Editor:
I died once and went to that place of omniscient one-ness with the universe, that place of all-being, all-seeing and all-knowing; one with God. I could see the immensity of the universe, and the minuteness of its components; the complexity and the simplicity of everything, all at once. What I remember most, other than a feeling of complete and utter, total serenity, was an awareness that, in the grand universal scheme of things, my little problem down here (being dead) was just a drop in a bucket in a whole big old ocean of things to worry about, and so was, as a friend used to say, “Nothin’ but a thing.”
I think that those of us who would have us build a monument to their every trauma, to be reminded of it every day lest we trip on one of their marble bases as we wind our way through the veritable forest of them that would be required, possibly triggering the magic trapdoor releasing all our horrors, to be relived again and again, would do well to remember that we are all just little specks (“Triggers and Lifelines,” March 28). We aren’t the first people terrible things have happened to, those stories on the news really have nothing to do with us and no one ever got anywhere by making a career out of keeping the memory of their trauma alive, feeding it and tending it so it never dies.
Terrible things happen. Some people are abusive. Accidents happen. Sociopaths walk among us. No society ever grew stronger by making a religion out of victimhood, though. We do well when we persevere despite our horrors, not when we focus on reliving them with every reminder. Live life. Move on. Be free.
Steve Parr, Eureka
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This article appears in To Stop a Heist.
And yet, by telling their stories over and over again, Holocaust survivors can warn us of what can come lest we forget.
“Everything we do in life is insignificant but very important that we do it.” Gandhi
That’s not what I’m talking about. You don’t see holocaust survivors going on and on about how traumatized they were by it, unless someone asks them, and then it’s more to protect other people; to prevent it from happening again. I’m talking about people who have no concern for whether whatever happened to them happens to anyone else – their main concern is that we know what happened to them, and never forget it; never accidentally mention anything in conversation that might be even remotely associated with their negative experience; never do anything that might “trigger” them, lest they crumble before our very eyes.
And I’m talking about people who take on every injustice that’s ever happened in the world, and take it upon themselves to be offended, as if it happened to them. It’s great to have empathy, but Jesus, just because something’s a problem in Pittsburgh, doesn’t make it a problem here.