(What is our) RESPONS-ABILITY
This essay has been written just a couple of hours before the earthquake hit my hometown, Zagreb, Croatia. In those moments of shock and panic, homes being devastated, losing ground beneath our feet literally and waiting for another wave of earthquake to arrive, when the only sensible thing would be to stick together, hold each other and cry in each other’s arms, we needed to stay standing apart. Even though this essay addresses the events before the earthquake, I can say that now it is even more appropriate, and not just for Croatia, but for the big part of the world as well. Let us be an example of possibilities in these times. So hold on. Or let go. Because who knows what’s next for any one of us.
Wow. I am lucky to say that never before in my adult life have I faced a threat to my freedom to move freely or the freedom of assembly. I am lucky to say I have been enjoying many luxuries of the 21st century which at many times I have taken as my ‘right’. I have taken them as the status quo of the society I live in and as the way the world, or at least my world, is. And mind you, I come from Croatia. We, like many other countries have had a war what nowadays seems like 10 minutes ago. As a good friend of mine put it, only then we were in a refuge gathered around someone telling us stories as grenades were falling down. Nowadays we have ‘lockdown’. And Internet. God bless Internet.
These days my body contracts constantly from trying to adjust to the thought of three pine trees 150 meters away from my window that will along with my apartment plants be my best nature friends for who knows how long. If I’m sure of anything, it is at least that this new situation is reaffirming my choice to move to nature. And at best, it will support me to bring out more health, love, joy, wisdom, dance and creativity into this world. Hopefully, it will serve us all in that way. At least that’s what I pray for these days.
But let’s go back to the beginning.
REMINDER OF HOW IT WAS / TRAUMA(s) COMING TO SURFACE
As I was walking my dog in the middle of the night, the fresh spring air was carrying a smell I could recognise deep in my bones. It was some kind of alertness, panic, speeding up and lack of inner peace. It felt like the ‘enemy is coming’ and ‘save yourself’ energy was all around. Reality check at that moment did not support this atmosphere in any way. I was okay. My world was okay. My friends, family, loved ones were okay. Only the next day did I manage to recognise this feeling. As I started witnessing the living world around me, I was aware of the state of shock that brought out to the surface our collective, and often unconscious and undigested, memories from war.
The first couple of days of this global change already seem very far away. And yet each country goes into that journey in a different time. All this time our body-heart-mind systems (as well as the socio-economic and political ones) have been and are adjusting to the best of their abilities. Yet, no official public media supported people to recognise that the state of fear and panic along with all the other emotions are working on many different levels at the same time.
The response that each one of us has is intrinsically linked to our own personal history, to our national history and to the wider web of world community we are a part of. In the last couple of weeks each country in Europe and beyond has politically and psychologically responded in correlation to their own traumatic history. Buying toilet paper, guns, flour, ignoring the situation, blaming neighbours or getting tanks into the cities are just some of the markers on the surface showing how much, oh how much we as communities have been holding undigested within us. In the state of panic our fight/flight/freeze response has turned back on. Once this mode is switched on we quickly regress and lose the ground within us. Our psyche goes back to the moment we had this feeling once before – and we start doing whatever the hell worked that time to save us.
Whether that moment is us as a 3 year old, 15 year old, or in our adult life, we go back to the place where there is trauma (unprocessed emotion) we have not yet dealt with. As you and I are an organism with our personal history, so is the society, the community we live in. We have collective traumas, memories and burdens that have been kicked off by this new situation. We have within us and within our ancestral lineages memories of pain and hunger, violence, war, loss, disaster, disease, shock and trauma. All of us do. Luckily, we have good collective stuff too.
THE BIG UNKNOWN
In these days the world as we know it fell apart. Things will never be the way it were before. I keep on recognizing the feeling I had a couple of times in my life, but the time that was the strongest was when my father died. I was a 20 year old woman who has not seen her father ill one day in his life. And suddenly he had a stroke. And suddenly he was gone. I remember that my world broke down into pieces. All the thoughts, ideas, sense of how things are and how they would be have been shaken to the ground. And it took days, months and years that followed to create a new world.
