The pain of past experiences

Unfortunately, it is part of the tapestry of human experience that all our human heroes and edifices are bound to reveal their flaws and limitations and contradictions, if given enough time and scrutiny. So you have to start from a grain of cynicism, knowing that no one is good but God; and all earthly governments, from a family to an empire, will be imperfect.

We are never able to live up to even our own standards, and so we are all some stripe of hypocrites. But to that grain of cynicism you must also add a healthy dose of optimism. The affirmation of life that accepts the flaws and limitations and blind spots and betrayals as inherent, yet finds the good to be real and discoverable and sensible, that finds pleasure in our desire to be more than what we are and reaches toward what could be.

Having been harmed by someone or something, it is very hard to see the value in those things or persons, or to take their positions and arguments and strategies seriously as positions to be considered, rather than enemies to be defeated. A bad father may sour us on fatherhood altogether, a bad leader on leadership itself, a bad meal may give us a lifelong aversion to that food, a bad church may make faith unpalatable. Or they may drive us into the arms of another person or philosophy that promises to oppose our former oppressor. Sometimes that provides a better home for that need. Sometimes the marketing tactics that take advantage of our hurt lead only to an opposite vice and enslavement. So often those who flee their father’s house to get away from him fall into the traps of men just as bad, using their freedom to merely change one misery for another.

It’s easier to understand danger and bad experiences than it is to extract the evil from the underlying value (whatever it might be, there’s always something) and see it for what it was and wasn’t and could and couldn’t be, to see the good in it. And the deeper the hurt, the harder to see the value. But usually the things that hurt most are also those with a lot of power and value (however misused), like a family, an intimate relationship, or a close community.

I’ve seen many people lose a lot of avenues for good in their lives because they had its source poisoned for them by a particularly bad example. And I’ve seen just as many fall into different (but still problematic) alternatives because they supported their rejection of the things that had harmed them. And you often find yourself needing support because of the pain of the loss that comes from pulling away from something that had power in your life. You need somewhere to belong and find strength, to stand and perhaps to resist and pull away, to grow. And sometimes joining the opposition party seems the best way to do that.

And who can blame people for this? Especially in the near term, when you need space and strength to recover and grow, to establish some identity of sufficient distinction to allow you to make a critical assessment of your former situation.

Unfortunately, most people take a long time to go beyond mere criticism, if they go beyond it at all, to a balanced and independent view that isn’t threatened in their identity by the old power and pain from their old lives so they can view it dispassionately. Some pains run so deep and take so long to heal. And sometimes unhealthy and immature means of coping may help promote survival and protection and reassurance but not advance people toward a more balanced and mature state of mind. People can stay angry right until the end of their lives and never resolve their relationships with the objects of their grievance.

Even in my own extended family I’ve seen this, people so hurt that they couldn’t ever stop chasing that pain and fighting those battles, even when the people in question were long gone, even when it stole their happiness and ruined their lives. Never underestimate people’s willingness to sacrifice health and happiness for pain and resentment and blame.