I had a chat with an old mate recently.
Some really interesting things came up.
I realised a great many things.
One thing that we talked over was trauma, and repressed memories.
It's amazing to think how traumatised so many people in this world are, or have been.
Life Is Hard. Reality Is Cruel. Etc.
My life isn't. My life is easy, and I'm ignorant of so many things, often, happily.
My friend is suffering to a degree from the effects of trauma, not to himself as much as to those who are close to him.
Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes, but typically it boils down to sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.
...you know, I was actually lying in bed, thinking about this stuff, and I wanted to come and write it down. But it's 3:45 am Sunday morning, and I have to work at 9 am, so I should really stop this. It has become apparent that I need to do an awful lot of writing to make my point here, and I can't afford the time for that now... here're a few notes, which if interpreted out of context are likely to be less useful than I'd intended, but they're here for my sake, more than yours:
People are familiar with 'repressed memories', it's what happens when you 'black out' from binge drinking. When you think about it, you are actually severely traumatised at such times, and sexual, physical, and emotional abuse often happens at those times. Not that you're likely to remember.
I think that it's quite possible that 'repressed memories' are actually still in your brain, it's just that the context in which they are recorded was so different to the context in which your consciousness tends to function, that subsequently trying to 'read' the memories recorded while you are severely traumatised is probably like trying to use your HTML 4.01 standards compliant renderer (i.e. your consciousness) to decipher a file that has been stored in a Microsoft Word 97 file format (i.e. a repressed memory).
People who don't 'out source' their fundamental belief system can have a lot of trouble finding ways to cope with realities of life. Coping, in its most basic form, means surviving.
I think there is a message here that is valuable:
I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
-- D. H. Lawrence
I may be drunk but i've always found it fascinating that when a lion is killing something ie it is biting it's neck to kill it
that it looks in the distance as in it's ashamed at what it is doing.
Yeah, you're tougher if you can be compassionate in your struggle to survive.