Knowing there is a possibility of something has not much to do with experiencing it. This is just how we are built, our psyche cannot be prepared for this. Life-changing events are exactly what that phrase says – life changing. And what is happening now in the world is definitely one of those events.
On a personal level the period of stress will stretch us beyond what we can imagine. We touch our hidden and most protected places. We react from parts of us that are in a typical everyday life usually under our control. And these days our psyches have been stretched in an unexpected way – cracking in places, bending in others and allowing what is underneath in our personal storage to come to the surface. We are meeting our core wounds through our thoughts and fears over and over again. That is being vividly mirrored in every practical aspect of our life – through the relationships with our partners, family and friends, our work, our ‘free time’, our self-care… Have you noticed how you got angry with someone these days? Have you noticed that ‘the same old thing is happening’ event in these times? Well I have. For a moment there I experienced well known challenges in many of my closest relationships, each one of us reacting from a pattern we well know – and this includes the most embarrassing moments as yelling at someone you love very much – like I did. Every aspect of our lives in the state of uncertainty or stress brings out our own psychodynamic to the surface in an amplified way. And fear… Fear is an exquisite catalyser.
Fear can work in many peculiar ways, but fearing the unknown brings this whole thing on a whole other level. If we have not yet met this place within us many times (in the contrast of many indigenous traditions and ancient practices), being faced with the Big Unknown brings out that which we are afraid the most. And believe me, I know, a whole lotta possible worst-case scenarios have been moving through me in the last couple of weeks, from who’s gonna take care of my dog if I die alone in my flat, through we will stay stuck like this forever, and all the way to the complete dystopian chaos on the streets.
The Big Unknown in that moment becomes a big projection board for all that we have been more or less successfully avoiding all this time. And this is exactly what we could see these days – attempts of our psyches to hold on to that which is known, shopping and shopping and shopping and denial and ignoring and panicking and shopping some more and creating last attempts to hold on to the existing material world in the way we know it[1]. And even though you, just like I, may not be shopping like mad, have you noticed the speed of chewing your food? Or brushing your teeth? Well I have. This nervous-panic-speed up-run for your life-vibe has got to all of us in one way or another, no matter how subtle it may be.
Yet, this is not the only thing we did, but this aspect is being hugely neglected in this process.
Photo by Paul Trienekens on Unsplash
You may well have heard that fear is a useful emotion. And to set the record straight, under no circumstance am I saying we should not be afraid. There is an outside reason we yet do not know enough about. And there are many inner ones showing us that which is dear to our hearts. What I am saying is that there is a big difference in using this emotion in its essential function – alertness, in the contrast of being overwhelmed. To borrow a really great way of phrasing it – there is a big difference of ‘neurotic fear’ and ‘wisdom fear’.[2] And the latter, wisdom fear is showing us where to look, not only outside of us, but even as important, inside.
And sooner or later that silence will come. One of these days we will be demanded to finally stop with our neurotic running around, gathering and finishing stuff ‘before the the crisis hits us’. We are almost like an engine being switched of and is still gradually slowing down before it finally stops. What does it take for us human beings to collectively stop? One of these days we will need to stay in one place, meet that silence outside of us and face what is in us. And This is the way the world (as we know it, Ed.) ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper. [3]
NARCISSITIC STYLE[4]
Some years ago I went to the Amazon rainforest. I was going on that journey with my teachers through an organization of The Pachamama Alliance[5] along with a group of fellow travelers. On the morning we were about to go on a small plane to enter the jungle the rain showers have started. We were unable to go and had no idea how long we will have to wait. It could be minutes, hours or even days. Our well structured and organized 12 day plan just got interrupted. We all had all sorts of feelings around it but one thing was clear; it was the time to surrender all of our ideas of how things should be and wait for the sky to become clear again. Quite a death for our westerner’s ego was that.
Sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s time to change our plans. No, it’s not about going to that last hairdresser’s appointment, an important meeting, to a 40th birthday celebration or sitting in a park with all of our friends. What we have been witnessing in the last couple of weeks is a question of how much water do we need to get close to home before we take this seriously? On the collective level the unhealthy side of our self –importance has started showing up painfully vivid. Our society is showing us how much distortion there is in our concept of power. Instead of choosing power to feel valuable and to value each other (‘s lives), some of us are choosing to show up in the power of self-importance. Whether it is manifested through ‘just one more thing I need to do before…’, or ‘I won’t get sick’, ‘it’s just a regular flu, I’m sure’, ‘this cannot touch me’, through working out our ‘father issues’ through resisting the instructions of authorities or even feeling that ‘I cannot do anything to help this’, in this moment we are witnessing an enormous lack of understanding of how does interconnection work and how precious every life is.
So, let me break it down for you one more time: this is really not (only) about whether or not you will get sick. This is even not (only) about will someone you know get sick. This is about being a part of a wider web where your daily activities endanger someone else that you may not even realize he or she exists.
If you don’t belong to one of these groups yourself or don’t know somebody in them, at least one of the people closest to you does know:
a person with difficult health condition (auto-immune disease, cancer, cardio-vascular problems…)
a person with or recovering from addiction
a person without a job
a person in jail
an elderly person
a child that needs medical care
a person without home
a person without family
a person that has gone through a loss of a loved one recently
a person who suffers from depression and/or panic attacks
a child/adolescent in social care system
a family with a difficult financial situation etc.
I don’t know about you, but I can name at least 10 people I Iove belonging to one of these groups, including family members.
These are all people who are endangered in one way or another by our behaviour, as media often calls them ‘vulnerable’ ones in our society. Well, newsflash, dear ones, we are all vulnerable whether we like it or not. The question is how much freedom/power/opportunity/privilege we can practice with that vulnerability.
You and I may have a choice to stay at home. Not everyone does. Moreover, you and I may receive healthcare in case that this hits us. But someone else may not. And it will be an indirect consequence through the limited capacity of valued resources of our societies[6].
And yet, this is not the only way that this concerns us. At this moment the entire western socioeconomic system is going through a crisis that will affect us all. Neither one of us will come out of this process without being impacted by it in one way or another. And we will need every member of the community to support the rebuilding of it. As we do now.
What a way to face the shadow of the so often glorified individualisation. What a way to start remembering the medicine of being a part of community. And how lucky we are knowing that it does not have to be an either/or situation.
PRIVILEGE
Our ancestors did not have the choices we have today. They did not have the luxuries of the 21st Western world, the multilayer, multifaceted, digital, go&get it kind of life we have. They did not have the luxury to work with their self-development and their traumas either – mostly because they needed to work.
They often needed to wait for seasons to change to see the fruits of their work. Now we are waiting the seasons to change to get a new iPhone. We think ‘apple’, we go and get an apple. Literally. No matter of the season. And the more we have, the more we want. And the more we want the more we have. And the more we have we take for granted. At some point we started losing connection to the purpose of things. With that we have neglected where we are and how much we actually have. And we have neglected that what we have we are also responsible for.
Responsibility as I see it is an ability to respond to current situation from a privileged position. And let’s face it – if we have a roof over our head, food on our table, if we are educated and have health care, if we have a job, friends and family, we are privileged. Yes, there are many people who have it better than you and I. But there are many that have it much worse. It’s not a question if I am privileged or not – most of us having time to think, read (and write) are privileged in one way or another. The question is what will I, what will any one of us do with that privilege. So, instead of winning the ‘I have it harder than you’ contest, it’s time to shift our focus, make a game changer and start recognizing what we have so we could actually start doing something with it.
