52 for 52. Instalment 3

52 for 52. Instalment 3.

This weekend we saw One Life – the new movie starring Anthony Hopkins about the work of Nicholas Winton in the second world war.?

And in the midst of tears streaming down my face with the sheer scale of his impact, the boldness of his belief one clear, loud sentence started echoing in my mind.?

“In a world where we are so focussed on our internal wars how the hell will we know how to step up when external wars arrive”.?

In my own work to live with Complex PTSD and my previous work speaking into Resilience I went deep into the work of David Kessler in his book Finding Meaning - sensing immediately how understanding grief gives us powerful reference points in navigating any sudden change that removes the life we’d imagined having.?And the work of Victor Frankl – yes the book Man’s Search for Meaning – but I lost myself in his work after that book was released. The work buried within Logos Therapy, a powerful way of shifting out of depression, PTSD and addiction before the world went crazy over (indeed had access to) psylocibin and micro-dosing psychedelics.??That deep dive linked me into the work of Dr Michael Ungar who has some of the most revealing research on how people really do breakthrough and breakout, creating an argument against the rugged individualism that has its grips firmly around humanity’s throat in this era and age.

This movie, One Life, reminded me of the keys from that obsessive deep dive trying to understand more about my own mind and how to keep out of the clutches of hard core medical treatment.?

• That too often we try to assign meaning to events that create seismic changes in our world.?When in reality those events are simply that, events. That we, in our obsession with meaning, crave understanding of the meaning of events that have none, and in that pursuit obliterate the one thing that can restrengthen our foundations.?Acceptance.
• The cornerstone of the success of Lagos Therapy is to shift into service of someone outside of yourself.?To reconnect to something that is bigger, or ‘other’, than you.?For addicts and prisoners – and for many of our children - this can be as simple as getting a dog for a pet. For many of us it is literally finding something that gives us meaning outside of ourselves. And
• The most brutal existence in the human experience is to be invisible, to be unseen.?It is almost as if there is a chemical reaction that exists in the moment when we are seen and we understand that we have truly been seen, that fuses hope, possibility, and conviction together and ignites belief and action to levels that outstrip anything we had ever imagined possible.?

Which is the power in the story of Nicholas Winton.?A Stockbroker in London who volunteered to do a week of ‘admin’ in Czechoslovakia as the Nazi’s accelerated their move through eastern Europe.?Who saw in the face of every child refugee an inexcusable state of play.?Who would not accept that the problem was too big and the system too complex.?With grit and determination – and the photos of thousands of children driving him -?he simply took the next step.?He didn’t try to break the systems.?He didn’t rail against them. He was unassuming yet ruthless in unlocking everything needed to get the children out and found a way.?One simple step at a time, one after the other, until 669 of those children were safely in London with foster families.?

He didn’t try to find meaning or to make sense of the events leading into his week in Prague.?He saw it for what it was – inexcusable AND unchangeable – and simply decided that the sequence of events could not be changed, but the outcomes could.

Nicholas Winton did that for no regard for himself; it was completely in service to others – the core tenant of Logos Therapy and Viktor Frankl’s work.?Which also centred on acceptance of how things are / were and not wishing for different – a deep sense of acceptance. Nicholas’ capacity to do this came from one singular focus – the faces of those children.?

And most of all Nicholas Winton revealed the truth of Dr Michael Ungar’s work. That it is not rugged individualism, tenacity or sheer grit that is behind the ability of people to break out of their circumstances.?He has proven that every single person who made it ‘out’ against all odds had someone who saw them – from a random interaction with one other person to a life long advocate, those that make it out – who we applaud for their grit and resilience – not one of them did so without being seen, even if only for a moment.

Nicholas Winton saw every single one of those children.?It is the undercurrent you feel of ghosts needed to be seen; he needed to know that what he did made a difference. He needed to know those children made it through.?Not for ego, or profile, but simply because he had seen them, each of them, and needed to be able to see into them again.?

And so the question swirling in my mind is this - in our pursuit to see deeply into ourselves, to unlock and heal the trauma and experiences we hold, to self realise and self actualise, can we still lift our eyes and expand our view to see deeply into the people surrounding us??Would we know what to do if wars, or our own version of hell arrived??Would we be able to invoke both the wisdom and the experience of those that have come before us to step in, deem it possible, and make a difference?

How can we become the people who balance working through our internal wars with being able to see the people caught in the external wars - those who just may need to be seen by us.

Jacqueline x

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This year I turned 52, making a deeply personal commitment to write each week in a blog series called '52 For 52'.?Not SEO enriched, not to hold a call to action, simply to express where my lived experiences take and, often, push me, to explore the thinking that bubbles in shower moments and long walks and in the midst of great books.?Soon these will all be published via a dedicated blog site, but for now, I am sharing them with you here each Monday, as I build the rhythm and the cadence that will edge me ever closer to realising my deepest dreams.