Measures and Motions

I find it interesting how we deal with pain and sorrow with our own, very personal, emotional slide rule.

The strength of any physical discomfort and pain has a hierarchy. The pain you suffer with a sunburn will be down-sized with a bump or bruise. That will quickly be put in true order when you scald your hand and that will lose importance as well, at it’s place on the pain chart, should you tear a muscle or break a bone. The pain that you feel physically, however, will soon be forgotten, with the occasional reminder of a scar or a flashback, when a similar event occurs.

The same hierarchy applies in certain ways to emotional stress. On the work front, when you didn’t close the deal with that important prospect, missed out on that promotion or failed to qualify for a bonus will soon be forgotten should you suffer a demotion or indeed, lose your job.

The pain that comes with the unexpected or even inevitable departure of a much loved pet, can quickly be put in perspective when a family member or close friend needs support physically or emotionally, and if escalated, should end in death. Although the immediacy of the pain will eventually depart, the substance of the pain is filed and can be recalled to nearly the same intensity, when triggered. The difference between emotional and physical discomfort is that psychological scars run much deeper.

I believe the same principal applies on a much grander, global scale. Emotional groupings happen every day and escalate and recede with the next media news report. The yardstick took on a whole new meaning in North America, with the events of September 11th, 2001. The massive emotional awakening we felt as a nation or as a continent would set a whole new standard for stress and discomfort.

The reason I localize this tragedy to North America, is simply because of the impact felt at our imaginary, impregnable borders, our total reliance on America to protect their northern neighbour to our mutual advantage, and the fact that more serious ailments face other parts of our world. These shattered geographical safeguards also affected our emotional borders. The millions of underfed or starving people, the millions dying from AIDS and other unmanageable diseases not only in third world countries, but down the street, and the indiscriminate cruelty of Mother Nature and how hardened and apathetic we seem to the plight of global problems that have very little immediate impact on our
in-turned, daily lives.

Since the global, emotional bar was set so high on Nine-Eleven, as it’s been referred to, we have become further jaded, as a whole new generation has been subjected to, and has had to adjust to the uncertainty and disconcerting, internal boundaries of war. We have become emotionally dulled to the loss of life and tend to shrug off, or minimize daily media reports of further violent activity in the middle east. As a result of the events of the past few years, we no longer concern ourselves with the on-going problems in Ireland, the insurgence of drugs in our culture or the South American cartels which supply them. Many things have taken a less important role in the media, and thus, in our lives. The
re-measured impact is true to the slide rule of discomfort and pain. These happenings can impact us negatively or make it somewhat easier to be optimistic.

The bar for optimism is set very high these days.

My view from Loon Lake.

Dan Blix