So what could we do with it? We could look into how we treat one another. We could look into our social justice systems. We could look into our relationship with the environment, with nature. We could go on looking what are we teaching our children and how we are doing it. We can look into the economic systems and the perpetuation of inequalities that has been empowering itself for centuries. We can look into how we take care of our elders, how much respect we give them and how can we actually learn from them. We can continue with our food production, our factories, chemicals, ways of farming and how disconnected we are from (the whole process of) what we put into our bodies, of how much health there actually is or isn’t in what should nourish our body, well-being and longevity. And oil, don’t let me even get started on the oil and forest devastation… We can also have a quick glance in how much trash we produce, because even just a quick glance connected to the feeling will make us all sick. We can look into how ‘social distancing’ is just a vivid representation of the state of our society. We can go on looking through the amount of addiction in our culture asking ourselves how do we contribute to it, and how the hell can anyone of us think it is not also our personal problem. We can look at our monetary systems, our politics, our strategies to earn more no matter what the consequences are. Look into how we are doing our best to inhabit every inch of this living Earth, leave our imprint and impact, how we try to take as much as we can without giving back in any way. We can then see how far away are we from that which actually nourishes us – our land, our water, our air and the sun that shines above us, our loved families and friends.
Moreover, we can look at the choices we make every day, including the ones we do not make because those are often the most powerful ones.
We can look into our global sets of values driving us towards appearance over content, sensationalism over sensation, profit over nature and torture over nurture… And we can finally start doing something about it.
RESPONSIBLE RESPONSE?
In the indigenous cultures to receive a healing doesn’t mean all the work is done, it means that we have a new chance in choosing the course of our actions. We have a choice whether we continue with the same habit that created a dis-ease in the first place, or choose something that is nourishing and healthy.
Even thought we may not see the end of this right now, this too shall pass. Soon will come the time when every one of us will be able to walk out into the world, stand up fully in who we are and bring that to our communities. And in the time being we can make a choice whether we want to give our attention to imagining our worst nightmares or creating new dreams.
As every one of us has been experiencing our greatest fears, so does every one of us have an opportunity to respond to this crisis from our own essence – our own personal gift, point of view, our specific and individual truth. For some of us that will manifest as seeing a bigger picture, holding in that way a torch of hope when we forget there is a sun still shining above all these clouds.[7] Others will hold that light in working in hospitals, taking care of their neighbors, being immersed in the current needs of their communities. Some will be working out a new socioeconomic and political systems, taking care of animals or making sure there will be seeds to plant in this Earth next spring again. We will all need to use what we have learned so far and step up to bring our contribution to us all personally and collectively.
So, dear fellow human beings, this is not a rehearsal. It is not the time to look the other way, it is not ‘all we can eat’ time, time to stop collecting your (dog’s) shit nor is it a vacation. We have an opportunity to make a choice of what do we say ‘yes’ to. We have a choice to look into what is that which guides us, to think critically, to take the learning of this time into the practice and to bring our practice out into the world in a way we have never done before. Not just for ourselves, but also for each other, for our communities, for the planet and for everything we are connected to. One step at the time. With each other. With kindness. Individually. Together.
And lastly, I want to honour all of my teachers, all of the practices I have done for the last decade, all of my family, friends, loved ones -because this is what holds (my) ground when the ground is shaking.
March, 2020
Kaya
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[1] If there’s such a thing as a plus side of ‘social distancing’, it is that it slowed our shopping down enormously.
[2] Russell Brand: Coronavirus: What have we reveald? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1sbp5oyVh4
[3] T.S. Elliot: The Hollow Man
[4] Phrase borrowed from Stephen M. Johnson’s book Humanizing the Narcissistic Style, a great contribute to integrative psychoanalitical understanding of this part of the human psyche
[5] The Pachamama Alliance, https://www.pachamama.org/
[6] I use the term ‘valued resources’ because there are many recouses in our cultures, communities, nature and wider that have been repressed by materialism of the Western world.
[7] A metaphor by Yaacov Darling Khan, founder and teacher of Movement Medicine, amazing human being and Shaman