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A friend called me this morning and asked what I was doing. I explained that a student from Goucher had committed suicide on Monday and that I was writing about it. There was a short silence after which he started telling me about his experiences including a very delicious dinner and spiritual talk from the night before.
In the movie Princess Bride, the heroine is forced to marry the king whom she hates. Later, walking towards the bedroom with the king's father whom she likes, she kisses him on the cheek.
“What was that for?” The king’s father inquires.
"You have been so kind to me," she replies, "and now I am going to my room to kill myself so I wanted to kiss you goodbye."
"Oh that's nice" he replies, "and that was such a nice kiss, thank you" and he walks off smiling happily.
When did we learn to avoid, ignore and quickly overcome our own and others’ feelings of pain?
I have lived most of my life in a country torn by violence and war. Through the hourly news and the daily newspapers, the pain and ever growing suffering are never more then a step away. Most people I know are so tired of it all that they avoid the news, do not buy the papers and talk about anything but "the situation" which deteriorates daily. It is a bit like living in an emergency room, how much pain and suffering can we handle before becoming immune?
The biggest challenge for me as a peace maker has been to keep my heart open to the pain -- my own and that of others.
I believe that if we are to survive as humans this is also the biggest challenge for all of us. "No man is an island" wrote John Donne. We are all related. We are all part of the main, the whole. And we all have feelings, feelings of love and joy, feelings of pain and despair. Feelings are as much a part of us as are our thoughts. If we are to be balanced and healthy, these feelings need room. When given a place, they come and go like waves, they become our friends whom we can learn from. And after they have been expressed our thinking becomes clearer and we make decisions based on logic and not on strong emotions.
But when we avoid them as our society does so well with pain and suffering, they just keep coming; they do not leave us alone. They keep trying to break our defenses, they make us sick and sometimes when we are so flooded by them, they turn into destructive actions -- devastating to ourselves and to others. Much of the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Territories could be resolved if we were able to make a safe space for people to feel and express their strong feelings without hurting themselves or others.
Feelings are not actions, they are just feelings. They become actions when they have no room for expression, no safe place for working through. And yet where are we taught about how to deal with feelings? Almost nowhere. In school we learn math, geometry, science, history, biology, chemistry, how to play basketball, football, soccer and tennis, how to dance and draw and sing. But where do we teach our children at any age how to deal with their emotions? Where do we teach them how to handle their pain and suffering?
Mostly we don't. Mostly the messages we as a society give to people is to get a grip, hold it in, overcome it, don't make a scene in public. We even punish our children sometimes for the expression of strong feelings. So they grow up trying to hide them, ashamed of them, not knowing what to do when flooded by them.
I wonder sometimes what our lives in Israel and everywhere else would be like if every child and every adult had a safe place to go to every time they felt sad or angry or upset, a place where he or she could feel these feelings express them and feel accepted? A place where they could listen to the feelings of others, feel empathy and their own possibility of providing love and support? I wonder what our lives would be like if from a very early age, in kindergarten through college we were taught about being emotionally aware? That there is room to express pain and suffering, that they are not awful things to be avoided but an integral part of our being to be listened, expressed and learned from. And that when strong feelings are expressed, acknowledged and respected in a supportive caring space then it is possible to begin to let go, forgive and move on.
I wonder if this is one message Dave was trying to convey when he hung himself in such a public place -- on a tree next to the dormitory.
Please let’s not avoid this message, let’s not overcome it so quickly, let’s not run away from the pain or cut down the tree. The bells do toll for us. And they are saying, I believe, use this opportunity for growth and healing -- for ourselves, for the campus and for the world.
Nitsan
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