How mentally traumatic events shaped not only you as a person but all of us as a people

When we are first born, we shed the protection of the womb and entire into an existence that is extremely frightening, we cry not so much about the doctor spanking us on the butt but simply because we know of no other recourse to express this fear. This is the first time we encounter a mentally traumatic event, we call abandonment. Our only true solace is to placed in the arms of the person whom we had come to know as our safe haven strictly by heartbeat and possibly smell because only after hearing that familiar heartbeat and later the sound of that safe haven’s voice, do we calm down enough to stop crying. If that sensation is missing, we will continue to be unsettled and affect by this for the rest of our lives. If this sensation is present, we tend to settle in and when something happens which creates a fear in us, we run to that safe place for comfort also for now and the rest of our lives.

As we grow, several other mentally traumatic events happens, each leaves it’s own mark and lasting effect. Some may feel less traumatic to some but that will never decrease or minimize how traumatic it will be on others. A missing biological contributor to you, denies you the opportunity to get a better understanding of who you are and why you may feel how you do about certain things. It may deny you the complete understanding of why you tilt your head a certain way, make a certain face, are more or less animated or can focus on a task or is easily distracted. Having both biological contributors in the same household does not guarantee that you will learn those things and so many others as to better understand who you are but it does provide you the opportunity to seek and find those answers.

As time further lapses, you pick up lessons from traumatic and non-traumatic events involving friends, family, neighbors and society as a whole. Some you wish to repeat, others you just want to understand and some you try to avoid at all cost. During these times, as who you think you are begins to take shape, others sometimes will make an attempt to mold you in their image. Some will resist this from the start whole many may allow this to happen but in the end, before all is said and done, events will happen to make you sure of your decision to resist or cause you to change or modify. These forces can only suggest to you who you are and must have your complete acceptance or will never take root, where the major conflict arises is not in whether you bought into what those forces were selling but the inner struggle that ensues when who you think you are comes in contact with who you really are.

You will be able to tell that you are experiencing an inner conflict when many things you are seeing and hearing does not make sense to you. When you feel like you have something to say but your voice is stifled by your reflecting upon the times where you were told that your voice did not matter. Many use this development as an excuse to not put forth the effort to change it, while others realize that the only truth that matters is yours and the only way others will ever know your truth is when you educate them on it. We can not go along to get along if what we are going along with does not make clear sense to us. We must be willing to share our thoughts, ideas and beliefs with others regardless of how you think that they will react. The only thing we need to be apprehensive about is the delivery of our thoughts, ideas and beliefs. It should be paramount in our minds that if we wish others to hear what we have to say, we must first be willing to listen to what they have to say. An individual is only as ignorant as they choose to be. If the knowledge is out there and we refuse to access it, then we have graduated from being ignorant to being stupid. Some remember being told as a youngster that they were stupid, ignorant or will never amount to anything. Those who embrace that thought will forever struggle internally but those who come to understand that they have the final say is what defines them will use that as fuel to work even harder to prove all those who said that wrong. You should never allow anyone’s idea of you to define you because they only know the parts of you that you have displayed to them. Since we never reveal all of who we really are to anyone, how is it possible for them to now believe that they know us so well. Truth be told, hell even many of us don’t know the full extent of who we really are.

Friends will use the lessons that they have learned and try to convince you that you should follow their lead, family will use the lessons that they have learned and will not only try and convince you you to follow their lead but sometimes attempt to force you to do so. Neighbors and society will attempt to manipulate you into following their lead and punish you if you don’t. Regardless of which way you choose to go, remember that you and only you can choose the path that gets you there. Often times, during this stage, we begin to use excuses as to why we did what we did or made the choice that we made, completely unaware that this action only adds to our internal conflicts and compounds our levels of frustration. Friends use the excuse that their actions are for the best, family uses the excuse of trying to protect you while neighbors and society uses the excuse that it is all for your well-being. None of this is true because no one person knows what is best for another, we only think we know what is best for us. In the end, you will not find any comfort is saying that the results of you actions or inaction is due to anyone person or group because the final decision in all of that is yours and yours alone. What path you choose to travel in life, may not be the one you have chosen to travel and even if you fail to recognize that there is and always will be one unavoidable fact that to will recognize eventually. And that fact is, you and only you must decide how you will travel this path and in what condition/steps you will take to get there.