Not so Blue, the beautiful sound of silence.

The older I get, the more I am becoming a stranger.

Fryodor Dostoevsky wrote “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” He was right on many levels. And as I get older, I give thanks that I have become unexpected, because of it! I found that the first part of enabling yourself to love, is to love and be kind, not just to others, but also towards yourself. And that this could be applied to the principle of the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to share how personally significant it is. How on reflection of its application, I now appreciate why it is so important.

The consideration of love, come about after a face book conversation with a young man I help raise. He was a kind, and happy young man, but he wrote something on social media that made me genuinely concerned for him. He wrote of post-traumatic stress syndrome, or PTSD and I tried to convey to him that despite what may have happened to him, or what he may have seen to cause it, that he should be kind to himself. I wrote to him saying he should be easy on himself. I told him we all loved him. We loved him because he was a kind, and respectful person. Talking to him, helped teach me, that we all make mistakes, and that sometimes despite making no mistakes at all, and despite being utterly blameless, we witness things that no person should witness. I conveyed to him that we must remember that we are not to blame, even despite at times our direct involvement. I indirectly shared a little part of myself with him, not just because I am proud of how he turned out, as he now helps me, and others. I shared it, because he assisted me, one way or another, and as a result he helped me to write this, a self-reflection that helps me with my own PTSD.

Thanks Ben.

Despite only being a little older than fifty, my mind and body, no longer match nor recognise the person I once was, and my recollections of my character become more frequently and every so often vailed. Despite the change of loss, it still cuts a little. It was not that I showed pride, it was not that my ego was hurt or reduced, it was from the personal experience of PTSD that I spoke to Ben with an adult honesty, an honesty that I always showed him even when he was a child. And it made me realize that despite the ever present or looming Spector of PTSD, that the thing that grates me, was the idea that some thought it was a weakness. Although never considering myself as weak, the considerations were foreign and made me reconsider who I was as a person.

So, who is this new person, this stranger?

I do not know, and to be honest; it is just that the more I write about myself, to myself, the more I appreciate the efforts I made. The more I write, the less, and curiously the more of a stranger I become. I reiterate, over and over to myself, about just how many failures it took to achieve anything. And it should be noted that failure is not necessarily an end; it is in general I have found, “…the start of doing something meaningful…, to paraphrase someone from somewhere in the cloud...

The more I look back, one of the things that I appreciate, was giving the benefit of the doubt. And although I fell on my face applying it on multiple occasions, I dearly valued how it helped, not just those that I gave it to, but in the end, it helped me! It helped me value the person I had become, and very fortunately it helped me value the person I was, despite all that had happened. Because of my application of it to others, I learnt to give myself the benefit of the doubt. And writing about it in my diary, makes me appreciate the principle, for what it is. It showed me just how clever it remains, and of how much worth it has as an intrinsic value or idiom. It in retrospect seemed like just a thing you do, and it should be noted that to give it, (the benefit of the doubt), and expect something back, other than to be granted the courage that it might be possibly or hopefully reciprocated, lacks integrity and self-sacrifice. It was something I was taught by my parents to do as a child, and I did it, and do it, because I was instructed that it was the right thing to do. I keep it up, because now I know, it is the just thing to do, not just a thing you do.

The application of this fundamental axion, pushed for me, to try to treat people with respect, even if I did not know them. It is not that I respect them, whoever they are, as my respect is earned, it is that I respect their right to be treated humanely and with humility. And until recently, I never fully treated myself with this respect. As a result, I now have become a stranger to myself. The more I learn, the more I find out, and the more I understand that I was not what other people thought I was. That they never really knew me. That their opinion of me was in general in error, and or self-serving of themselves.

I never forget the mistakes I made, which is part of my PTSD. But I try and be kind to myself and not dwell on them, as learning is and always will be an objective, and I now know we, as in humanity, universally make mistakes, while learning. I know that this is part of the learning process. These mistakes are written about in humanities survival manuals, printed, and etched in text to help us. Reading of others, not just personally observing them, and having firsthand experience, reinforced that this scenario played out repeatedly in its truism. It helped not just with forgiving myself for my mistakes or failings, but it aided in forgiving others for theirs. Due to this maxim, and its novel application to myself, I now look at this foreign person that I have never seen before. That person was me, and ironically, always was. I look at myself in a new light. It is not that I had an epiphany about who I was, I just never gave myself any credit, as not many others did. It was a trait written in one of my high school reports.

Despite them saying things like you are not bright enough; or you do not have the capacity, I just kept on going, like Vinsent from the movie Gattica. My mother gently pushed me not to listen to the people that said things like you cannot do that, or you will not succeed if you go down that rout. I tried never to listen to the nay sayers, because that is what my mother taught me. Although at times, I did. She was so calm and repetitive in saying it, that I should just keep on going. And as my capacity to take hits lessons, and my body runs out of time, I am losing some of the innocence I once had. The naive ignorance, and faith, in my capacity to weather personal injury slowly diminishes. I am not becoming a grumpy old man, sinical or anything like that. But, as my ability to disregard the opinion of those that thought, or think, of my applications of intellect, where acts of stupidity, I now become a little inelastic. My perseverance for those that thought it, and felt no shame in publicly pronouncing it, gets less, and because of their ridicule, I have become more.

In Australia, right or wrong we cut down tall poppies, and I have been cut down many times. This process seems highly ironic, as I never stood tall for all but a second in my youth. And boy did I get cut down by those that disagreed with me. Recently it seemed to me that they were just flogging a dead horse, trying to bleed the very last drop of effort out, all the while offering no just reward. But unlike Boxer from George Orwell’s novel Animal farm, I am not at the knackery yet, nor have I been sold for more whiskey for the pigs. It has not gone quite that far, although it has been tried by those that sort to capitalise on my work. And although my study and work put me in many perilous positions, some of which had left me socially prostrate and biochemically brutalised, it was the innocence and naivety, with which I went about my work, just like Boxer, that I am happy about. An innocence or loyalty that was, and is, of a worth that I personally think is immeasurable. It was not just a loyalty to people, but to values and things I had been taught.

