You don't know what wars are going on down there

I need to be constantly aware of my prejudices. Many years ago I used to look at strangers and make ill-informed decisions about their lives and their character and about how I should react to them. I guessed that they might be ignorant of the deeper explanations in life, that they did not consider what I thought were "important things", that they lived an easy and blissful life probably free from serious stress. 

In the last twenty years working in mental health and nursing I have had this ridiculous idea destroyed about the ease of others' existence. I can make absolutely no accurate judgement about anyone's experiences and character from how they look and how they hold themselves. 

I once met a man who was lined up with eighteen of his relatives and were sprayed with machine-gun fire until all of them were presumed dead. He was the only survivor and lost his father, two brothers and uncles and cousins. I once met a man who was forced to watch his parents being killed with machetes. They were then cooked and he was forced, along with his younger sister, to eat them. I once met a brother and sister who, as teenagers, were gathered in a room with more than thirty family members. Half the room were chosen at random and taken outside to die. The remaining half including the two I met were then forced, on pain of torture, to shoot and kill their relatives outside. 

I have met countless people- just normal humans like you and I- who have been dragged into extraordinary situations experiencing immense loss, forced complicity in trauma, psychic pain and monstrous degradation.

A commonality to almost all my patients is their, and immodestly therefore my, natural humanity. Most people are forthright, stand straight, are receptive and warm, have a flexibility in their potential for growth, have compassion and empathy. I believe these are universal human traits that can not be broken by any oppressive force, that we are hard-wired to make loving connections with others. There are many things I have learnt from those I have met and I aim to present myself with the integrity and grace that many of them naturally express. It is a goal I doubt I will ever fully achieve but I commit to the endeavour because many of my patients are role-models.

I once read a story about the relationship between Ludwig Wittgenstein (a philosopher who lost three of his brothers to suicide) and his sister Hermine. Hermine asked him why he was often so sombre and uncommunicative. He replied that she reminded him of someone looking through a closed window at a man walking down the street bent over and seemingly frail. She doesn't realise the man is struggling to stay upright against a strong wind threatening to whisk his feet from under him. 

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. 

You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Miller Williams, poet