Stampede is on, but its opening Friday attendance was down by forty thousand from last year‘s, high of over one hundred thousand. The Stampede mood or spirit is more subdued than normal as I feel that, living within shouting distance from the crowds. However, the main thing is that this Summer celebration fest rose above the river floods and shows that resolve makes a big difference.

I just hope that the effort made for the Stampede to go ahead did not cause too much resource allocation away from other venues that were coping with the flood’s aftermath. There are still about a dozen businesses in my area of Forth street not open on account of the flood and missing out on the Stampede’s spin-off income. On the other hand, many visitors did come, who would have been absent, had the Stampede been cancelled.

And, yesterday, Sunday, our Calgary life Enrichment Centre group met again at the Palliser after two cancelled meetings. That was a bit of a celebration in it self, be it that some regulars were away. Yet is was good to share our varied flood experiences.

With regard to my own experience, I notice that I feel a bit subdued. I think it is, because I am on my own again after almost two weeks of travel, which was followed by ten days of living with Shirley and then John, Tammy and Annie. This combined with the added company from Michelle as displaced neighbour.

Now that all is returning to ‘normal’, I feel a bit low. This maybe due to this reduction in social contact I am reminded of other losses that I experienced during my life time. Such losses are apart of life in general, but I know from personal experience that such losses are not readily assimilated in the psychological and emotional sense.

This repression is in part self protection, when a loss is too much to handle all at once. So, it comes back later when a new loss is experienced. Feeling a bit more depressed about such a new experience points, according to me, to remnants of unassimilated memories and their feelings which are still active and need some day light. That is, the importance of loss needs to recognised in my life and given a place along side the causes for celebration.

I feel the need to elaborate and generalise some on this theme. First I recall the fact that in Antiquity the Greeks and the Romans considered sympathy and what we now call empathy a weakness of character that had to be overcome. This value attitude is still with us, but has become addressable today under the banner of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

We are talking here about empathy not just for some one else, but no less for yourself. This reminds me in turn that you must love your neighbour and yourself also, which is often overlooked.

Secondly, the reason for repressing the loss experience and its trauma is that we are afraid of its debilitating effect and affect on our daily doing. It makes us vulnerable and we feel we need to show strength in order not to be subjected to more injury. Self defence, in other words is the motivation for not dwelling on the trauma experience.

Yet, when we compare emotional trauma with physical injury we realise that healing times are necessary and that we have to make room and allocate resources in each case. In the materialistic value frame work of our society, it still remains a battle for such resources.

This can be concluded for the way our Federal government deals with such resource allocation in the case of Canada’s returning veterans. More can be learned about this from the article “Collateral Damage” by Sharon Adams in the “Legion Magazine” July/August issue 2013.

Finally, the above argument is in support of a notion I have about the way religions and societies deal with difficult emotions that we experience as humans in general, when we undergoing loss, injury and diminished status. As I compare the various main religions, I would say that Christianity allows for suffering in that it is addressed and acknowledged as being a part of the human experience. This has resulted in some measure of dealing with such difficult experiences, their memories and associated emotions. Also in the Muslim-Shi'ite religion we find a public acknowledgement of suffering in human life.

However, not many other religions know this kind of acknowledgement and that is the reason for my elaboration. My point is that when one religions reminds the other - may be a similar religion - of such missing acknowledgement, the other religion - as a value frame work - is rejected outright and fought-off violently even.

In fighting the other religion or value group, one is fighting and repressing that what one does not want to acknowledge in one’s own value frame work. This kind of behaviour is applicable to many different group, but is most prominent when religious values are referenced.

Some thing needs to be added yet. Repressed content - experiences, memories, feelings and emotions - remains undifferentiated on account of its being repressed. Therefore, all repressed content becomes entangled and inter-associated; subsequently the new experience of trauma will affect earlier ones and therefore will also become repressed.

The only effective way to deal with such repressed experiences is to peel the onion as I call that. You go back slowly but surely, one step at a time, persistently tracing how the last experience connects to an earlier one.

Applying this notion of re-tracement in the case of some religious and/or historical conflict situations in our world today, we need to practice this re-tracing in a social setting. And this is in effect happening today as I see that, except that we do not seem to be consciously aware of the fact that we are indeed engaged in such a process world wide.

If we would acknowledge that we are so engaged, then we could change our behaviour and apply knowledge and resources more effectively and efficiently to such conflict situation, reducing the human suffering and collateral losses.
<9:42am~