I’m finding as I get older that certain words cause me to stop listening to the person that chose to use that particular word, and healing has now been added to my ever growing list.
The annoyance with these trigger words happens to me before I consciously understand why I’m reacting, and so once I identify that triggerage is happening I need to take some time and sort out the why of the matter.
So healing.
I mentioned I’m getting older, and because I’ve survived for this long I now find myself exposed to more and more situations where myself and other survivors are compelled to deal with situations involving non-survivors, and others who have come perilously close to being non-survivors.
The perilously close people have had some sort of ailment or accident that involves healing. The non-survivors have not healed, and so because the non-survivor didn’t heal, we now have a group of survivors that are the ones that need to heal.
And that’s the use of the word that’s been irritating the hell out of me lately. It’s happening often enough to cause some consideration over what I mentioned earlier.
Why?
I think my reaction is rooted in cynicism and maybe a touch of fatalism. I really can’t help it though, and as a result I’ve learned over the years that a little self discipline with sharing that fatalism is probably a good idea. My wife and maybe some family and friends might find it difficult to believe that I’m actually censoring myself, and from time to time I’ve debated removing all of my filters to demonstrate the depth of the darkness. But, I don’t because I think it’s best to keep the poison contained. I don’t gain anything by sharing ugly thoughts except to spread disquietude, and that’s not a good look if you like having company. I’m not perfect though. Everyone likes to share and there is some truth to the proverb that misery loves company. But as I said, I try to exercise some discipline. So, if I see a flattened cat on the road I make a point of not telling my wife. She likes cats too and telling her will not unflatten the feline.
However, it appears that the concept of healing involves a great deal of misery sharing, and I think that’s the root cause of why the word is pissing me off these days. I don’t have a problem with physical healing. If you break your leg a doctor can provide an estimated time for the bone to repair and remodel. If you have surgery a timeline is clearly established by the medical professionals for a recovery or healing process. This timeframe gives the people around the injured an idea for how long they’re going to be required to provide assistance or care, and everyone involved knows what to do and how long they’re going to have to provide.
But now healing is used to describe mental trauma and the timelines are no longer applicable. Now the healing process is generational, and creeping toward perpetual. And for some fucked up reason none of the people healing from their troubles can mend themselves quietly or without an audience. I don’t know if it’s the power of the proverb I cited above, or if it’s an attention seeking disorder. I don’t know if it’s victim leverage in pursuit of compensation, but I do know that It’s annoying, and so I’m back to trying to sort out the reasons for my annoyance.
For starters I’m irritated by the concept that being healed suggests a return to a persons physical or mental state prior to whatever injury or misfortune they may have suffered. That restoration doesn’t happen. If you break your leg it does heal, but that lower limb is never going to be the same. Likewise if someone dies that you’re fond of, they’re not coming back. So the healing that we’re talking about is actually an AA scenario. We accept and adapt and then we call that healed.
Evidently though, some people need more time than others to complete the process, and some people need a support group, media attention and a renewable prescription to make it through the AA phases.
And some people don’t seem interested in any acceptance at all, and so that makes any adaptation unlikely. These people are perpetually in healing mode from some misfortune or injustice that has befallen them or their ancestors, and I’m unable to shake the impression that they’re exactly where they want to be.
I understand that some wounds don’t heal. It’s what I’ve been writing about for the last few paragraphs. and because of that understanding I have some sympathy for people who grasp that they’re permanently damaged and cannot adapt to the reality of their injury. But my compassion begins to fray at the edges when they can’t suffer in some semblance of eventual silence. Because my eyes and ears are functional. I can see you and I heard you when you explained your troubles. I fucking get it, and I don’t need to hear the same story over and over again. It’s not that I don’t care. I said I understand and so I’ve either chosen to not help or I’ve demonstrated with my actions that I’ll do whatever I can to assist.
I’m not trying to be a prick about this I don’t think. Benny Franklin summed up the concept with more diplomacy in Poor Richard’s Almanac when he wrote, God helps those who help themselves.
Or to put it another way, God and Benjamin recognise that these people have accepted their personal reality and are in the process of making the best of the situation.
They’re adapting.
I’m one hundred percent impressed with those people, and just by their very nature they compel me to assist them however I’m able. I believe my response is human nature and that Benjamin could have been honest and replaced the word God with the word humanity. Because I’m pretty sure he was really talking about people, but God got a lot of good press in the seventeen hundreds.
Every life on this planet is going to experience an event or events that require a recovery. Healing is fucking near a perpetual activity for all of us. We’re either sad or putting a bandage on from the time we learn to walk to our last breath and I just don’t understand why people act shocked and surprised when it happens to them.
It’s inevitable and we need to deal with it. There are no other options.
Lately I’ve taken to amending an overused truism to demonstrate my fatalism I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. When a calamity of some sort occurs, it’s a given that someone will eventually say holy shit man, you just never know.
To which I respond with my amendment, yes you do know, you just don’t know when.