The Ungoverned World: the Material, the Spiritual, and the Unknown

The world is weird. Who is in charge, and what do we really know, anyway?

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The nation is celebrating.

As well it should be. Years of corruption have just met with a resounding political defeat. People who felt oppressed and hopeless and downtrodden suddenly see a cause for hope again.

At least temporally speaking.

I feel it too, but it’s hard for me to align with the vibe. I feel so close, but so far from where I need to be. Success is within my grasp, but elusive. The Thanksgiving holiday offered some much needed downtime, but I emerged from it feeling a heavier weight.

“I just wasted five days when I need to be focused on getting things done.”

My wife bristled at that, as well she should. Our oldest daughter, her husband, and two young children came to visit. The first holiday we’ve spent together since they got married.

Two years ago, we weren’t even on speaking terms.

When he sat with me the first night, outside, and we smoked cigars, he said, “Thanks for having us.”

I didn’t want to re-hash years of conflict and drama. I didn’t want to explain, or get into the details, or spend our time defending our respective positions. I don’t even know if I have a position anymore. We’ve both suffered enough in the war we fought.

These days, I just want peace.

“It’s time for a fresh start,” I said. “That’s what moving here was all about.”

This seemed to satisfy him, and I was grateful for that. He’s a man of few words. We are both children of trauma, he and I, and we’ve both done some incredibly stupid things. Separated by two decades, we could at least agree on that.

There’s no point litigating the past. You can’t change it.

I’m glad they came. Glad we could begin rebuilding a life with them in it. I have a hard time letting some things go, but I can also see the man he is trying to become. The man I thought I saw when he first asked permission to date my daughter, nearly a decade ago. The man who was replaced by something else for a time as he worked through his own damaged sense of self in ways that were often not healthy or good.

Facing my own demons these past few years has caused me to realize I’m different, but not necessarily better. I’ve hurt people I love. I lash out. The more I learn about what complex (chronic, usually perpetrated by a trusted caregiver) trauma does to a person, the more worried I am that I’ll never be whole.

I spent a couple hours last night listening to talks on this topic by Tim Fletcher, who is one of the best in the business on the subject.

It left me feeling horribly depressed.

Tim doesn’t mince words. He tells you exactly why people who grew up in volatile, abusive, or neglectful environments behave the way they do, and how that comes to be. But he also tells you how hard it is to overcome, and the damage you’ll do along the way to healing, if you have the strength to get there at all.

I wonder, sometimes, why, if we are truly designed by a Creator, we are so fragile. So non-resilient. Why our coping mechanisms and maladaptive behaviors are so counterintuitive to human flourishing. Why abuse lives on like a generational curse we unwittingly pass to our children.

Fletcher compares the sense of self those with complex trauma have to an image in a funhouse mirror. If you’re tall and skinny, and the mirror makes you look short and fat, you laugh at the distortion, because you know it isn’t you.

But if you grow up in a home that only has a funhouse mirror, then when you finally see your real image, you think that is the distortion.

“I’m worthless. I’m bad. I’m unlovable. I’m a mistake. I don’t matter.”

These words, or others like them, play on a loop in the minds of those who lived in this world.