Last night I had a thought that wasn't very original, but it took me to some places I wasn't expecting. The thought, or observation, was that we are most fragile in those places where we've already been hurt.
I don't think that's because of the scarring, both physical and emotional, but because we harden ourselves to future hurts, and that hardening makes us stiffer, more brittle. When we are assailed again, instead of bruising, we are more likely to shatter.
It takes an awful lot of courage to be able to stay flexible and soft, open, in the face of life's many inevitable hurts. But that softness means that we don't have as far to go to heal when those hurts arrive.
If only someone with a big microphone and a big audience had said something like that after 9/11. If only we had all been guided toward healing instead of toward hatred. This would be a different country, and it would be a different world. That day made all of us in the U.S. terribly afraid, the violence of it, the horrid mess it made. We were traumatized, no doubt, and look at what we've become since then, how divided, how insecure, how hard and brittle, how afraid.
We should remember that when we drop bombs ourselves. Those we drop them on are terrorized, as we were, and they will harden themselves, as we have, becoming angrier and more righteous, as we are.
What on earth do we think is going to happen, with all this growing anger and righteousness? I don't mean just we in this country, I'm talking about the world. There seems to be more fighting and more and more, more blaming, more closed doors and walls, more accusations and threats. Do today's global leaders actually want a war, so that they can strut around and feel like big men? What do they - and we - think is going to happen if we don't all learn to work with each other?
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