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Dear Little Evan, #11
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Dear Little Evan, Every letter I have written you has contained a story of a past trauma that I have endured. Some sadness or another which I have carried with me, unable to leave behind. On the outside looking in many of these happenings may seem trivial or minuscule, at least I have written them off as such over the years. I have denied the effect that they have had on me. Yet as I consider them more carefully, writing them down one by one, I have concluded that the normalcy of my issues does not make them any less traumatic.
Even the tiniest of traumas become unbearably difficult to carry when cobbled together into a collective whole. Unaddressed emotional pain becomes chronic emotional pain that keeps sending reminders to the mailing address of our heart. Just because we aren't starving does not mean we don't deserve to eat today. Just because someone has it worse than we do does not mean that our suffering is invalid. Everyone you will ever meet is hurting, whether presently in their body, or pastly in their inner child. Our story may not be an exceptional one, as everything we have experienced has been experienced by someone else too. Nevertheless, as Benjamin Franklin once said, "Beware of little expenses - a small leak will sink a great ship." Every trauma we've endured comes with a price tag attached to it, and the price of reconciling it must be paid, either directly or with compounded interest over time.
We are neither a victim nor a victor, life is not some competition to be won or lost. Life is not a game. We are a human being, prone to devastating valleys of desperation and magnificent peaks of joy. Everything that happens to us in our lives, whether great or small, holds tremendous significance in the overaching theme of our life. Every sentence of the narrative is important, neither a jot nor a tittle should be dismissed as irrelevant. When I have found deep and profound meaning, not only in suffering but also in the mundane, my eyes have become better adjusted to perceiving the value in everything we do.
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.” - Ecclesiastes 9:10 NKJV
It is not our story that matters, it is how we decide to tell it that makes a difference in the end. I have gone through everything that you have gone through, and much which you have yet to experience; and it was in such times that I deliberately clung to faith, that I could see there was a greater purpose behind our seemingly insignifacnt life. The meaning of life is simple: Life is full of meaning. And even if the nihilists are right, even if we're just a sheer coincidence, void of purpose and exist merely by a stroke of chance, that's no way to live. I assure you, the happiest and most content we ever are is when in spite of life's setbacks and obstacles we intentionally derive meaning from our life.
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein
From me to you,
Big Evan
To the child who experiences
To the child who experiences some sort of trauma, it is neither trivial, nor common to many, nor any of the other labels that we adults put on it. To the child whose life experience is in no way equal to an adults', each trauma is as new as if it happened for the very first time to the very first person. The child has not analogue with which to measure or define the trauma; and even a second or third trauma, or whatever number it is, seems like a first because it is so specific to that child's circumstances. When, at a family reunion, I, a nine year old, was rejected by my sixteen year old cousin (whom I dearly loved) from playing badminton with her, I wept hot tears---not because I cared that much for the gane, but because of her somewhat abrupt rejection of me (previously, she had been very kind and gracious to me). When I was almost eleven, and found out, early one weekend morning, that the great actor, Boris Karloff, had died in a London hospital, I wept profusely. I even wept at school, and my classmates in fifth grade made a mockery of that. I knew in my head that people died all the time; but, in my heart, Karloff's death affected me as if it were the first ever death.
Then, from sixth through tenth grade, the bullying I experienced---sometimes with very minor physical assault---was not unique in our school; several people like me, including one of my closest friends, were bullied because of how we looked, what we were called (nerds, dweebs, faggotts), and even because our grades were higher than those of the bullies who tormented us. Even then, although I knew far better that it happened all the time, and everywhere, it still seemed that I faced it entirely alone. My parents either dismissed the concern, or believed I brought it upon myself; the school administrators were entirely indifferent to it.
You obviously understand what Little Evan had to endure. Too many people do not; to many dismiss it as imaginary, or as a made-up complain to deflect attention from something else. Today, while writing this, I began to wonder if the reason I studied to many poets of the past, and almost no contemporary poets, was because I feared to lose someone to whose living work and accomplishment I might become attached. Christian Faith would have assisted with this, but that did not come to me in the soul-sustaining way until 1994, when I was already thirty-five.
I applaud this series that you have been building and expanding, and I am certain---very, very certain---that it will help many as much as it has helped me.
Starward
I like to think of the little
I like to think of the little traumas like splinters that don't want to be sprung loose. Sometimes, when I have a splinter I'd almost rather cut off the entire finger to make that nagging pain go away. At least if I were an amputee the pain wouldn't be brushed aside as insignificant. Thank you for sharing some of your own personal hardships, I hope this series makes more people more comfortable being vulnerable. If my journey of healing can be of some use to others it makes all the pain worth it.
"Paper is patient." - Anne Frank
Thank you for your gracious
Thank you for your gracious reply. and your courteous tolerance of my verbose recollections.
I think you can count on a very useful effect that these poems can deliver to their readers. You have already helped me, a grumpy old coot, to understand certain aspects of my early years, and others will be, and are being. helped as well.
Starward
By the way, the poetry
By the way, the poetry reading went great tonight! I think I'm going to make it part of my Thursday evening routine. I got to read some old stuff and new stuff too. As for the verbose comments, I look forward to them every time. They're little dividends of return on my investment in poetry, and I can be a glutton for positive reinforcement when it comes to creativity! So, by all means continue remarking whenever you feel so moved. No need to hold back, I appreciate all the time you spend crafting the comments.
"Paper is patient." - Anne Frank