(Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans - John Lennon)
(Life is not what it's supposed to be, it's the way it is. The way you cope with that is what makes the difference – Virginia Satir)
In the period in which I wrote this text I was reading and re-reading "The Black Swan", by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and, although I am "accustomed" to observing radical changes and people's reactions to them, I was impressed by the lucidity with which Taleb describes the human reactions of his community of origin in Lebanon immediately after the start of the civil war…..Taleb tells about these people, convinced that the war will last a few days, who live in hotels or makeshift lodgings, who surround themselves with people and objects belonging to their (now former) normality, while time passes, and each passing day makes it clearer and clearer, for those with eyes to see, that nothing will go back to the way it was before.
The fact of remaining attached to a now lost past irreparably removes precious resources that could be destined to "do something" in the current situation, but perhaps the strongest damage is the incapacity to see the new resources and opportunities coming from the new situation (in Taleb's case the simple fact of being permanently transferred to a more advantageous location for the role of international writer that awaited him), certainly for the most part difficulty noticing them (particularly true for refugees).
Personally when I think about my experience with reluctance to acknowledge that a situation has changed and see the new opportunities for it I think of the change in my life when my parents separated when I was 12 and I had to follow my mother to a city, a crowded area, full of pollution, having first been used to run happily and play in open spaces, open countryside, spaces full of animals that I loved.
That child, because I was still a child, really didn't see anything positive in being deprived of that luxuriant nature and that enormous house, and thrown into a hostile city and into an apartment barely big enough for me, my mother and my sister, I still remember the tears and nightmares (literally!...NIGHTMARES!) of that time.
In a year's time I would enter the adolescent phase, where pets to play with didn't count that much, and the need for social contacts became overwhelming, especially with peers, I then had to choose high school to realize the immense life opportunities that had presented themselves to me, I could freely choose numerous educational and life paths that, if I had remained to live in a village of a thousand inhabitants, I would have simply dreamed of, I could frequent cultural circles and political movements.
Only THEN I realized how lucky I had been....unbeknownst to me!
As you can see, sometimes it is really impossible for us, at least in the short term, to understand WHAT is positive about a certain change (again: especially in the case of refugees fleeing a country at war who have lost all their possessions ), and it is easy to object that one cannot be sure that something was positive, for example in my case if I had stayed to live in a small village maybe I would have liked it even as a teenager, maybe I would have lived a completely different but happier life, who can say for sure?
Some of the books I've read, commonly ones that talk about hypnotic regression to past lives, argue that everything we go through in life, even the most unpleasant events such as an illness, loss of a loved one, or even rape or untimely death, were somehow planned by ourselves with the purpose of making us evolve as people and as souls, I am a simple human being, and I can't know if this is true…BUT..I KNOW, and I know for sure, that this attitude helps a lot to accept unpleasant events and situations , even “unacceptable”.
Please note that in this stage (acceptance) anyone with some form of spiritual or religious faith has an advantage: they can easily relate their temporary "misadventures" to a larger path....and accept that this path may sometimes be inscrutable to human eyes, he can even accept that the suffering he feels is THE reason why he is faced with certain events, that is, that not only is it not a mere price to pay, but the ultimate goal, the foundation of the positivity of what it's happening.
I invite the reader, even those totally devoid of faith and reluctant to even have it, to make the following considerations:
1) What is there to lose? What do you gain by NOT believing that what is happening has a positive side?
2) Which of the two mental attitudes is more effective? The inability to accept a certain situation or taking action with the means available regardless of the probability of success?
3) As human beings we are by definition unable to know something super-natural, if only because we are intrinsically limited beings, therefore to fundamental questions such as "God exists?" or “Why am I in this world?” there is no way to answer using logic, that being cleared up don't you realize it is more effective to think like the authors previously mentioned? Isn't it more motivating to believe that we are facing something that we ourselves have decided we should face....regardless of the results in this life?!
(it is the "Credo quia absurdum" (I believe because it is absurd" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum ) of the Latins or the "I believe because it suits me" of "Pascal's wager" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager )
These are obviously rhetorical questions.
I therefore invite the reader, if acceptance is a phase judged "unacceptable", and regardless of the most intimate individual convictions and one's own (sacrosanct) skepticism, to adopt the attitude described above, the one immediately deriving from the first of the questions posed: "what I have to lose”?, it may seem impossible to convince yourself, believe deeply, but that is not what I am suggesting, I ask you to act AS IF this is the case, it may seem difficult but believe me, I know from personal experience that it WORKS! 😉 .... and if nothing else it will make you feel better since from the very first moment.