Standing on principles that where and are sometimes profoundly challenged by my peers is and was in fact a strength. Most do not know the value or strength of virtue. And the revaluation, of its consideration helped me establish who I am, and what I went through. It helped reduce the PTSD, and now I am someone foreign to me. Like a thought of the third person, I have become a welcome stranger to myself. It has caused a process of revaluation, and in that process, I have become someone new, someone alien, someone of value. And just like the welcome swallows that turned up every year at my old house, they as a metaphor for an idea where in contrast, and unlike PTSD. They, like a conscious dream, fly in from nowhere, light up my day, and move on. And just like the birds, who took with them the mosquitos that filled the night air, my considerations take with them, the mosquitoes of my mind. They were such a beautiful little thing to see, and always welcome. For a quite mind is a gift.

This new person was created with two forces, out of something old. Like water and wind, to use a cliché, they helped produce me, with a heavy dose of self-fortitude. They had both worn me out, and worn me down, and I become a considerate tolerant man. Both were my parents. My mother, said and encouraged me to try anything, but she always reminded me, of the demanding work required to achieve said task. In contrast, my father cut down every endeavour I had thought of trying. Where my mother had taught me how to give myself the benefit of the doubt, my father gave me the capacity and discipline to do the work required. Initially he did not believe that I had the capacity to do the miles, to use a cycling term. To do the miles is to suffer for extended periods of time, to work, to churn, or grind away on the pedals as you train. Doing the miles makes your response to the task automatic, disciplined, and acutely effective. The longer you grind, or the more miles you do, the more Zen like you become at a task. Ironically as they both aged, my mother’s enthusiasm for me waned, and my father’s enthusiasm increased.

I do not know, if my father saw in the end, the miles being done, but, and it should be noted that both my mother and my father may have been a bit out, in their accuracy department of their analysis of me early on. Despite this, they both taught me resilience. The resilience, to have the not so common capacity to give the benefit of the doubt. One initially vocally optimistic, and ever encouraging, the other absent in lack of optimism, with an ever-present silence. His silence came from seeing me fall, seeing people laugh at his son, and finding the visual or metaphor more horrid to watch, than it ever was. I do not think he ever worked out, that where I might have lacked the ability to do the miles, it was my persistence in getting back up after a fall, which was my talent or discipline. Due to this, both my mother and father’s appraisals were wrong.

What caused it, this factual error? And to introduce Einstein in my parent’s defence, the situation was relative; it was not just their lack of faith in that I would just keep going after a fall, they just never could clearly see, where I was moving to, or where I was in time. I was on one train, and they were on the other. Like ships in the night passing each other, we never really stopped to talk, I never really discussed my work with them, I never told them about what I did. For when I had, they never believed me, for they could not comprehend my achievements. This social isolation is part of the new person I am, and as I discuss me, and what, or who I am, I come to the realisation of my exploitation by others. With an absence of family to discuss the details of my effort, and the sacrifices I had made, as they would never understand it, I started to write a journal, or a diary, about my work, and put into perspective or context, that journey.

Part of that journey due to my lowly status at work, was I never had a boss who could intimidate me. I never had a boss that could threaten me with a lower position, because I was in general already or always in it, the lowest of jobs. And thus, I become a type of wondering ronin. I am not sure, if my use of the word ronin is the old, or the updated version, but it most certainly is an Australian or western fusion of the two. This wondering, this lack of direction, and the experience of suffering and struggle, become an instructor of joy. It was an indicator, or a sign that I had earned my happiness, and not expected others to pay for it. This work or suffering had educated me, that I had earned the right to smile. I had served not just myself, in my endeavours of my pursuit of personal happiness, but that I had also served others on their quest or personal journey or pursuit of it… It was through my personal suffering, for that is what my work was, that I had lowered my collateral damage to those that surrounded me. I had reduced my infliction on their personal pursuits of happiness. As a result, I gave the benefit of the doubt to my pain, not knowing if it would ever bear fruit. I learnt of the discomfort of others, through my experience. I discovered that I should be considerate, because one way or another, we all suffer, and to intentionally cause another to suffer more is inhumane. I learned what that tribulation may entail, how personal it is, and how much of a double-edged sword it can be, as it is both, friend, and foe. And through the sympathy of other individuals suffering, and because of it, I learnt to give myself the benefit of the doubt, and I concluded that I had earned a decent living.

Studying others and their sacrifice, not just my own, and being respectful to both, helps alleviate the constant reminder of my broken body. The aches, and the pains, that I presume, if I make it to eighty, will all be quite weathering. But for now, they help keep me honest. I can only hope as I become more crippled, that I take more from Yoda than quasi modo. It will help put into context, the sacrifice of others, and just how lucky I have been, in comparison to some. It puts into perspective, that to give the benefit of the doubt, is to sacrifice little, and to give the benefit of the doubt, is to give up nothing. It is staunch, hard, and stoic, with one purpose, to give, and the first person you need to give it to is yourself. It has been both philosophically and religiously said, that suffering, and trial are a gift, a gift reserved for those that can manage it, but sometimes I wonder. At times, I look on at people, and question about their journey, and how much they, which is most of us, endure. And after reading a little of the Philosophers, I concur, luck, and hard work, are no strangers to each other, and when combined, are like magic. A magic so powerful, I no longer recognise myself, or care about my crippled body, nor the PTSD from the events that crippled it.

I was not cursed by my suffering, I was blessed to help not just myself, but others.

 

Done