How can we meet a broken world with our hearts wide open?

By Rachel Musson

Over the past week, I’ve spent time with a Palestinian rapper and journalist; someone in the Israeli Ministry; Israeli activists, Iranian friends and children from Gaza.

Some of these are new connections, some deep and long-standing. Each of these unique humans carries their own version of heartbreak and hope in vastly different contexts. Within these encounters, each exposed something deep within their core; revealing for a brief, tender moment -midst the anguish, anger, violence, trauma, pain - the essence of their vulnerable, beautiful humanity.

I’m sitting quietly after these encounters, listening to all that's swirling within me. I'm feeling the privilege of a regulated nervous system from a childhood context of peace. I'm sitting re-reading the emails, poems, stories that have been shared, alongside the morality-piercing news ever-pouring out of Gaza, Israel, Iran...

I sit with the questions:

• How might we break cycles of trauma, so that traumatised people no longer continue to perpetuate endless cycles of trauma upon trauma?
• How might we transform structural beliefs ingrained within cultural mindsets which are being perpetuated through fear and indoctrination?
• How might we nourish the human soul with truth, with goodness, to meet each other with our humanity welcomed first?

The more I meet, connect, listen and learn from people in complex and deeply traumatic contexts, the more I understand how behaviours are forced to become primal and reactive. When a nervous system is aggravated day in, day out within a context of fear, violence and a fight for survival, the body is forced to respond from an unconscious autonomic level.

What we're witnessing across the world is an erosion of humanity.

My housemate is Iranian. Two of my dearest friends are Palestinian. Some of my close work connections and friends are Israeli. And here we sit in a world where right now their friends, their families, their homes, their culture, their countries, their identities are being destroyed; violence upon violence upon violence in the name of what? An ending? Redemption? Peace?

I'm sitting in the flood of heartfelt emotion that I know and I’ve witnessed in each of these beautiful humans. When we begin to humanise the stories of suffering - see what is happening on the news as happening to our friends, our family, our loved ones - we let the grief in, and are more able to stand against such darkness continuing to spread by actively meeting one another - friend or stranger - by seeking to notice and welcome our humanity first.

I’m not sitting here seeking answers. I'm just sitting here. And at the same time I'm filled with such a clear knowing of what I can do to meet this beautifully broken world, from the privilege I have to even be sitting here, quietly thinking. What I know is that I want to continue to look to first meet that quiet, maybe scared, sometimes broken, often deeply hidden or oppressed part within us all - to seek to meet that deep essence of goodness which is always, endlessly waiting to be seen, to be heard, to be enabled to breathe.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦s 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘮s 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘗𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 '𝘰𝘩 𝘣𝘪𝘨 𝘣𝘭𝘶𝘦' 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘜𝘱 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵.