Gifts of Life

There’s more than pain with the experience of warring and everyone should know it. The deep life lessons and the range of positive life-giving resources that come out of the very things that hurt you are usually missing from the conversation about trauma. Because they are, we often get hung up thinking everything is hopeless.   

The light at the end of war trauma’s psychological tunnel does exist. Knowing and being assured that greater good is possible opens the way to easing much of the psychological pain. Sorrow will linger but that is appropriate. What’s important is that the pain of grief will no longer be crippling and self-defeating behavior will change. The real and potential resources that I have seen in some men who have warred illustrate the tangible goal of transforming the symptoms of war trauma and making the Survival Rules highly useful when life at home resumes after combat.

For every symptom of post war distress and each Survival Rule in play, there are at least twenty life-giving “gifts” that already exist or can come into existence once war’s debilitating emotional pain ceases.

These gifts are life-positive and life-sustaining resources born out of the very stuff that shattered the psychology in the first place. In the destruction of all that we humans hold dear, the rock bottom values of life are laid bare. The primal intelligence in us knows it. 

WARNING: No self-respecting man who has warred will willingly step back into that cesspool of pain unless he can be assured that there is a realistic way out, and that there really is another side. It gives ex-combatants (and everyone else) a mission, a goal for which to aim.  Knowing there are useful, describable goals to be had if pain is faced and transformed helps us to revisit and re-examine that pain. If no goal is offered, forget trying. 

HERE ARE SOME OF THE GIFTS OF LIFE

When I was in Moscow in the winter of 1988, in a newly dedicated park for the Soviets who fought in the war in Afghanistan, a Soviet veteran, newly returned from that war, was still in mourning for his buddies and the horrors of battle. He was in no place to begin thinking about anything positive that could come from that war. I had over paced him, that is, I had gone ahead of his grief, trying to give him some hope. He could not yet see the life resources in his horrible experiences and he thought I was nuts. 

Do you?

You who have warred, you know what I’m talking about. Even though the aftermath of combat undoes you at certain times, somewhere deep inside you also know you are in possession of a vital and elemental awareness of life most people never have and may never get unless they, too, experience combat.  I realize many of you would wish other people could get it, even though you don’t wish that experience on anyone.

Though you may only have a vague sense of all this and you may not have a concept or words for it yet, you still possess that wisdom that comes with the knowledge of terrible things. You posses it, even if you are dealing with the pain of it, have gotten so used to that pain that you don’t think of it as pain anymore, and can’t see your way out of the self-destructive pattern you might be in at the present.

There are many gifts, and the following are only a few:

• WILD APPRECIATION FOR THE MATERIAL THINGS OF LIFE           
  Yes! A gift of life. The material world counts: roofs, running water, being dry or being cool, flushing toilets, lights, and simply having enough to eat. More than anything, you know with every fiber of your being that matter, as much as spirit, counts. They are not separate, and they run together on a fine continuum.

• IMPORTANCE OF THE MOMENT
  Each moment becomes cherished and savored and, you know with absolute certainty, that life is a moment-to-moment deal. The illusions about time and about immorality have been shattered. The crushing struggle to regain meaning has been reached.

• THE BEAUTY OF BONDING WITH OTHER MEN
  This gift looks obvious to some, but you would not have this powerful bonding if you hadn't killed other men and seen them and your buddies die. This bonding is not the same as being part of the "good old boys club."  It is as elemental as existence and goes far beyond the conventional idea. You saw and heard the reactions of other men under the extreme pressures of war, and you understand men like few do.

• IMMENSE PHYSICAL SELF-CONFIDENCE
  You know your body and you appreciate it because of what it has taught you. Your physicality has been tested. You are realistic about your strengths and what your body can endure. You learn from body’s “talk” in the present and no longer ignore what it says to you (something you had to do to survive combat). You know your physical limits.

• ABILITY TO ENDURE
  When something matters, you see it to the end. Persistence and determination have become built in traits. You know that “keeping on going” is what makes you reach the end. This is often called “mission mentality,” governed by the Survival Rule, Plan Ahead.

• PROFOUND CONCERN FOR ALL LIFE: 
  You now realize you have an intimate knowledge of all the soft, tender places in people and the basic reason they hurt. At the same time, you know that life by itself is not "sacred." Life is far too easy to take and it becomes devalued with killing. You may find yourself ushering spiders out the door rather than killing them.

• SELF-COMMAND AND SELF-AWARENESS
  No longer lost in the chaos of memories and the split off parts of yourself, you have stared death in the face, you know you will die, and you no longer fear it.

• INTENSELY STRONG INTEGRITY AND CONVICTIONS
  You’re absolutely certain that it is crucial to stand up and stand for some things in life. Life itself depends on this.

• RESPECT FOR AND ABORRANCE OF VIOLENCE
  Who knows more about violence than someone who has warred? Violence is never a joke, not something with which to play macho big man, not something to use as a threat, and never to prove something "manly." You know extreme violence has only one outcome—death. You know that any form of violence is extremely dangerous because violence has no half measures.

• HEIGHTENED AWARENESS OF WHAT COUNTS
  After the destruction, the deaths, the losses, and the pain of suffering great loss, the fundamental things that matter in life are pretty clear to you. You are keen for the elemental rules of human interaction, the elemental needs people have for comfort and safety, and for the many things that matter far more than others to keep you alive, safe, and growing.   

• KEEN SENSITIVITY TO RHYTHMS
  The experience of the tempos of nature, your own and that of the environment around you, lead you to being in tune with the natural world.

•  A PASSION FOR JUSTICE
  You are highly aware that others suffer for no good reason, and you care to your roots that balance is struck.

• STRENGTH TO MAKE HARD DECISIONS
  You have learned how hard it can be to protect life and you do what it takes to protect and safeguard your life and the lives of those you love and depend upon.

• FLEXIBILITY
  Actually, this resource is one of the eleven Survival Rules, STAY CONGRUENT, and it is already a gift of life. It is useful just the way it is. It means you have learned to be flexible for any situation, a highly useful ability that, just as in battle, lets you correctly assess an activity and make the most of those situations in which you find yourself.

And, so many more gifts are possible and available to you. Every symptom is Rule governed, and those Rules have the ability to become some of your most powerful resources for the present, if you use them right. 

THIS IS THE HERO’S JOURNEY

Transforming war’ trauma into life positive resources is a personal goal. It does not make men saints, however, and no one should expect it. But it is a heroic journey.  The Hero’s Journey, which we hear about in myths and legends, tell us that, should a person be driven to dark depths, such as in war, it is possible to come back to the surface with gifts of life from that descent. Transforming the pain of warring into life-positive resources is the most breathtaking form of heroism.