Thursday, September 18, 2014

I mention often, to anyone that listens to me about my realization of just because I was born human didn't mean I knew how to be a human. We have to be shown what forgiveness looks like, we have to be shown how you treat and how you speak to those you love, we have to be shown what to do with anger. We don't simply know how to do these things just because we were born human.
I guess I'm lucky because I have the natural desire to research stuff. I have a curiosity about why I act and react the way I do and why others act and react the way they do. I'm naturally drawn to they "why" behind the "thing". The more I look and the more I find the deeper I understand the whole "being a human" thing. My life is enriched exponentially when I take the experience of being human that others have had and apply it to my own.
When I got off from work last night I watched a documentary called "Hitler's GI Death Camp". I had no idea whether they taught it in school and I wasn't paying attention or if they just didn't teach it at all, but I had no idea that a couple hundred American GI's where in the Nazi death camps as POW's. Endless footage was shown from inside the camps of Jews from every where and our GI"s. You know that feeling, that brief split second when you are about to burst into uncontrollable sobs? I was hung right at that spot for nearly an hour. To say it was uncomfortable would be an understatement of a lifetime.
They had interviewed of 3 or 4 American Service men recalling their harrowing two months in the death camp and my soul hurt so bad from their stories that I wanted to turn the thing off. An American mind, under the age of 60 cannot fathom what hell the people in the camps endured. If there had not been video footage and photos, even I with the most imagination of anyone I know couldn't dream up the Godless terror the people withstood. To be so hungry you ate the lice on your body and leaves from frozen trees is not a thing I would have ever been able to dream up. After the show ended I was completely utterly gutted.
This morning, I realized that because i took the time to watch this show, about the human experience these people had, to expose myself to the story of another, I understand my humanity better. Would I have died or would I be one of the GI's that had such a desire to live they ate lice? How did they find a way to get past all of it when the few servicemen left living got home? How did they not just shut down permanently. how did they not be consumed with anger and hate?
. The more I expose myself to the experience and stories of others, the more I understand about myself. I'm not really sure I ever dreamed I could watch a film or TV show and have and the more possibility I create. You know, it touched the place inside me that I always held behind locked gates but it happens now on a regular basis. When I remove fear and ego and am in a place of connected-ness and centered-ness I can allow your experience at being human to greatly enhance my experience at being human. I can use your experience to deepen and enhance my own. We get to do that for each other when we aren't crippled by self centered fear and hurt.
I looked into the eyes of the living servicemen interviewed in fancy High Definition and you could see the look of a men who will never be able to unsee, unfeel what they saw and felt, yet they moved on and found lives for themselves. As a human, I need to see what is capable, what I am capable of and a great deal of that comes from me finding out the story of others. We have to learn how to be human, we don't automatically know how to do that. Just because i was born with ten pink toes and ten pink fingers doesn't mean I know how to live as a human.
The name of the film on Netflix is "Hilter's G.I. Death Camp" and I defy anyone with any sense of God about them to watch the hour and not be deeply affected by it. It's hard to believe that one human would have the power to do order up such evil. It's just as hard though for me to imagine going through that horror and finding a way to live a life afterward that has any love and light to eat, but it appears they found a way. THAT my friends is TRIUMPH OF HUMAN SPIRIT and that is exactly what I need to see often, regularly and in technicolor. I don't want to waste my limited run in the human experience box office of life.