Time Lessens What Actions Heal

It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.
- Rose Kennedy

    This quote lingers in my mind like a menacing cloud over a cheery village. At any moment the bubble can burst and drown the joys away, taking with the outpour all hope and sanity that once thrived there. All it takes is one event to shatter our existence, changing the way we view the world as we knew it to be. Eventually the pain, as if under a heavy anaesthetic, will numb away, but the bitter thoughts will remain gnawing at our psyche. All we want is to feel normal, but normal is not a luxury we can afford. We can spend thousands of dollars on cars and clothes, but even those cannot mask the deeply seated wounds we harbour within ourselves. We wait for time to run its course, for it to come and sweep away all the cobwebs in our troubled lives, but waiting for time is just that --waiting.
    I bear the scars of my unhealed wounds like many humans do, but this is not my story. Sometimes I find my days stream like a series of events that somehow all connect and intertwine in some way of another. Today was one of those days.
    As I served salad at St. John’s Kitchen this afternoon, I was talking to “red persuasion”, another volunteer, and she told me about an incident that occurred the previous week. In her story, a woman in line threw her plate full of food at a man, and was later seen causing the same kind of ruckus and violence towards him. It was later understood that they had previously been in a relationship, one that obviously did not end well. The wounds from their broken relationship remain unhealed, and she cannot cope in a healthy way. Maybe in time the pain will lesson and she will be able to move on; however, I am not one to know for certain.
    Wounds were also excavated within the walls of my home today. For years one of my family members has struggled with some deeply rooted wounds that the rest of us are blind to because he refuses to let us in. We try to help, plead with him to get some professional help, but he refuses, claiming that there is no cure for his problems and that professionals know nothing about what he experiences because they have not lived it. Yet for years I see his body, his soul, and his personality drastically alter; even his views and beliefs shift almost daily. The problem is that he cannot see that what he is doing to himself is trickling down and damaging everyone in the household. He says that he is living for me, but what he does not understand is that I do not want anyone to live for me. I want them to fight for themselves, for the life they could have, alleviated from the wounds they carry. I believe time can heal some things, but sometimes time is not enough to tackle the bigger issues.
    This brings me to my questions about my upcoming experience at Reach Out. There, people are struggling with tremendous physical and psychological issues that stem from poverty, lack of education, poor health-care, HIV/AIDS, among others, yet everyone I speak to says the same thing: they are the most joyful, kind-hearted people you will ever meet. How does someone who suffers so much, for whom everyday is a battle between life and death, have the capacity to smile and exude so much happiness in their life? I cannot fathom this. Maybe money is the problem. Our society thrives on what we can get from those slips of green -- the power, respect, goods -- but what we do not gain is the release we desire from those suffocating, unsealing wounds, because the problem was never money in the first place. Money was only a smokescreen for the real issues at hand. Or maybe our society has become so self oriented, adopting too highly a survival of the fittest mentality, that we forget about the healing that can take place within a community like the one I will be a part of in May.
    I have not even stepped foot in the country yet, yet I desire something the Ugandan people have -- the ability to heal and live life joyfully, despite the hardships that they have come across, the hardships that threaten their lives.