Company of heroes?
Why is it that there is a special bond that forms under duress, and the more traumatic it is the stronger the bond. You do not need anything else in common just an awful event that affects you both, a car accident, war or even an expected rainstorm where you hide under cover, it is when the external world tries to kill or harm us, that we recognise our joint humanity and create strong connections. However the most common and enduring duress we all share is the internal trauma that harms us throughout our lives which we can only experience alone, we do not get that moment of shared witnessing. We have to be our own witness and we can only report later how it felt, we can remember the pain and tell the story but it can only ever be a second hand account, and it can take a lot of time to find others who have experienced a similar event, as our personal trauma is so unique.
However we need to search both for meaning in these experiences and ways to move past them so that we can grow as people, and it is not easy to find those people who are your company of heroes, those who have gone through the same war, whichever one that might be. That company is so important as it gives you an opportunity to see how others coped with the same events, especially different people with a variety of skills and personalities, points of views that help you to see things in a new light, from fresh perspectives, what appears to be a cliff to some might be a flat walk to others. It gives you a window into the skills that you lack and need to learn about, it increases your chances of growing as a being of consciousness, to develop new techniques to deal with life and deepen your knowledge of yourself.
It is the company of others that gives us strength to go out into the world and be ourselves, hopefully the best version of ourselves, the self-actualised version, which acts in alignment with our values and in fulfilment of long term purpose and mission. Whether that is raising a family, writing a book, selling insurance, if it is your version of serving something greater than just your own base desires, that is a good thing more than a lot of people get and please remember most people for most of history have just survived. It is an incredible honour to have the chance to actually serve others, to do good for the world, to make it a place of abundance and freedom for all, rather than the survival of the fittest race that crushed so many of our ancestors.
What they did to just survive is amazing and their progress through the horrors of the last ten thousand years should be praised, in just a five hundred generations they managed to create the whole of civilisation. They were not perfect, and they did not always learn quickly from their mistakes, but they did in the end and we should be grateful, but our world is so complicated it is difficult to know where to start to continue their progress. Whilst I am so happy that we live in a world where social exclusion is not a death sentence, it does mean that we have unprecedented levels of social isolation and the problems that arises from it.
There has always been a fringe of people on their own, hermits are not a new things, though often they were feed and even valued for their external views, over time they became rarer and ended up unionised into the organisations which we call religions now. Which at their best offer an external view of society that helps inform their decisions, becoming a Taoists in China was to remove and retire yourself from society, to be social and useful you were a Confucianism with it's rules of polite behaviour, though the Taoist way of thinking was valued as a reflection to view themselves.
What we have now is something quite different, we have a large number of people who do not need company in order to face the external traumas of the world, we do not have that shared experience. There are not droughts and famines (or should not be) that kill us (by us I mean people with an internet connection, that instantly puts you in the wealthiest half of the world!), we are able to live in a safe, secure societies, protected by law and customs, we have incredible freedom and yet so many of us are desperate for community.
How do we establish the new communities that our society needs, what do we replace common trauma with, and I do include work as a possible source of trauma. No sane person would ever want to get up every single morning to go to work, and I am not talking about work you just hate, everyone has a morning when they just want to rest and not do anything, that is natural, energy is not constant, it oscillates up and down. Though even great jobs have their share of trauma, you can bond over a bad boss, pointless paperwork or box ticking meetings, if you have a mission you are able to take the rough with the smooth.
It is perhaps that lack of available missions that we really need to address, the great jobs are disappearing, you might not like going down a coal mine but you were serving a purpose, you were keeping the lights on and whilst wind turbines need maintaining the number of people involved are tiny compared to the hundreds of thousands that went down pit. Also there are so many people outside of the working world, the old, the young, the unemployable (a growing number) and the sick, soon it will the will be the majority and even a degree is no guarantee when over half of people have one. When the good opportunities disappear, only the bad ones remain, it is better to be an outlaw than a slave, it more exciting to a drug addict than a drone, a crusader rather than a security guard, a protestor standing up to the police. People will seek conflict because that makes them feel alive like they are living an adventure, of us against the bad guys, and when there are not any villains we will create them, divide ourselves, and find the easy target to attack, whilst the one percenters sell us the weapons of our war, whether that is social media or guns.
To turn away from these options we need the greater mission, a better, higher one that seeks harmony and a wholesome community, we have to create the circumstances that brings people together in an endeavour that is greater than the individual and yet that each of us can contribute towards. It starts with the personal, each friendship that fosters the growth of each of you, that are positive, happy and healthy, is a step towards something greater and towards a tribe, a fellowship, so that we can enjoy the company of heroes who inspire us and who together can achieve great things. That is not easy in a community of individuals, you have to get out there and look for tribes, friend who are on the same path, it is often found in learning skills, playing sports, attending talks, concerts, but is is also dependant on having the time and energy to do so, it means prioritising time with others not just the pursuit of money and status. However if you find some heroes makes every effort to spend a little time in their company it will be worth every second and might lead you somewhere great.
