The Great Pursuit of Separation

Our individualism is killing us.

This is not to say that, as individuals, we aren’t important. Far from that, in fact. Rather, that our pursuit of individual freedoms at all costs is slowly poisoning everything around us.

Take a look around you. Are you an island? The vast sea lapping at your shore. Disconnected from the world around you. Yes, maybe that sounds idyllic. Beautiful. Peaceful, even. But is it the truth?

The march of death across our screens is truly soul crushing. Babies inflicting violence against babies. Hatred, anger, fear, and self loathing with nowhere to go except into the bodies of others. Taking all their infinite beauty, their infinite possibility, with it. Leaving a black hole. A void. That sucks all the joy and pain, beauty and sorrow of one human’s life into it. Tugging the rest of us closer and closer into its dark depths. Into chaos.

It is a fallacy. This great pursuit of separation that is encoded in our DNA as Americans. That it is all yours for the taking. That we can pursue this without consequence. Gather all our righteous fears around us. Guard ourselves against the other. It is a lie. Laughable, even. That we can (both literally and figuratively) arm ourselves against the world, build higher and higher walls, move ourselves away from the pain — and get out untouched. Get out alive.

It seems that everything I see, I touch, I hear these days points me to one truth. Personal healing is the most important pursuit we can, as individuals, engage in while we are here on this earth.

It is your greatest act of peace. Your greatest act of liberation. Your greatest act of community.

It is your greatest pursuit. To go inwards. To interrogate your belief systems. The stories you tell yourself. The fears that guide your actions. Are they really your own? Or were they passed down to you. Have you truly found your voice? Or is it just an imitation of someone else’s response to trauma. Someone else’s coping mechanisms.

It’s not easy. It’s hard work. It’s full of grief and confusion. All reasons for why, with every cell in our bodies, we resist doing this work. But, the only way forward is through. Anything else is just throwing yourself against the brick walls you’ve built around you — and locking those you love, those you raise, those you birthed into this world, into the same patterns, the same fear, the same pain.

When people talk about generational trauma, this is what they mean.

Those coping mechanisms that we hold onto dearly to survive. To get out alive. Don’t get me wrong, they work. They do their job. They keep us safe when we are put in situations that are forced upon us. In times where we don’t have the capacity to do anything but survive. But, there is a time to put them down. To reflect on those experiences. To integrate them. To move through. And, finally, forward.

When we don’t do this. When we prioritize moving forward at all costs, never reflecting. When we prioritize (when we require) silence. We pass those traumas on down the line. To the next generation. And the next. And the next. Until their consequences are so subtle, so ingrained that we can barely see them. Just whispers in our DNA, pulling us towards thoughts, actions, feelings that were never ours in the first place. Never ours to bear.

And so when I see headline after headline of violence, I think, each one is an expression of grief, of trauma, of pain that went unspoken. That went unseen. That went unheard. Some of it experienced personally. Some of it passed down. All of it inflicted by more grief, more trauma, more pain that went unspoken. Unseen. Unheard. Unexamined.

It is an endless cycle. Are you going to break that cycle? Because we ALL have something to heal. It’s the only way forward.

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