Hopeful Thinking - Saturday, April 6, 2019 - The Irony of Safety

Many of us have experienced abuse, either emotional, sexual, or physical. Some of us have known war, violence, or deep psychological trauma from one event or many. Sooner or later we all emerge from these places. Hopefully, having survived. Once we are finally free, we often find ourselves with a surprising set of new challenges to face.

The unsettling quality of finally achieving a measure of safety following prolonged abuse is a sudden recognition of how much we had gotten used to feeling unsafe. That is a can of worms all its own. The unclenching. It is part of the aftermath of recalibration. A new normal.

Imagine you need to go to the chiropractor for back pain. Your muscles constantly ache and pull. You take pills. But sometimes the nerves send out shockwaves like lightning throughout your body. The pain is so sharp and sudden it takes your breath away. You’ve gotten used to it. But something has to be done. We can’t keep going on like this.

As you sit on the chiropractor’s table, the inner scaffolding of your body, your skeleton, is realigned. Briefly returned to its intended state, or at least somewhat nearer to it. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Future adjustments will have to be made as the healing process unfolds.

The muscles are now made even more uncomfortable for the moment by having to reposition themselves closer toward the form they were supposed to have been in the first place. But they are not used to it even though they’ve been asking for it. They didn’t know how hard it would be.

Change, even toward something better, is never without discomfort. Sometimes it’s a level of discomfort so great, it makes us feel for a while as if it was never worth trying to make the correction in the first place. We secretly wish the chiropractor would push the bones back into the old and incorrect positions, the devil we knew. In our panic, we falsely imagine the old way felt better than this. But some realignments can never go back to their old shapes and forms. Once begun, we must work our way through it. The back end of the tunnel has caved in and the only way now is forward.

The fact is, we get comfortable in our old ways, even when they do us harm, even when they are literally killing us. We ask for change but fear what change will ask of us in return. It’s always more than we ever thought we’d be willing to give. The shift toward health is sometimes more painful than was the disease. For a time.

Think for a moment about our human society. Over the past few hundred years in particular, it has steadily woken up and begun the process of recognizing that the only way forward is together. We had inadvertently begun the arduous and multi-layered commitment of choosing to aspire toward an ideal of equality and fraternity. A struggle which  continues to this day and shall. That desire shows no signs of abating. We began to perceive injustice in a way we had not previously recognized it. We saw glimpses of our own individual worth and value. It would not go over well. No society awakens unscathed.

Take comfort, however, in the recognition of this process. The world may feel less safe than ever before, but it is a lie. Of course much of what we are seeing is really there, but the view is neither proportional nor fully accurate. Each of us has only a distorted keyhole’s view of the wider reality. In taking a step back we see that it’s logical for us to be experiencing the societal angst we are enduring. It’s the natural consequence of a progress not everyone wants. Spend your energy soothing people‘s fears over the changes that are now inevitable. Don’t do battle with people. They are more afraid than you. We are becoming increasingly loving each day and it’s more difficult for some than others.

As our body finds its true skeletal alignment, as we walk into the comfort of greater degrees of safety then we have ever before known, the cost is sadly dear. Our muscles cry out in rage for being stretched from their torqued, but familiar positions. Our memories of all we’ve suffered until now, which have been kept tucked away, suddenly flood forward. The consequences are natural, but devastating. Hold tight. It will get better.

These days are not without hope. Take relief from the fact that we are here and do your best to love all those within arm’s reach. You don’t have to soothe or even forgive the whole world, just help where you can. This difficult time will end. We might even live to see it.