#017- A Moment of Silence

The terrorist attacks in Paris and in Baghdad and Beirut before that, suddenly puts a stop to our fast-moving, rapid-paced world of the present. A moment of peace, a moment of silence, they call for. Silence for memory, silence for remembrance, but most of all silence for reflection. Reflection upon the world we are living in. Reflection on how we got here, and what this means…

And in that reflection there are some voices which will have us believe that it is Islam’s fault. The fault of a religion, the fault of a people, the fault of refugees. Look, they say, look what happened when we opened our hearts! Look, how we were massacred, look what came off trusting strangers…Look at how they hurt us when we tried to love them…

It seems to me not very different from a bad relationship–where each one has hurt the other so much, so much for years and years and decades and decades that when one moves to even caress, the other shudders. Where when one tries to mend, the other lashes out. When one tries to love, one is met only with anger and mistrust.

And how much ever one tries, how much ever one wants to love and mend, ultimately, it seems that it is hurt which drives the relationship- the memories of past hurt, and the fears of more hurt in future. Love shies away, and then seems to fade, when faced with such lack of reception, when the only response it ever seems to get is more hurt…we feel stupid for ever trying…

We close ourselves…our doors, our minds, our hearts…

There is no future here, is there?

I just know how difficult it is to live through that. We all do. In all our lives, however big or small, we have lived and loved. And we have lost.

Then can we ever get past our hurts to give our love, the whatever little sliver we have left of it, another chance? Can we heal and help each other heal within this relationship? Can we focus on how hard they tried when they did, because how hard they loved, more than how hard we were hurt?

I don’t know. It is perhaps the hardest thing in the world to do. To face our own fears. To face the possibility of more hurt. To rush in nevertheless when all evidence advises the contrary.

But the burden of hurt is also hard to bear. My mother once sent me a story on Whatsapp. It goes like this: A man moves around with a bundle of logs tied to his back. He walks slowly because the bundle is heavy, he is trudging. He hates it, but he cannot throw the logs away. He feels they are his to bear. He slows. Then one of the logs falls. He can move faster. Another falls, and he feels lighter. Till all of them fall, and he can move much faster and his back does not hurt anymore. Hurt is like that bundle of logs. We can carry it around all we want, but once we choose not to, it is easier to walk. That’s what the story said.

Most often though, it is the passage of time and time apart which allows for the logs to fall. Very few times, is it a deliberate choice in the eye of the hurt storm.

Paris has been to the world, a city of art, fashion and joy. A city of good living. And I just think, what a good life it is where one is able to choose, so deliberately, one’s love to govern oneself, over one’s hurt. Maybe it is not a life of easy-come. But it is a life of integrity, of finely picked craftsmanship. A life of aspirations, big aspirations, executed so decidedly, with so much determination. And isn’t that striving for aspirations what makes us human? Isn’t that the aspirational luxury all art and fashion we make as humans stands for? The aspiration to live better, to rise way above the hurts, the bad memories, the terrible experiences, we are wallowing in right now?

Should we then let our hurts govern our decisions…the decisions to rage pitiless wars? Is that where our moment of silence should lead?

*un moment du silence pour les morts.
we are injured. we are hurt. let us acknowledge that. let us not deny.
but let us not let our hurts consume our little worlds