I was recently reading an article on the strength of the human spirit. I know in an earlier blog, I made the point that there are people out there who suffer so much more than I do – wars, plagues, watching family and friends die in numbers, torture, famine, and so on and so forth. I said then, and still do stand by it, that even if there are people out there facing greater tragedies than I do or have, that still, those of us with mild depressions and constant anxiety need to address them in order to fully live our lives. What we have, who we are, cannot be doled out to others, shared with others, in ways that are healthy if we ourselves are not healthy.
Now I mention these others who are surviving, or who are barely surviving, because this article I read made a great point. On your most bleak and desolate days where you feel you can no longer carry on, you manage to do it anyway. You do if you’re reading this, anyway. The self-preservation instinct is one I plan to research – how does the biology of the brain fit into this concept of the endeavoring human spirit? It does seem that dopamine has something to do with it.
One of my exes is Cambodian, and immigrated to the United States as a child. I got an education on the Khmer Rouge and how it affected her family, as well as the families of other Cambodians that I met in the area. One of the most horrifying stories I heard was about her mother. She had given birth to a daughter before my ex was born. She was with women in one camp, while my ex’s father was in another. There was an escape. The baby girl didn’t make it because the mother did not have enough to eat, and therefore was unable to produce milk. She clung to the dead body of the infant, unable to believe her misfortune, and was determined to carry it with her. She did this for three days. On the third day, the father pried the infant corpse from her arms as she screamed and kicked and buried it somewhere in the jungle. As someone who has watched their own mother lose a child, I cannot imagine what went through that poor woman’s mind when she found she was not able to care for her own baby. My mother’s guilt at having let my brother drive his vehicle (unnecessary guilt, but she felt it nonetheless) ate her up in the years to follow his death. I can’t imagine the guilt that must cloud someone when it is because your body cannot fulfill such a seemingly simple function as feeding a newborn infant. Yet, in the middle of such fear, despair, and chaos, my ex’s parents and one son made it out of Cambodia to a Thai refugee camp. My ex was born there. They began new lives in the United States, where they did not speak the language nor were particularly welcomed. But they managed to get jobs, raise a family of five children, and buy their own home. The parents still suffer from post traumatic stress disorder.
That is an example of the so-called human spirit. When her parents were marched out of Phnom Penh among the bodies of their neighbors, with a small son in tow whose eyes they covered with their hands, they had no idea what would happen. They went to work camps and watched as friends and workers were killed, or just went missing. They were fed very little, and lived in constant fear. The girl child I spoke of was not the only one they lost. They lost two daughters during this time. Still, they carried on. They made their escape, and they made it to the refugee camp. They kept going until they got to a place of relative safety to continue their lives and raise their family. They did not, in the middle of all this, give up. They did not curl up on the jungle floor, and let the jungle take them. Maybe there were points at which they were tempted. I imagine there were moments where they did curl up and shout for death to come. Yet, they didn’t remain there long.
So, on my days when I am facing a hardship through the seeming meaningless of my own existence and the mechanical motions I must go through in order to seem sane to others, I try to remember that there are people out there with a deeper sadness than my own, with angry white scars that run down the bellies of their memories. Yet, they live on. And I ponder this. I think, “What is the point? What is it that drives us to such extremes?” As if to live is extreme. And, perhaps it is. If the nothingness is what we come from, and it is nothingness that we return to, perhaps it is the living that is extreme. What a radical concept for those who see living as an illusion.
Over my desk I have a postcard of a Norman Rockwell painting portraying six year-old African-American Ruby Bridges as she is escorted by US Marshals through an angry mob, just to claim her right to a good education at an Alabama elementary school. I think to myself that if a child can face years of death threats, spitting, violence, and harassment just to go to school, then I can face anything, no matter how much I may fear it. So, in the midst of all the haphazard happenings in this thing we call life, endeavor. Remember that you are stronger than you think, smarter than you think, and that you will not only survive, but you will thrive, but only if you honestly put your mind to it. And this is probably the dopamine talking. 
