The world needs your breakdown

We live in a society that values functionality. Keep it together. Pull your socks up. Get on with it. This is the message we receive by well meaning high functioning (and predominantly unhappy) loved ones from the time we are born. 

Until recently, I didn’t question this social normality. I, too was high functioning. I was firm and broad chested while people died horrific deaths and loved ones had to be notified. I pulled my socks up and I got on with it. Like we all do. I did this because I have always believed, without question, that keeping it together is the most important thing. Crazy people fall apart. Nut jobs lose their minds. Weak people can’t handle it.

You get me right? You believe this too, don’t you?

As most of you know I had my own kind of breakdown on a silent retreat in March (you can catch up on that here). Even though it felt pretty awful, it didn’t take me long to see that it was one of the great miracles of my life. 

About two weeks after I came out of that retreat I sat on an old couch meditating and feeling grateful that my life had granted me the opportunity to fully inhabit my trauma. I was musing that all the soldiers in the world should have access to this experience: a meditation retreat to quiet the mind and allow their trauma to come up, an unconditionally loving community that can hold space without judgement or fixing, and amazing therapists to help them understand what to do with their hurt (and terribly scared) human bodies. 

As I sat there I let my mind wander into thought. It was figuring something out: it was saying, this is what every cop, firefighter, paramedic, social worker (and anyone else routinely subject to the harsh reality of the real world) would need to be rehabilitated. I thought: in an ideal world this is what the government could provide for each one of its soldiers. 

In a rapid succession of understanding I could see that there is no practical way that this would happen, as the government simply could not afford to rehabilitate every soldier of trauma. I saw that the soldiers of our world had been used as pawns to play out the greed, hatred and delusion of the top tier men of our world. 

And I saw that as a first responder, I was also a kind of pawn: sent out to clean up the carnage of people perpetuating the cycles of fear, violence and suffering. And in seeing what tired, angry, defensive humans could do to one another the trauma had become mine to perpetuate onward, or not. 

Would I pass the suffering on? 

I saw that I had always had a choice. If I’d remained unconscious I could have passed on the suffering. I could have denied that I was hurt and scared. I could have buried my pain inside and drank more booze. I could have made poor decisions, been short tempered with loved ones, absent and uncaring to lovers. I could have remained a paramedic and treated people without compassion. I could have not cared so much. 

I would have been seen as functional. 

By waking up I realised that I was hurt and tired and scared. I stopped. I fell apart for a minute. I realised that I was no better or worse than anyone else. I felt the suffering of all beings, myself included. I was reduced down to a state in which I could no longer ever willingly or intentionally cause harm again.

To do this I was rendered temporarily non-functional. 

I was worried (and still worry) that I’ll be judged for that. Had I been anywhere else but Spirit Rock, surrounded by wakeful souls, I may have been hospitalised. Perhaps I would have been medicated or labeled with a condition. After all, telling people that I am being cut to pieces, stabbed and shot inside my mind is rather frightening isn’t it?

Do you see it? We all have a choice. At any moment you could turn toward your pain. The problem is that we value functionality. We need to pay the bills, keep the job, stay in the nice house. We need to drive a car that is as good as our last. We need to look good.

As I sat there on that couch the insight was miraculous. Shivers went down my spine. I saw with lightning clarity that if any single person on this earth turned toward the fullness of their pain, their rejections, their fears, they would breakdown. 

And I realised as I sat there, my heart pounding, that this is exactly what the world needs.

It is in functioning that we destroy the earth. It is in putting one foot in front of the other that we just keep going, perpetuating violence, judging one another, hating. Fighting for power or pride or for bullshit we don’t even understand. We need to stop it. We are asleep and we need to wake up. 

Waking up means feeling your suffering. It means understanding that you suck sometimes and that it’s okay to be less than you hoped for. Once we can see what it really feels like to be all of us, with all of our injuries, we can never again willingly harm another. 

The world needs you to let go. The world needs you to stop trying to be so damn perfect. The world needs you to crash, to burn, to rip those fucking socks right off of your tired feet. The world needs you to stop. Even if it means you break down or fall apart or get totally uncomfortable. 

Never forget, all of you is holy. You’ve been through so much and it is okay to be afraid. You’ve been hurt and its okay to weep. You can place a hand on your heart and say the words you’ve been dying to hear all of your life, “I love you”. 

All of you is holy. 

Love, 

Kate 

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