On Trauma

Why are good times so fleeting? They come suddenly as though borne on a wind and just as quickly vanish into the clouds of memory. Their mark on our lives is minimal and their aftereffects almost unintelligible amidst the clutter of our biographies.

Bad things, on the other hand, they tend to stick around. The untold trauma that negative events brand into the psyches of their victims is a truly disturbing phenomenon.

A single negative event has the power to merge into our personalities as seamlessly as a limb; it inhibits our action, corrupts our judgment, and suffocates our emotion.

What should be isolated incidents, transform themselves into distorted commentaries, forcibly annotating the text of the everyday, lending a poisoned ink to the script of experience.

Is not the very nature of life poised against human happiness? Is not man a vulnerable target forever within the grasping hands of tragedy?

Perhaps one could make a case for pain and tragedy in general. Perhaps they are the result of our harmful or destructive actions. Maybe their unwelcome visits into our lives have some kind of purpose and our surmounting them rewards us with some unknown long term benefit.

Nevertheless, we would reply, “Should this grant them the endless power of recurrence?”

I would understand the concept of “an unmet challenge remaining a failed opportunity,” or that of “a sin invoking a punishment,” but is that not enough?

Do our failings and weakness justify the long term effects of trauma?” Is it really a fair trade off to be offered the “opportunity” to triumph over a challenge but, should we fail, a price is exacted from us indefinitely? That interest rate is outrageous!

Is it cosmic justice that has apparently granted tragedy permission to enmesh itself into our thoughts and feelings? Is it true that sin forfeits our happiness, arming tragedy with the spade to shape the very development of our lives?

Let’s play the devil’s advocate. If bad events are to make so inerasable an impression upon the mind, and cling so vigorously to the individual, so to, should the pleasant times make a profound impression and have an equally lasting effect. In this arrangement at least the good and the bad would be on an even playing field.

Or think of it another way. If the happy events are to merge with the ordinary and diminish with the passing of time, then so should negative experiences be washed away and dissipate.

Let them stand on leveled ground and remain equally potent or fading, enduring or ephemeral. And then, at least in terms of equality there would not be a valid objection.

To digress for a moment

Kabala teaches that angels are called “Omdim” (standers) as opposed to humans whom are called “Mihalchim” (“movers”). And so we ask; what is it about angels that earns them the title “standers” and what is about man that earns him the title “mover?”

Chassidus explains that angels are constant and unchanging; they are designed with an exact capacity for a specific function. There is no fluctuation or confusion, struggle or weakness. The realm of the angels is entirely without personality, and thus their title, “standers” is appropriate.

Humans are something else entirely. They’re caricaturized by confusion, frustration, and division. Man is an unpredictable grab-bag of sentiment, susceptible to the storms of passion and cold detachment. An ever-changing enigma evading definition from even himself! And thus, the title “movers” is appropriate.

With this in mind a new perspective is born.

The fact that we can never be satisfied with our happiness is not a fault on the part of justice or a defect in the nature of positive experience, but rather a strategy of the subconscious.

It is not that our appetite for happiness is ever-present and as a result we can never be satisfied. The contrary is true, our desire for happiness is there to keep us forever striving for more, and for greater. It endows us with the gift of ambition and the desire for productivity, both of which are essential tools which maintain the allure and shine on the picture of achievement and personal development.

This is the first and most instinctive motivational force toward physical, psychological, and spiritual growth. Our short term memory of our accomplishments inspires our drive for greater and more powerful achievements. Yes, this is the cup that can never be filled but our very nature calls out, in its fullest voice, “bring on the water!”

Sounds like an addiction? Like an endless staircase? Well, it is, and thank goodness for that!

If this first line of defense is defeated, if we succumb to slothfulness or complacency, then we become engulfed in the dark side of our personalities. Then the hounds of the past will free themselves from the confines of memory and wreak havoc in our lives. Ones past will not provide a refuge from the imperative that man must progress and that he most move forward. The past will reject him by definition and by its very nature; it insists that we be on our way into the future and not delay. The past is the cave of memory, the future the sky of the imagination, and the present the grindstone of action. “Standing,” being constant, defying time, this is the business of angels.

The galaxies are all in motion; the world spins eternally on its axis. The ocean waves caress the broad shores which rumble and shift atop their great tectonic plates. The land is teeming with the fervent exchanges of biology as the endless dialogue between the heavens and earth carries on. Life is motion.

And thus we, homo sapiens, humans, the possessors of consciousness and the trustees of the power to subject the universe to our will, we the “movers”, must always be moving, growing, and progressing. And, whether we are beckoned by an exciting future or pushed violently from an angry past is very much in our hands. Yes, in our living, trembling hands, we are the movers.