Photo Credit (unchanged): Crystal Coleman https://www.flickr.com/photos/thatgirlcrystal/6660793217

Required: Listening (as a start to empathy)

Three days after the inauguration and two days after the worldwide “women’s” marches, it is clear we are not listening to each other, instead, we are talking past or posting past each other on social media. Recent social media posts and comments wonder why there is a need to march or condemn those who are marching, while conveniently forgetting the protests with hateful, racist signs, acts of hanging and burning effigies after Obama’s elections. People misunderstand the reasons for marching by posting: “shut up and get over it, he won, you lost”, “give the man a chance, it’s only been one day”, “the signs with the p-word and pink hats are rude”. The latter ignoring the use of the p-word against him originated with the President himself, bragging about getting away with sexual assault because when you’re a star “you can do anything”. The President’s most ardent supporters broadly label the people that marched not just for women’s rights, but human rights as “liberal” which, seems to be an increasingly negative connotation.

Feeling Marginalized

There are multitudes of reasons why the minority of the popular vote, voted for our President, but let’s assume they were mainly economic reasons.

Surviving Myself – Andrew Willis (ACE Study)

Photo courtesy of Andrew Willis

Dr. Jeremy Richman Ph.D., founder of The Avielle Foundation discusses Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) in his presentation The Science of Violence and Compassion, as a factor that could lead to violent or aggressive behavior. The following guest blog from Andrew Willis’ first-hand experience confronting his own ACE’s originally appeared on the Stop Abuse Campaign blog series and is from his 2015 speech at the Stand Up For Passion event in NYC.

It was a great job.  Jetsetting around the world, managing integrated marketing communications for global brands like Citi, IBM and HP.  The cliche, “It’s Hong Kong, it must be Monday” and stopover weekends in attractive cities my reality.

I returned home to a beautiful 6,000 square foot stone house in Connecticut, my wife and two children.  An ideal life. Work hard. Play hard. Good friends. Great family. Two vacations a year; sailing in the summer, skiing in winter. Church on Sundays.

Then I woke up.

Staring into the bright clinical lights of the Very Intensive Care Unit in a hospital far from home. I’d swallowed 300 Tylenol PM and wished the world goodbye. Almost a week before.

Leather straps hung off my bed by my feet and arms where they secured me.

My veins had coursed with crystal meth. My arms… bruised and punctured. My goodbyes said, not heard.

I had never even smoked weed until I was over 50. Taking drugs was my way of medicating away the pain and humiliation of remembering my youth. Still today much of my childhood years are cloaked under the shrouds of secrecy that protect our sanity but drive our depression.

Why? I had to know why this happened to me. Was it just my bad choices or was something else at play. I guess I went in search of excuses – but I found answers. I found I was not the only one. In fact I was no different to about a quarter of people. One in four of you in this room is hiding a secret from childhood.

My search for the answer, combined with the love of my two boys, family and friends has kept me alive.

My search initially led me to the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study). A massive study of childhood trauma and its impact on health carried out by Kaiser Permanente with the CDC.

Project Longevity

Nineteen young men with criminal records who topped the current list for most likely to be shot or of shooting someone else were ushered into a room of standing community members, service providers and law enforcement and then seated in the center-front rows. Eight people stood opposite them and once everyone sat, the Bridgeport Program Lead addressed the men with the basic messages for the meeting:

• Violence will no longer be tolerated in our community and must stop
• Individuals involved in group/gang activity are encouraged to become productive, positive members of the community
• A range of services will be offered to them if they make the choice to transition from the group/gang lifestyle

He then turned it over to the panel who, one by one spoke to the men from their perspective.

We are being swallowed by a culture of fear as our sense of safety and security erodes every day. How will this fear affect our younger generation and the prospects for our country? What can we do about it?

I settled into my seat last Sunday, days before Regal Cinema’s announcement to check moviegoer’s bags. I checked the locations of the exits in case of an emergency. I know my wife was doing the same. I wondered if my 15 years olds were too or if they were as anxious as I was. Were they looking at the people already seated and the ones coming in, as I was? I’d hoped not, I hoped they were just looking forward to the movie at our local AMC Theater. The announcements started with scenes of the silly animated red characters and accompanying voice-over, “please silence your phones, don’t use your phone to text, and don’t talk as this will distract others.”  But then the usual cartoon animation of colliding cows riding in cars stopped, where the voice-over used to say ‘in the event of a cow collision or emergency, please walk to nearest exit…’ The animated scene had been replaced by bold red text and I’m paraphrasing here, to “be aware of suspicious people, if you see someone suspicious, notify the staff.” It continued with “in the case of an emergency walk to the nearest exit and once outside, move as far away as possible.” Being told to walk to the nearest exit and moving far away (also new instructions at least in the last year), has taken on an entirely different meaning since the Aurora, and Lafayette theater shootings and an axe attack in Tennessee.

Maybe we can expect the next version of the movie theater message to sound similar to airplane crash procedures, “In the event of an active shooter, your seat-back can be removed and used as a bullet-proof shield.”

Moving from me to we. Fostering empathy and compassion.

(Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/19779889@N00/ quote added by SODINA)

It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about us.

We’re here for a very brief period. Although we are ultimately responsible only for ourselves, we do not walk alone on this earth. We rely on each other for companionship and survival.

I live in Newtown, CT and have many questions stemming from the mass murder that occurred here. I never imagined it could happen here, in my neighborhood. Violence is not as remote as it once was. I continue to be horrified, angry, and feel profound sadness for the victims, their families and each degree of separation outward from this massive epicenter. How did we as a country, a community, a neighborhood, a family, a person, allow this to happen? Obviously, no one with implicit knowledge of what would occur would have allowed such an unspeakable act. You wonder about all the potential steps along the way of a person’s life where someone could have changed one thing that may have made a difference and kept the killer from picking up a gun that day or any day. Could the course of events have been altered to the extent that this tragedy possibly would never have happened?

It felt like we as a society have failed so many people along the way, and in small ways we fail a little every day. We also succeed in small ways every day. Can we increase our successes and decrease our failures at a more rapid pace in our struggle to creating cultural change and a more peaceful world?

I was staring out the window where, 24 hours earlier, I had watched the SWAT truck, with its team hanging off, clad in body armor and rifles at the ready, drive down my street. In the background, I could see helicopters fly over the Sandy Hook Elementary School searching for more shooters. I can only describe the feeling as a sense or recognition that I was human, sharing a common bond with others.  I distinctly remember, strange as it may sound, shedding any sense of idolization of others, we’re all human.

You and me? We’re the same.

At the most basic of levels, we are the same. We share 99.9% of our DNA. Yet, despite a relatively short amount of time on this planet and no guarantee of a tomorrow, we seem to be geared more towards competition rather than cooperation and collaboration, and we tend to focus on only the 0.1% that makes us different.

We’re brought into this world with an absolutely clean slate, blissfully unaware, innocent, a complete lack of knowledge–let alone any control over who raises us or how. At some point we begin to learn about our perceived differences, whether it’s our gender, ethnicity, socio-economic “status,” values, etc. These labels become ingrained in us. Sometimes they define us. But while we may accept the labels or the perceived differences on some level, we can paradoxically, and maybe conveniently, disregard them on another level when we assume that everyone should think or act the way we do.