A few years ago I attended a week-long workshop in Tennessee, where about 50 of us isolated ourselves from everything that anesthetizes us and takes us away from our emotions. The experience marked me with a turning point that still has an impact on my life, as it marks the days when I learned about the baggage full of pain that we all carry, without exception, and all that it affects us. For this, I want to share an idea and for this I tell you a story of that week.
In some psychodrama sessions, a spectacularly effective technique that you could, if you are interested, learn more about in the thousands of articles available on the Internet, for example, we learned relevant facts in the lives of many people. However, I would like to refer to two of them because of how much they taught me.
One of them began his story by explaining to us the drawing he had made of his childhood, dominated by a huge black shadow with monstrous features, which undoubtedly referred to a tormenting experience, as he later confirmed. In painful detail, and which was reflected in our eyes as we listened to him, this companion of a week told us the story of his childhood marked by his grandmother’s husband, a man of Cherokee origin, tall, strong, with caramel skin and long hair, who abused him in sick rites, in the company of other men, in the darkness of the woods to which they took him at night. In that special work, I thus heard, in my own voice, one of the hardest stories, and at the same time I could see the power that the hand of God had exercised in the reconciliation of this man, the innocent victim of a heartbreaking ritual. Nevertheless, he continued his work of recovery, for the pain he carried in his emotional baggage still affected him in an important way. In the midst of it all, he had managed to build a balanced life, with his family and his business success.
In that same small group, of trust and sudden intimacy among strangers, another person told us about his turning point. Currently gay and with an enormous difficulty to feel, he remembered the hardest moment of his childhood, as the one in which his father had kicked him twice, in an instant of anger, a castle he had built with pieces of a kind of Lego. Undoubtedly, an event remembered in the context of a childhood marked by verbal abuse and harmful machismo, which led him to a life condition affected, damaged and strongly influenced by that rather common father. In this man’s life, however, there were only clear signs, a complex existence burdened by loneliness, anxiety and grief.
Between these two stories, as is visible, there is a gulf of difference. One reflects a terrifying and chilling scene, in circumstances seemingly reserved only for a horror movie. The other, however, seems more everyday and possible in any normal circumstance in the life of every family. However, it was precisely in that experience that I came to understand something that is important for everyone. Pain is relative to each person, it does not exempt and is totally personal.
One lived the consequences of his pain, visibly justified. The other also lived it, although in the eyes of others, it did not seem so understandable, because it seemed a more normal situation, if there is such a term. In any case, the truth is that there is no difference between one and the other, because pain is subjective, it is our own, it is not measured in intensity, volume, weight or stature, it does not require explanation and each one of us carries it. Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we have worked on it or not, whether we have discovered it or not.
Perhaps this is why there are so many alcoholics and drug addicts, perhaps this is why there are so many workaholics, obsessive sportsmen, hardened successful, sexual addicts, chronic sarcastic, tireless readers, destructive critics, perennial scholars, eternal smiling toothpaste commercials, overindulged in one medicator or another, one escape or another, one block or another. Socially accepted anesthesia or not, we all find some way to mitigate our personal pain. The truth is that we all apply natural mechanisms to defend ourselves from it, and like the child who instinctively keeps his hands away from the fire, as adults we do it in a thousand ways and not all of them harmless to others.
I had not understood this, and believing myself to be a character in a Disney fairy tale, I never discovered, until the end of that week-long experience in the winter, that none of us escapes the burden of those emotional suitcases that we all have to carry through life. And that is why it is so important to lighten that baggage, throw away the garbage that accumulates, clean the heavy bags and try to finally achieve a balanced life, with a lot of effort, every day, from the very moment we wake up.
Without realizing it, we affect others. We seek to mitigate the pain in a thousand wrong sources, we repeat cycles, we perpetuate the damage and increase it. And if we do not resolve and initiate reparation, the only sure thing is that we will carry a legacy full of heavy suitcases. From that moment on, I understood that there are only two types of people, those who are damaged and those who seek their recovery.
For many years I tried to quench my pain and thirst from the wrong sources. For years I did not understand my pain, just as I did not understand the way I anesthetized it, covered it up, medicated it. For a long time I lived, without realizing it, a victim of the universal effect that our personal pain provokes in everyone. And for this reason, I dedicate time to understand, time to recover and heal, because if I do not do it, it is not possible to stop hurting, as we all do, in the family, with friends, at work, in our life.
Today I find myself, of course, in the undeniable reality that I am still, although I try less every day, anesthetizing, medicating and blocking. However, I have also found in the path of my mistakes that the only source that quenches the thirst we suffer is our relationship with our Higher Self, as each one wants to call it. I am finding it in Christ, in his legacy, in his Word, and this is something that I share with serenity and maturity, clear of the daily challenge that means deciding a relationship with Him.
If you made it this far, I suppose that I managed to capture your interest, and that in one way or another, you have accompanied me one paragraph at a time, to discover where I am going with these words. However, I have no answer or recommendation other than that you seek your own recovery through forgiveness, that you assist yourself by building your own circle of love, and that you seek balance in your time and attention to your body, mind and spirit. And this, each day, one at a time.
What is your pain? How is your emotional baggage? How much have you learned from your personal baggage? How much do I affect my relationships today because of the imperceptible pain of my existence? What are my painkillers or anesthetics? How do I escape my pain and how do I transfer it? How much damage do I cause in my work, in my family, with my friends?
Questions that need to be answered, especially for the balance and equilibrium of life that we want to enjoy so much. I leave you here, my friend, I send you a hug and on this peaceful Saturday afternoon, my sincere wish for our recovery. Here I leave you, after having typed in disorder for a while, after having shared and opened my heart to you.
