Rachel Yehuda’s closing insights to Krista Tippett about resilience rang another couple of bells for me.

“What I hear from trauma survivors, what I’m always struck with is how upsetting it is when other people don’t help, or don’t acknowledge, or respond very poorly to needs or distress. I’m very struck by that.”

Oh, man.   This is the truest and most certain way to strike cruelly at somebody’s heart– remain stonily silent in the face of their pain.

“And I’m very struck by how many Holocaust survivors got through because there was one person that became the focus of their survival, or they were the focus of that person’s survival. So how we behave towards one another, individually and in society, I think, can really make a very big difference in, honestly, the effects of environmental events on our molecular biology. [laughs]”   

Oh, boy.  We live in what Henry Giroux rightfully calls a Culture of Cruelty.  The message could not be more explicit:  your worth as a person is directly tied to your wealth, as we see most directly in wrongful death awards.   How we treat each other, as a society, is beyond shameful.  But I am more struck by the first part of that statement, how one other good person in your life can give you reason not to succumb to despair.   

I recall Primo Levi, in his memoir of his time in Auschwitz, describing a fellow prisoner who, simply by being a good guy, not being twisted beyond recognition by the inhuman pressures of life in the death camp, gave Levi enough hope to enable him to survive.   One man, simply by remaining friendly and decent to others, enabled Levi to picture life beyond the borders of Auschwitz.  He credits this man with his being able to cling to reason enough to survive an unimaginable nightmare.

Now, suppose you have one person, a person who listens to you, doesn’t dismiss your pain, supports you when you’re anxious, gives you the strong feeling that you are important and have value as a person.   What if this same person, in a moment of high stress, once threatened to cut your throat, after killing your parents and burning your kids alive?   Ah, nothing is simple, my friends.

To mention this, in the context of this conversation, may strike some readers as insane.  Think of it, though, the desperation not be alone in a frightening, violent culture where fear is broadcast to us around the clock, fear that drives hatred and rage and ratings and shopping and elections, can become so great that we will accept the love and support of someone who also, in a moment of crisis for them, raged that they would murder us.    Many women every year are killed by such mates, otherwise loving but liable to snap and do unspeakable things when the stress gets to be unbearable for them.   

I shudder for our species when I consider that many spouses would rather hide the shame of this potentially fatal compromise than enter into any kind of conversation about their alternatives.  That imagined chat is much more terrifying than a ONE TIME threat to cut their throat.  The only one she can even imagine having that talk with is the one who, if he snaps, would end her life.  Imagine that.