If I live under the assumption that “if people could do better they would do better” or alternatively that “everyone is doing the best that they can” then it leads me down a very gracious rabbit hole. Within that rabbit hole is the realization that Laziness doesn’t exist. For most accusations of laziness of which it always seems to be made as an accusation there is an underlying reason as to why it is occurring. Yet the laziness of today is not the idleness of previous generations either, or is it. There is a complexity of generations of trauma and torture and shame all layered like a terrible cake or geological sample, waiting to be dissected and examined.
The space to examine these layers requires a level of security and safety still not afforded many in our society because unhealthy coping mechanims allow us to survive until tomorrow in a chaotic world where the Grace of learning healthier ways to be are not available. Yet in those same layers of reflection from previous generations we see the seeds of healing and Grace planted by our Ancestors in hopes that perhaps someday, they would find the fertile ground of our own healing. Some have grown strong gaining footholds in broken patterns the parents who refused to perpetuate physical violence as a mechanism control have children who struggle with healing the tools of emotional control. The subtle shifts of healing are hard to see in the brief little lives of us individuals.
Yet we all stand with an army of
blessed ancestors behind us who did the best they could and sometimes that was a horrible thing to bear. When their best was torture and broken. How do we recognize the truth of harms done from the disease that runs through us and our families? While also recognizing the hope that followed it? How many shame filled heads rest in tear soaked hands at the monster they had become? What is owed to the terriorized, is it enough to carry shame?
Shame is an awfully easy shortcut to avoid healing in my experience. It often is a quick route we use to avoid facing the full brutal awareness of ourselves as capable of monstrous things while simultaneously robbing our victims of their quest for Justice. “I already feel so guilty so what else do you want from me.” The things we do from ignorance and the things we do from malice shift subtly if we are all “doing the best that we can” because what if malice is the best that someone can do?
There we come around again to the topic du jour in many circles boundaries. Since it is obvious that harm caused within a relationship or greater still community must be addressed. That addressing it is part of a larger process of healing and that those processes are not found anywhere in today’s dominant western society. It requires a desire to bring healing and harmony back to the relationship that includes digging out those deeper wounds and unlearning unhealthy coping mechanisms. Not everyone is interested or game for such self-examination or transformation. The best that they can is harmful as fuck. So instead boundaries are placed on interactions as we accept that No is the only valid answer to malice even if it comes from a place of damage.
We cannot just banish everyone from the group though that just leads to us all trying to “do all the things.” Group projects being done solo on life setting eventually lead to burn up or burn out or both. So what do we do instead? Hierarchies of harm? I’m not comfortable with hierarchies but it seems to be a go to. Commitment to malice holding higher degrees of exile compared to sheer malice via ignorance whether of self or others. We can take a cue from nature. Then we turn back to laziness. At its core nature loves laziness in so much as it loves efficiency which as such efficiency is rewarded by nature with greater abundance usually not just for the individual but for communities as a whole. Though laziness in a community where if everyone isn’t contributing to the common household goals like having enough woolie mittens for the harsh cold winter days of death ahead. The natural results are someone is going to loose a finger or toe in the least. Cultural warnings in story create an external reminder of the consequences like the Yule Cat for just this reason.
Chances are it won’t be the person who despite doing “the best that they could” didn’t contribute enough, more likely someone else more fragile will bear the burden. Such is often the way of these things. The disease within community is born most brutally by those in the most vulnerable position. It is how these things ripple across the generations. A bad turnip harvest 200 years ago is the reason your kid won’t eat turnips and complains of the smell when you cook them. Unlikely but stranger things have happened. What if the harvest was bad in part because someone was depressed from the loss of his wife and child and didn’t time the crop well. What about when plague hit and it was the whole community moving through collective trauma as best they could?
I don’t have a nearly wrapped answer for all these questions. This is just as I stated a long rabbit hole with many scurry off points and dens full of hidden treasure and others with shit. Though to some shit is a treasure all its own, just ask the microbes in the compost pile. It does bring me back to a growing understanding of the outward spiralling circles of responsibility and control. For I am always and only every in control of myself and my actions and that is where the best use of my energy is held first in maintaining through awareness and healing within. Then I spiral out first to my household and the responses I make to the disease within it, be it ancestral patterns being broken, or societal coping mechanisms being replaced with hopefully more healed choices then rippling out into my immediate community. All of this takes a whole lot of Grace because if we are all doing the best that we can Grace is the only bridge that is going to move us into a place of acceptance so we may plant our own ancestral seeds and growth for the seeds planted generations ago in hopes of bringing wholeness back to our worlds.