Compassion is all we’ve got..
This is an interesting time. Everywhere I look I see separation, polarisation, duality, difference, debate, argument, dislike, suspicion and fear of ‘the other’.
I see many of my friends and connections on social media making statements such as ‘If you voted for X, Y or Z then you can unfriend me now’
I see and hear people making choices out of fear. Fear that ‘they’ are going to perish. Fear that ‘we’ are outnumbered.
Last night I made what I consider to now be a huge mistake. I watched as the election result rolled in whilst simultaneously reading The Body keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. I can highly recommend this book – maybe though, don’t read it at time of heightened emotion!
The book is a recommended reading item on a professional qualification course, called Compassionate Inquiry by Dr Gabor Mate (www.drgabormate) I am just about to complete. In the book the author cites the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) report form 1990. In this report people were asked about their experiences of certain childhood traumas such as, did you ever experience violence as a child? Did you ever see your mother being hit? Was your mother or father and alcoholic or addicted? Did any adult or person 5 years older than you touch you in a sexual way? Each ACE was given a one point score and the maximum score was 10 i.e. you witnessed 10 pretty horrendous things as a child. I’d like to share some of the statistics and data from this report. From the population questioned;
66% of women and 35% of men had an ACE score of 4 or more.
Suicide attempts are 5000% (that’s not a typo) more likely in a person with an ACE score of 6 or more.
With an ACE score of 4 or more you are 7 times more likely to consider yourself an alcoholic.
An ACE score of 6 or more and your chances of injecting drugs rise by 4600% (again, not a typo)
Women who score 4 or more ACE’s are 33% more likely to be raped in adulthood.
ACE scores of 4 or more are twice as likely to suffer from cancer and 4 times as likely to have emphysema.
These are just a snap shot of some of the findings of this report, if you can please go read it yourself and encourage the people of authority in your community to do the same.
Why am I writing about this you might rightly ask and it’s a great question. I can only assume that if you are reading this then you are from Northern Ireland. The same Northern Ireland that has had approx. 100 years of conflict and certainly had serious conflict and trauma over the last 50 years. We, as a society have witnessed many ACE’s. We have seen our friends and neighbours being killed, maimed, mutilated and tortured. We have witnessed great poverty, lack of funding, sectarianism, religious cleansing and political oppression and I’m not suggesting for one second that any of ‘us’ have more of a right to own these trauma’s than any of ‘them’…You can read a version of The ACE report for Northern Ireland here
Last night as the votes were counted in our most recent election I was reminded about an interview I watched recently with Mairead McGuinness who is the vice president of the European Parliament. She spoke at length about how she saw one of the main differences between the UK and the rest of Europe being our inability to reach out to each other after an election or referendum to heal the scars of such an event. This got me thinking about compassion. Compassion for ‘the others’.
As I have said already, we have had it particularly rough in Northern Ireland for quite some time. Our suicide rates, prescription drug use, alcohol abuse, unemployment rates, state benefit rate, poverty rates, food bank usage and other measures will support this statement. We have and do live in a state of fear. We live in state of hyper-arousal and we are easily convinced that it must be ‘them’ we are afraid of. We are told by our inactive government, our political class, and our media that our situation – be that the state of our schools, hospitals, roads, economy, public services is because there are Syrian families living here or that we have too many people ‘signing on’ or other such fallacies..
We have a political class that has yet to address the trauma of the last 50 years and has set out to hide this fact from us by blaming, complaining and making excuses and I wonder is it time for us all, in the day that it is, to bypass the peddlers of problems and polarity and look for solutions in unity..
As ‘we’ are lambasting ‘them’ for how they voted maybe we could take some time to ask why they voted how they voted and, if we wanted to go even deeper, what fear in ‘them’ do ‘they’ believe has been addressed by this vote? And what trauma, what ACE has planted that fear in them?
Maybe, just maybe if we all can do this for a little while then our compassion will arise and we will, all of us, be able to reach across a divide. As I write this I am asking myself ‘When is the last time I reached across a divide?
A religious divide? A national divide? A class divide? A racial divide? A gender divide? A sexual orientation divide? A political persuasion divide? Some of these divides, right now, seem Grand Canyonesque in size and then I remembered the words of the Indian sage when asked ‘how should I treat others?’ he answered ’There are no others’ and indeed there are no divides, it’s an illusion that is created by the absence of love and compassion and the propagation of fear and difference.
If we can all reach out with love and compassion and make an effort to understand the pain and suffering of each other then maybe, just maybe we can heal and prosper.
If we can talk and listen to each other, and I mean really listen, not just wait for our turn to talk then maybe we will hear the fear and hurt in each other and learn to help each other because as we help another we help ourselves. When we hurt another we hurt ourselves. When we help each other we teach our children that they are safe and can trust us and trust others, they will prosper and flourish morally, emotionally, spiritually and materially.
So today I am full of hope, not fear, that we can begin to recognise that there are many amongst us, irrespective of class, religion, finances, colour, creed, gender, sexual orientation or political persuasion and that we need each other...compassion, real strong, courageous compassion is all we need, and I am 100% confident that each of us has been bestowed with that compassion, we just need to create a little space for it to show itself.