A woman marched into the locker room at the gym earlier today and expressed that she could not continue to work out. She had been running on the treadmill while watching the news and she felt herself getting progressively more and more anxious seeing and thinking about terrorism and what happened recently in Paris. She found herself exasperated, could not concentrate on working out and decided to shower to minimize her anxiety, which was intensifying.
Some of us are drawn into observing, hearing and reading about terrorism, where it becomes all-consuming while others cut off being exposed to it because it evokes such intense fear and anxiety. Still others maintain a balance between being exposed to it intermittently and cutting it off when they need to so they can keep their anxieties, frustration and exasperation at bay.
We are understandably torn between wanting to know every detail about the terrorist attacks to somehow try to make sense of it all and successfully protect ourselves and our loved ones from the danger and wanting to know nothing about it, to maintain a distance from the potential danger we may one day face. The world has drastically changed and we are trying our best to accommodate these changes.
As I was thinking about terrorism, I decided to do a search for a list of terrorist incidents. I was mortified to find 29 pages of incidents worldwide. The number of people that are dying all over the world due to terrorism is staggering. I am not expressing this to induce more fear than we already are faced with, but to stress the need to appreciate ALL that we have here in the moment and make sense of it as best as we possibly can.
I am blessed by having two living Holocaust survivor grandmothers present in my life. Several years ago I videotaped their life stories and got a full account of the trauma they endured during the war. It included having their families murdered, personally being in concentration camps and living their middle to late teen years in fear for their lives. One grandmother asked me, “I don’t understand, how could they have done this to us, they are humans like us, can’t they imagine what we must be feeling and going through”? She desperately wanted to know how it was that she was so fiercely dehumanized.
I could not help but well up with tears with the thought of my grandmother being treated and seen as a non-human. I explained to her that they have had to dehumanize her in order to cut off any relatedness to her or empathy toward her plight. Because of her religion they categorized her as a non-human, which therefore gave them justification for treating her any way in which they chose to.
These examples are larger scale ways in which individuals experience dehumanization. The rationalizations of their captors or perpetrators provide those individuals with the rationale to grossly and mercilessly mistreat their victims. How can we understand and make sense of people being murdered, assaulted and dehumanized? How can we wrap our heads around the murder of others because of race, religion, gender or for some other unconscionable reason? We realistically can’t because it is out of the realm of how we live our lives, the values we believe in and encompass and how we choose to act in accordance with those values.
We do not have any control over being victimized by terror and aggressors who are so merciless, however we can contribute to humanizing our society by being compassionate to ourselves and others and acting in accordance with our humanistic values, consciously and mindfully. When we focus primarily on our worries and contemplate about what may happen to us (the what ifs), we lose sight of what is in the here and now — in the immediate present. We lose focus on what’s important to us, namely our friends, family, community and the world at large. There are small scale ways in which we could all take responsibility in being more present, open and humanistic.
We can all make an impact to treat others in a more humanistic way. We all have the inherent responsibility to do our part. Making change and significant impact is within each of us. Love is an action word; it is not enough to just say “I love my family.” To truly love it requires direct action to illustrate love. To make a better life for ourselves and those we surround ourselves with, we need to make a meaningful concerted effort by taking action on a daily basis. I encourage you to take an inventory of these actions daily.
The Efforts Include:
(1) Being cognizant of the sweeping comparisons, criticisms and generalizations we make toward ourselves and others which lead to our sometimes harsh judgments and counterproductive actions on behalf of those comparisons, criticisms and generalizations;
(2) Rather than thinking about what is “wrong” with others, also notice and be open to what is “right” with them as well;
(3) Living life mindfully, whereby we take time “on purpose” to be in the present moment and gain awareness of all the beauty we are surrounded by;
(4) Exposing our vulnerabilities and forging connections with others;
(5) Asking more questions and showing interest in others;
(6) Helping others in need (financially, emotionally, physically, etc.);
(7) Being self-accepting and kind to ourselves;
(8) Living our life as if it were our last day and thinking about whether we want to be remembered for being a person who was stuck in the what ifs or lived in the present and fully embraced life, and
(9) Recognizing that we share our collective humanness. That we all one of the same and we all are deserving of love, respect and dignity.
It is frightening to be vulnerable to terrorism, it unsettles us and takes away our sense of control. That fear exists and is real. We cannot deny it or distract from it; even if we try, it unfortunately surrounds us. What we do have control over is ourselves and how we choose to behave toward ourselves and others. There is no way to truly make sense of it. I for one am happy not to. I never want to understand such brutality and inhumaneness.
