Lessons from Deep Space

I love Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Absolutely love it. For me, DS9 was the best of the Star Trek franchise in terms of acting, writing, and just telling a story. It gripped me time and again with every episode, even the silly ones. But one thing stayed with me even now, 25 years on, and that was the very first episode, Emissary. In it, the new commander of The Space Station Formerly Known as Terok Nor, Sisko, first encounters the wormhole aliens--entities that exist inside a stable wormhole that links the Alpha and Delta Quadrants of the Milky way.

The wormhole entities exist in a timeless state and do not uderstand corporeal beings who live “in time” so Sisko, in tried and true “seek out new life” manner, tries to explain it to them. However, the wormhole aliens, who are accessing his personal memories so they can interact with him by taking the form of people he knows -- his son, Jake, his wife, Jennifer, Captain Jean-Luc Picard-- can’t grasp the idea that humans (and other corporeal beings) live in a linear timeline because Sisko keeps returning to the scene of his wife’s death at the Battle of Wolf 359. He tries again and again but keeps returning in his memories to where he lost his wife. Accordingly, the  entities ask him, “Well if that is true, that you do live linearly, why do you exist in this place? At this time? In this moment?”

And that is when Sisko realizes that he does live, move, and have his being in that place, that time, that moment. Everything he does, every choice he makes arises from that time when he was so profoundly traumatised. He can't leave it. No, he won't leave it. He chooses to remain in that space with those fires and those alarms, and the horror of watching his wife die and being able to do nothing about it.

Understanding dawns and he realizes he is choosing to exist in that place. He is choosing to exist in that place. He is choosing to exist in that place.

It is not linear.

It is not growth.

It is his choice.

Spoiler alert: At the end of the episode, Sisko is beginning to make different choices. He begins to choose to live in a different place. The trauma is still there. The grief is not gone but he no longer chooses to exist, to live, move, and have his being in that place. He begins to heal.

I think we all have those places in ourselves. Individually and corporately. We get profoundly hurt and the trauma is real. It's Ground Zero. Our life looks like Mt. St. Helens blew up and took the very earth from beneath our feet, destroying and ruining the entire landscape of our being.

Borrowed from Del Tackett via Google Images

My Mt. St. Helens blew in my living room about a month ago, 2007. And I lived in that devastation there for YEARS. It was comfortable there, with all that nice sticky mud around me, conforming to my emotions but there was always something (someONE) telling me this is not how you are supposed to live. There isn't supposed to be ash and rubble everywhere ALL the time. The still pools of your spirit aren't supposed to be choked with regret, the rivers of your soul should flow, not continue to stagnate with death and destruction.

I had to choose to do the work that is necessary to NOT exist there.

It was hard work. It involved facing what I did, did not do, was not able to do as well as what was done to me.

It involved forgiveness of others and of myself.

It involved letting it go and letting it be.

It involved recognizing that the only person keeping me in that place, that time, that moment...Is me.

It's not easy to recognize that you are choosing to live in a place of destruction if you've lived there a long time. Humanity is successful because humanity is adaptable. We can adjust to live in just about any environment, including a toxic one of our own making. Defenses are erected, lookouts are posted for any sign of offense, real or imagined, and we settle into our bunker, our muddy foxhole and decide this is how it should be and damn the person who says, "Would you like me to help you move these dead trees and clear out this mud?"

It becomes the place where we exist. Where we live move and have our being. We like our dead trees and mud.

Letting go of that is one of the hardest things I ever did but the first step, saying to myself, "No I do not want to live here. I want to live a linear life. I want to move" was the best one. I revisit these places but on a vertical spiral. The spiral goes up--because I choose for it to go up. When I see the broken places from a higher place, I can see where I need to ask for help to fix them: that river is choked with mud, these busted trees are piled too high for light to shine on the saplings. And then the river flows and the trees grow and I go up again. When I see that space again I see something else that needs adjusting so that light can shine and water can move.

But it has to be a choice I make. No one can do it for me.

Relevant Reading
ST: DS9 - Emissary
ST: DS9 - Time is Linear, Pt2 (Youtube video)
You Choose to Exist Here: Reliving Deep Space Nine
Acts 17:26-28
How the Truth Sets You Free

Edited to add: I think the entire country is living in a place of trauma. I won't speculate on when the trauma occurred but what is happening now is a symptom of so many years of ignoring a huge festering wound where, whether we recognize it or not, we still collectively, exist--live, move, and have our being.

We need to move, collectively, to a better space or else nothing we do will change. We need to choose to not exist as a traumatized people.