As a professional specializing in helping those suffering from trauma, I have come across people who have undergone the most incredibly unfunny experiences. Accidents, illnesses, operations, physical abuse, sexual abuse, rape, torture, satanic rituals, mind-control experiments, quite apart from the run-of-the-mill upsets of everyday life such as divorce, losing one's job, losing one's possessions, or losing a mate or loved one through death. And, to top it all, there's the fact that, sooner or later, we are all going to die -- and that's hardly likely to be a pleasant experience! Getting born isn't that great either!
Surely, we don't need to invent a hell -- we've got it!
And yet, isn't it amazing that most of us, at least some of the time, can smile and even laugh!
It seems that there are two sides of the coin: humor and seriousness. Which reminds us of the Greek theater with its tragedy and comedy -- expressed by the double mask, one happy and one unhappy. Shakespeare's plays express the same concept: some plays are tragedies, some comedies. Life is seen as a combination of both.
The theater comparison is an interesting one. In a play, the actors and actresses are deliberately playing roles. Some are assigned happy roles, some unhappy. At the end of the play, the actors and actresses go home and resume their everyday lives. The Greek tragedy/comedy masks express very clearly this concept of assumed roles. The mask is something put on -- and it can, therefore, be taken off.
Does the same apply to the roles we play in life, whether they be happy or unhappy roles?
Clearly, we cannot shift roles as easily as in a theatrical play. Yet, don't we, in fact, shift roles all the time? One moment one may be a husband or wife, another moment a mother or father, another an employer or employee . . . And isn't it possible that death is really just a shifting of roles? And, if this is the case, is the serious really that serious?
Life sure can seem serious!
Imagine a rock climber perched precariously thousands of feet above the ground. He slips and dangles at the end of his rope. The attachment of the rope to the rocks is not that secure and the climber is likely to plunge to his death at any moment.
A serious situation! -- surely we can agree on that?
Yet, let's as an experiment try shifting our viewpoint.
Here we have an incredibly powerful spiritual being operating a body and taking on the challenge of getting that body to the top of a mountain. Something goes wrong and there's his body hanging at the end of a rope.
Let's suppose the rope doesn't hold and the body plunges to its death on the rocks thousands of feet below. The being observes this and realizes no doubt that it has lost its body. It probably then decides to pick up another body.
I'm not saying that the incident is not traumatic. But is it really all that serious? Isn't there a certain humor in the concept of a mighty spiritual being pretending to hang on the end of a rope about to fall to its death.
Is life really so different than a theatrical play?
When we are in a 'serious' situation, it is not easy to assume the viewpoint of it being humorous. But then, if we could do this at will, there really wouldn't be much of a play.
Take again our example of the rock climber. Presumably he sets out to climb the mountain because it is a challenge. Like Edmund Hillary who was the first to climb Mount Everest. When asked why he set out to do it, he gave the classic answer, "Because it's there." The rock climber knew when he set out that what he was doing was dangerous. In fact, probably, if it were not dangerous, there would be no challenge and he would not be doing it! Let's suppose he survives the ordeal. Do you think he will then stop climbing? Probably not. So, the danger, the 'seriousness', appears to be an essential ingredient of the play.
Can you imagine a life that is all plain sailing with never an upset? "Great", you may say. But, in actual fact, if we were to experience this, wouldn't we get bored? Milton in his Paradise Lost portrayed Lucifer, the fallen angel, as someone we can relate to -- in fact, it's almost as if, accidentally, Milton created him as a likable character. And, if life in the Garden of Eden had really been that great, wouldn't we still be there?
David Findlay M.A. is editor of Tampa Bay New Times and also a certified trauma specialist. Clearwater (813) 449-8964. Email: david@altnewtimes.com.