Reflective > Staying Awake

Staying Awake
Published in QAAL - Linking for Learning,
Concordia University
Vol. 19, No.1 Fall 2001

I first heard the news of the terrorist attack of September llth as I stepped inside the doors of the Montreal Children’s Hospital with a colleague from Peter Hall School. We were attending a meeting concerning a handicapped boy and it was the child’s father who told us, as we walked to the meeting room, that planes had rammed into the Twin Towers of New York. I just didn’t get it. What he said did not register, perhaps because he kept on behaving normally - walking, greeting nurses along the way, opening the door of the meeting room, and pouring coffee for each of us before we sat down. I was not as aware as I would be later, that something dreadful had happened. Some important choices were made for the child by the group and we returned to school in time to see the lunch room TV on, exceptionally, during noon hour. I observed the shock on the faces of the staff crowded around the set in silence - and finally got the picture.

With no forewarning and no escape, September 11 was a rough awakening. I find now that the hard part is not about the awakening but about staying awake. I may be powerless over all that is happening, but I am not completely helpless. And yes, consciousness costs. Being one small, ignorant person is not permission for me to withdraw hopelessly or to recoil in isolation from the important messages coming in.
 
I’d like to share three of the best thoughts of the past weeks that have helped.

In the Montreal C.G. Jung Society’s most recent newsletter, Murray Shugar reviewed a book entitled
Kinds of Power by a Jungian scholar, James Hillman, who suggests that it is time that high drama and heroism slip off illusion’s pedestal and be replaced, instead, with the quieter more realistic values, like those of service and maintenance.
My thoughts strayed to the memorial wall displays I passed daily in the main hall of Westmount High School - framed photographs of dead young men, war heroes. I once read that during WW1, bright red ribbons were tacked upon the front doors of the families whose sons made “the supreme sacrifice” for their countries.
In the harsh glare of September 11th, then, ours is not the only country to send their young men to die…while their grey-haired elders are left to question, ‘Did we truly give every last ounce of our best efforts to negotiate peace? Or did we, in fact, not?’
We are the ‘elders’ of today: Every person who is willing to pay the price being awake requires and every caring adult who owns power well in their own individual lives. Our silence is their ‘permission’.

Another author, a Jungian scholar by the name of William Johnson, juxtaposes Buddhism and Christianity in his book The Mirror Mind. He says that each person’s job is to be doing, constantly, an examination of conscience, “Not a fault-finding mission, but a survey of one’s talents and abilities…”  Johnson suggests that our responsibility is to hone and use those talents for not to do so leaves the world worse off and deprived – perhaps in uncaring hands.
What would the world be like if we, all of us, chase passivity away and belong to committees in areas where we can make a small difference…and insist on accountability?  Answerability, that mechanism that lets a country know what their country is up to in another country, with an insistence that it reports back truthfully, plus our own involvement might spell ‘peace’.
Sometimes we are so stunned by shock we end up doing nothing but isolating with murky feelings of survivor’s guilt.  “Let it begin with me” counsels Johnson. “Let it begin with me.”

And lastly, what has helped me is quiet reflection .Simply focusing my attention, daily, on the importance and value of peace in our lives and what that means, is helpful.  I get ideas. I act.
 “Life can only be understood backwards…” said Kierkegaard “…but it must be lived forwards.”  I ask that my energy be transformed into purposefulness that can help the world and all those grieving in every oppressed country, in some meaningful way.

I first heard the news of the terrorist attack of September llth as I I first heard the news of the terrorist attack of September llth as I stepped inside the doors of the MI first heard the news of the terrorist attack of September llth as I stepped inside the doors of the Montreal Children’s Hospital with a colleague from Peter Hall School. We were attending a meeting concerning a handicapped boy and it was the child’s father who told us, as we walked to the meeting room, that planes had rammed into the Twin Towers of New York. I just didn’t get it. What he said did not register, perhaps because he kept on behaving normally - walking, greeting nurses along the way, opening the door of the meeting room, and pouring coffee for each of us before we sat down. I was not as aware as I would be later, that something dreadful had happened. Some important choices were made for the child by the group and we returned to school in time to see the lunch room TV on, exceptionally, during noon hour. I observed the shock on the faces of the staff crowded around the set in silence - and finally got the picture.

happened. Some important choices were made for the child by the group and we returned to school in time to see the lunch room TV on, exceptionally, during noon hour. I observed the shock on the faces of the staff crowded around the set in silence - and finally got the picture.

With no forewarning and no escape, September 11 was a rough awakening. I find now that the hard part is not about the wakening but about staying awake. I may be powerless over all that is happening, but I am not completely helpless. And yes, consciousness costs. Being one small, ignorant person is not permission for me to withdraw hopelessly or to recoil in isolation from the important messages coming in.

I’d like to share three of the best thoughts of the past weeks that have helped. In the Montreal C.G. Jung Society’s most recent newsletter, Murray Shugar reviewed a book entitled Kinds of Power by a Jungian scholar, James Hillman, who suggests that it is time that high drama and heroism slip off illusion’s pedestal and be replaced, instead, with the quieter more realistic values, like those of service and maintenance. My thoughts strayed to the memorial wall displays I passed daily in the main hall of Westmount High School - framed photographs of dead young men, war heroes. I once read that during WW1, bright red ribbons were tacked upon the front doors of the families whose sons made “the supreme sacrifice” for their countries.

In the harsh glare of September 11th, then, ours is not the only country to send young men to die…while their grey-haired elders are left to question, ‘Did we truly give every last ounce of our best efforts to negotiate peace? Or did we, in fact, not?’
We are the ‘elders’ of today: Every person who is willing to pay the price being awake requires and every caring adult who owns power well in their own individual lives. Our silence is their ‘permission’. Another author, a Jungian scholar by the name of William Johnson, juxtaposes Buddhism and Christianity in his book The Mirror Mind. He says that each person’s job is to be doing, constantly, an examination of conscience, “Not a fault-finding mission, but a survey of one’s talents and abilities…”  Johnson suggests that our responsibility is to hone and use those talents for not to do so leaves the world worse off and deprived – perhaps in uncaring hands.

What would the world be like if we, all of us, chase passivity away and belong to committees in areas where we can make a small difference…and insist on accountability?  Answerability, that mechanism that lets a country know what their country is up to in another country, with an insistence that it reports back truthfully, plus our own involvement might spell ‘peace’. Sometimes we are so stunned by shock we end up doing nothing but isolating with murky feelings of survivor’s guilt.  “Let it begin with me” counsels Johnson. “Let it begin with me.”

And lastly, what has helped me is quiet reflection .Simply focusing my attention, daily, on the importance and value of peace in our lives and what that means, is helpful.  I get ideas. I act. “Life can only be understood backwards…” said Kierkegaard “…but it must be lived forwards.”  I ask that my energy be transformed into purposefulness that can help the world and all those grieving in every oppressed country, in some meaningful way.