of the garbage truck or wander off to their landscaping or construction jobs with a cup of coffee. Those who always say hello will say it with more exuberance. And people I don't know who walk by in their fancy town clothes will keep their eyes ahead and only nod if I say hello. This is the 'me' who is just going to the store for some milk, or taking my kids to the beach, or leading a wilderness tour, or walking around taking photos for the various articles I write. This is the me who doesn't care what she looks like.

Or... I can dress up. For me that means lots of skirts, scarves in my hair, feathers and ribbons and usually a patchwork of interesting fabrics or hand-painted clothes. And people look away. They roll their eyes at me. They have literally (and no I am not exaggerating) turned their children's heads away from me. People who know me still talk to me, but the others - unless they look like me - would rather keep their distance. But this is me too! This is the 'me' who feels beautiful!! This is the me who really took time to feel great today, and is enjoying the island I have loved since I was a baby. This is the me I wish I had the guts or the time to be, all of the time.

So that's me. All three of me. And you probably know that the person inside those clothes is pretty constant. I'm just me. I see the people going by; I hear the things they say to each other about me; I see them turn towards me or turn away. And I see the many feelings on their faces as they do. I know they are people who, like me, might only be showing one stereotypical side of their many-sided selves, and that they are more complex; more interesting; more valuable, than I can know.

We are all valuable.

Our community, where houses look down on boats. (Photo: Rhiannon)

So what are we afraid of? Yesterday I was informed that we may not park cars with for-sale signs on municipal land. And our council passed a bylaw to prevent liveaboards. Yes - those liveaboards who don't wear golf shirts and look... 'alternative'. Those liveaboards who are a valuable part of our community but cannot afford to rent here. That these laws are discriminatory is obvious. But what is just the worst is that they discriminate against the poor, based on absolutely ludicrous assumptions made by people who walk by those 'poor' people every day and look the other way. Do they look the other way when they hire those people to clean their homes, weed their gardens or drive them home after a night of drinking? Maybe. Do they look the other way when they encounter those people dressed up in town clothes and serving them coffee or teaching their children? Maybe not. What are we afraid of?

I think we're afraid of other people's judgements based on other people's fears. We live in a world full of manipulative and judgemental media and social hysteria, where we are so busy looking into our phones that we can't see the humanity of the people we walk by on the street. We're so afraid of what other people think of us that we've failed to think of others. We're afraid that other people will see the 'other' in us. So we look for people to blame; we look for people to deflect that gaze upon and we shun them.

This is the fear that rots us inside until we can't see our own reflections. This is the fear that riddles us with doubts and misconceptions until our own children become the enemy. This is the fear that rips communities and nations and sometimes the whole world apart as we fight the people we don't want to see until one or both of us is too damaged to fight anymore. And then we pretend they didn't exist. But we are poor. And damaged. This is the fear we need to vanquish before it takes us away entirely. Because it will. Because we are all the same.

And when you get rid of the people you are afraid of, you get rid of a piece of yourself.