Читать книгу Peaceful Revolution - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 16

The storms of life visit us all, but we don’t have to go through them alone. Once when I was a twenty-three-year-old lieutenant in the army, I woke up surprised in the middle of the night. I was lying in a hospital bed. Looking up I saw steel bars on the windows and a surveillance camera in the room. Not again, I thought, moaning in discomfort. I knew it was late 2003 but I could not recall the month. I could not remember how I had gotten here, but I knew exactly where I was. I had been in this place twice before.

Slowly I retraced my memories. When I visited my parents for the holidays in 2002, my father had suffered a major stroke on Christmas Day. Several months later, while deployed in the Middle East during Operation Iraqi Freedom, I had trouble contacting my parents by phone. By the time I returned home to visit them in June 2003, I knew something was wrong. But I was not prepared for what I saw when I walked into their house. I immediately noticed a foul stench, and I saw feces on the carpet. Sitting naked on the floor, my father was screaming, threatening to shoot himself with a pistol he kept in another room. My mother looked like a corpse. As she tried to calm him down, he punched her. I restrained him and called the police.

Both my parents ended up in the hospital for a week. My mother was close to death but gradually recovered. My father’s mind had continued to deteriorate after his stroke the previous year and he had to be placed in a nursing home. When this incident occurred, I remembered many experiences that I had repressed as a child. It was a lot of pain for one person to bear.

After my parents were hospitalized, a friend convinced me to speak with a psychiatrist, who explained that my father might have suffered from untreated schizophrenia. He said that a child born to a forty-year-old man is twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as one born to a twenty-five-year-old. A child born to a fifty-year-old is three times as likely to inherit the mental illness. My father was fifty-four when I was born. The psychiatrist urged me to take a test to diagnose my mental condition. My results exactly matched those of a person with schizophrenia.

But that had happened months ago. Why was I here now? As I searched my jumbled memories that night, other unwelcome thoughts arose. I recalled how my family had been wrecked and I was an only child who had to pick up the pieces. Having schizophrenia would certainly get me kicked out of the army. Could I ever get another job? If my condition failed to improve, would I even be alive in a year? I had contemplated suicide through much of my childhood and now I remembered why.

Before my despair could grow too large, a memory of hope emerged, disjointed and fragmented like everything else in my mind. Several weeks after I had taken the test to evaluate my mental condition, a different psychiatrist had said, “You might have been misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. We aren’t sure yet. So we’ll keep you on these medications just in case. It’s possible you’re suffering from something unique that our test couldn’t accurately diagnose. Perhaps we can best describe this as psychological trauma resulting from your childhood, which was exacerbated by what you experienced after returning home from your deployment. We’ll know soon, depending on whether you improve and how well your recovery progresses.”

Then he said something I had never heard before: “As a doctor and officer in the army, it pains me deeply to hear about everything you’ve been through in your life. I’ll do everything in my power to help you.” He empathized with my agony, which seemed strange to me at the time. At that moment I realized how well I had kept my past a secret from everyone around me. Since I was an only child who grew up not having a relationship with my extended family—and my father was so paranoid that in elementary school he stopped letting me visit with friends—it was easy to keep secrets.

The day the psychiatrist spoke to me with so much empathy I had been in the same place I found myself now, surrounded by the same steel bars, constant surveillance, and white walls of the army psychiatric hospital. My memory was still blurry and it was getting difficult to stay awake. My mind felt like it was swimming in mud. Had they injected me with something? I could not remember. As I lay there that night on the verge of sleep, another memory crept into my mind. The recollection was crystal clear and I welcomed it gladly.

It was like a warmly remembered fairy tale: I was three years old and playing in my parents’ backyard. Sitting alone as my mother was gardening nearby, I was building houses for insects out of small rocks. Don’t all creatures deserve a home, a place where they can feel safe and protected? I often wondered about this as a child, but now I was no longer sure. I was still searching for the home and sense of peace I had lost as a child; I had begun to wonder if it existed only in my imagination. I might not have a chance to find out, I realized, because our society often abandons the mentally ill. And in a matter of weeks I had become the kind of person society gives up on.

The next morning after I woke up, took some medication, and ate breakfast, I saw one of the friends I had met during my first stay several months ago. He was a young soldier, only twenty-one, who had returned from Iraq and tried to commit suicide. We used to joke that he would set the record for the longest stay at the hospital and I would set the record for the most number of visits. Here I was again for a third time. And here he was, still hospitalized after his attempted suicide. How long had he been here? A month? Two months? Three?

He smiled when he first saw me. “Sir, you’re back again? You just like this place that much?”

“I wanted to see how you’re doing, and I also needed a vacation. I thought it would be easiest to do both at once.”

He stood up to shake my hand. “Did you get here last night?”

“I think an ambulance brought me.” Sometimes I experienced so much rage that I would go unconscious. It was my body’s way of preventing me from hurting someone. “I was in my apartment lying on the floor, and then I was in an ambulance, and then I ended up here. But they tricked me.” I laughed softly. “They said they weren’t going to bring me back here, and that’s why I agreed to go in the ambulance. When I realized where I was, I tried to run away. I think they injected me with something, so I was very confused. A big captain stood in front of me. That’s all I remember.”

We sat and talked for a while. I noticed that his leg still shook uncontrollably, and I saw new faces in the hospital. As the morning ended and noon approached, I realized the number of patients had increased since my last visit. Another soldier, a sergeant in his thirties, had also been hospitalized after returning from Iraq. His convoy had been attacked and in order to escape the gunfire and save the people in his vehicle, he had been forced to run over a little boy used by the attackers to prevent his escape.

