It Could Be Worse. I Could Be a Ghost Boy

If you read my last blog, you got to listen to me vent a little bit about the phrase, "First world problems" and my disappointment when it is used to minimize and secretly ridicule the problems of others.  I feel that we would do better to dig a little deeper, beneath what we consider to be another person's "whining", in order to find out the root of what is really going on.  After all, when a person has a whole lot of little problems, they can coalesce into a much larger one.

But that was my last post. And then I was talking about assessing the problems of other people.  Today, I'm talking about assessing my own problems.  And this is an entirely different matter.  There's great value in stepping outside of oneself and realizing that it could be worse.  And, in fact, there are others going through worse.  MUCH WORSE.

There's the person who is fighting cancer... and losing. There's the parents that lost a child in a car accident.  There's the family that lost their entire house and everything in it to a fire. Etc. etc.  I usually don't have to look very hard or long to find somebody who is experiencing a negative situation that dwarfs my own.  Although, it doesn't remove my own pain, depression, etc., it does ease it somewhat. 

Lately, the person I've been thinking about is Martin Pistorius.  You may or may not have heard of him.  Martin is a man from South Africa who spent 12 years trapped inside his own body.  During approximately 10 years of that time, his mind was totally aware of his surroundings, yet he had no way to communicate with those around him.  He couldn't move his body any more than a barely discernible twitch.  The doctors told his family that he had the intelligence of a 3-month old baby and that they should make him comfortable until he died. He desperately wanted to let them know that he was present and aware but was totally powerless to do so.  The stress of the daily routine of caring for Martin became overwhelming for his parents as year after year went by.  Daily, he had to be taken to a care center, picked up, cleaned, fed, put to bed, turned every two hours overnight, etc.  At one point, his mother became so overwhelmed dealing with his condition that she looked into his eyes and said, "I hope you die".   Martin was totally aware when she said that to him.  He felt her pain and frustration, but could not say or do anything to comfort her.  I cannot comprehend the level of isolation and abandonment that he must have felt.  The helplessness.  The hopelessness.    

Through a set of somewhat miraculous events, Martin was eventually able to communicate through a special keyboard and computer and tell about his experience.   There's so much more to the story, so I would highly recommend listening to an episode of the NPR show Invisibilia in which his story is briefly covered.  Here is the link:   http://www.npr.org/2015/01/09/375928581/locked-in-man

Martin also wrote a book about his experience entitled Ghost Boy which I just started reading.  I'm just so intrigued with what this young man went through and the inspiration that I can draw from it to help endure my own times of isolation and depression.
Empathizing with the suffering of others helps to put my own situation in perspective by diverting my mind from doing what minds often do.  That is, taking situations and turning them into more than what they are.  When I focus on the negative, my mind magnifies and multiplies things until I have created an overwhelming, insurmountable mountainous cliff that I feel cannot possibly be scaled.  When I divert my attention to the hardships of others, what once seemed behemothic, often becomes much less so.


One of the other mechanisms I use is to step outside myself and pretend that someone who is going through the same things that I am has come to me for advice.  What would I tell that person?  What coping strategies would I recommend to them?  What hard truths would I share?  What mercies would I extend? Etc.  Doing this often helps me be more objective so that I can divest myself of all the extra falsehoods that I have added to the situation.  This takes a lot of practice and I'm not sure that anyone ever totally masters it.  It's so hard to ignore those extras and so easy to give them way more weight than they deserve.  

That's why it's sometimes good to get input from a friend.  A friend tends to see the situation more realistically because that person doesn't know all of the extras your mind has added and can therefore,  be more objective.  If you have a friend who is able to listen to you, empathize with you and still give you honest, objective feedback, then consider yourself lucky and treasure that friend.  Many people don't have that when it comes right down to it.

But this isn't a post about friendship so I won't go down that road.  At least not today.

Until next time, peace to you ALL Fellow Earth Babies!