Although our society often treats people suffering from deep trauma and mental illness like outcasts, the military doctors and nurses working in the hospital had not abandoned their comrades. I had never witnessed so much empathy from so many people. If my father and other soldiers from past generations had received this kind of medical treatment, so much suffering could have been prevented. In the hospital I saw how the muscle of empathy forges the bonds that make humanity strong. Two thousand years ago, Jesus of Nazareth helped lepers, thieves, prostitutes, and other outcasts. He never gave up on those who seemed worthless to so many others. His life reminded me of a line from the Warrior Ethos: “I will never leave a fallen comrade.”

Because soldiers must rely on cooperation and solidarity to survive, we are taught to never leave anyone behind. Not the wounded, dying, or even the mentally ill. This ideal makes an army unit strong. Humanity’s greatest peacemakers have also embodied this warrior ideal. Embracing all people as one global human family, Jesus would not leave behind the outcasts of Galilee, and Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa would not leave behind their fallen comrades in Africa and India.

In my struggle to heal my suffering and become fully human, I spent years studying Schweitzer and Mother Teresa as well as our greatest philosophers and religions. Whether I was deployed overseas or sleeping under the stars during an army training exercise in the United States, I always brought a book that would help me explore my humanity. I owe a great debt to the wisdom I found in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Stoicism, Confucianism, Sufism, and many other spiritual traditions. However, the U.S. Army, West Point, and martial arts training have also given me a mountain of wisdom, which I call warrior philosophy.

Schweitzer was very critical of how philosophy was being taught in his day: “[During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, philosophy] became more and more absorbed in the study of her own past. Philosophy came to mean practically the history of philosophy. The creative spirit had left her … The value of any philosophy is in the last resort to be measured by its capacity, or incapacity, to transform itself into a living philosophy of the people. Whatever is deep is also simple.”1 Today students may be able to quote German philosopher Immanuel Kant, but can they offer solutions for solving our national and global problems? They may be able to quote French philosopher René Descartes, but have they developed the muscles of our humanity that give us the power to change the world?

According to Schweitzer, philosophy’s original purpose was to help people achieve their full potential as human beings and live in harmony with each other. Ancient philosophers like Socrates, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Seneca helped others walk the many paths toward becoming fully human. The teachings of these past philosophers provide us with a foundation. Every generation is responsible for building a house on that foundation—a house with stones made of practical solutions to our societal problems. Our participation puts those stones in place. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., who transformed their ideas into constructive action, are the true modern philosophers. Like the best philosophers, they were builders.

Warrior philosophy gives us many ideals and skills to help us become builders of communities and civilization. It teaches us how to overcome adversity, survive the struggles of life, and provide security to those around us. In Japan’s Code of the Samurai, written in the seventeenth century, we find the following guidance: “Bring security to the members of [society]. Therefore … as a warrior you should not abuse or mistreat [your countrymen]. To tax the farmers unreasonably … or to have artisans make things but not pay them for it, or to buy from merchants on credit and fail to settle accounts, or to borrow money and default on the loan—these are great injustices. Understanding this, you should be sure to treat the farmers in your domain with compassion; see to it that the artisans are not ruined; and pay off loans to merchants, in small installments if lump-sum payment is impossible, so as not to cause them to suffer loss. For a warrior whose duty it is to restrain brigandry, it will not do to act like a brigand yourself.”2

One of our earliest archetypal warriors is found in the ancient Greek epic poem the Iliad. Hector, a Trojan soldier, was a loving family man who led by example and sacrificed to protect his people; he did not like war and fought as a last resort. But few samurai were like Hector. Contrary to the highest ideals of warrior philosophy, most samurai behaved like brigands, many pillaging their own people. What went wrong? Throughout history, why have soldiers more often behaved like murderers and thieves instead of warriors who serve, protect, and fight only as a last resort? Military historian Martin van Creveld notes: “As has been well said, during most of its history war consisted mainly of an extended walking tour combined with large-scale robbery.”3

There are four reasons why soldiers have caused so much suffering around the world despite the highest ideals of warrior philosophy.

1 The powerful muscle of empathy I witnessed in the army psychiatric hospital is capable of far more than making the military strong. It is also vital for ending war. But if it is not extended to all people it can produce the worst atrocities imaginable. In this chapter I will discuss how empathy, when reserved for only a few, furthers our self-destruction. I will also explain how empathy, when it embraces all people as one global human family, gives us the power to solve our national and global problems.

2 Soldiers with the best intentions can be manipulated. I will discuss this in chapter 4, The Muscle of Conscience.

3 Not every soldier is educated about the warrior ideals, and our understanding of these ideals is still evolving. Today we must not only express the importance of these ideals but also bring our understanding of them to a new level.

4 To live according to any high ideals, we must journey toward becoming fully human. This is not easy. For example, the noble ideals expressed by Jesus include loving one’s enemies, forgiveness, not judging, and being a peacemaker, but how many Christians live up to those ideals? Just as many Christians do not represent the ideals of Jesus, many soldiers do not live up to the warrior ideals, because embracing our highest ideals requires determined effort. However, every step we take toward unlocking our full potential is more than worth the effort. As I will explain throughout the rest of this book, warrior philosophy gave me the strength to discover my humanity and survive the hardships that followed my stay in the army psychiatric hospital.