Loss And Continuum

"Humans. Your griefs, your pains, fix you to moments in the past long gone. You're like butterflies with your wings pinned."

Before sending the central protagonists home in an emotionally full episode of Picard, some of the last words of beloved Star Trek character Q. Now, in between some satisfying (if somewhat rushed) conclusions to season arcs and decade-long relationship development, this truth bomb could have flown under the radar. Despite it being the underlying theme of the season, it feels like we could easily miss how that relates to us individually. This is always where Star Trek is at its best.

So firstly, we have to ask - do our griefs fix us to the past? As a former therapist, I would have to say yes in others, but also, it so rings true in my own life. Some people seem to can bury the pain, and some can even use it to propel them forward; however, overall, it seems we are definitely motivated by what has happened to us. Most of us seem to live with an ache, our inner child lost in a thicket of briars, creating an avatar for the world. We try to be whatever we learnt to be to get acceptance from our family or peers. When those masks fail, as they usually do, we enter breakdown, midlife crisis or similar. Alexander Shaia talks about this as the first path in his Quadratos theory - when everything is falling apart. "All of us come to the experience of enormous loss. Whatever we believed would stand forever, burns, trembles and falls. It is precisely at this point that we find ourselves standing on the first path, with all we thought we knew shaken to the core." Often when a client came in, it was at this crisis stage. "Nothing works anymore," was the cry.

Secondly, if our pain keeps us rooted in the past, can we grow? Is there hope for growth? Certainly, there is much anecdotal, if not imperial, evidence that this is so; however it takes an inordinate expenditure of energy and self-motivation. Without a doubt, certain aspects of the pain can be dealt with to enable you to live life again. CBT, for example, is shown to be able to put solutions in that can act as a bandage to get a person moving again. Other talking therapies can help some people pull the past out and look at it in a caring atmosphere, but it can take years of digging and hard work to be successful.

Contrarily, yet coexistent, with this is the Harvard Grant study that declares you can become happier as you get older, irrespective of your upbringing. I presume that this study (all on men and white ones at that) fails to take in abuse and other Trauma in childhood. Even trauma (with a small t) leaves a mark in the body which will not just disappear on its own. Nevertheless, its results say:

First, the most important ingredient for meaning and happiness is loving relationships.

Second… those proudest of their achievements are those most content in their work, not the ones who make the most money.

Third, we can become happier in life as we proceed through it, despite how we started our lives.

Fourth, connection with others and work is essential for joy; and this seems to be increasingly true as one ages.

Fifth, coping well with challenges makes you happier. The key is to replace narcissism with mature coping mechanisms like concerns for others and productive work.

It seems that the evidence is that positive relationships - intimate, personal or professional (i.e. therapist) are the key to freeing us from our past. However much we might run (In Picard's case, to the stars), we will not escape the anchor that holds us trapped.

Another beloved character (Guinan) says to Picard:

"When something inside you is broken, it stays with you. You live in the past until you're able to reconcile it, even if it's painful. You do the work because you want to evolve. I almost forgot how unique that is in the galaxy."

I am sceptical whether this is true for everyone, as it seems that most people just want to get on with their lives and not keep being dragged back there. As we are talking about Star Trek, the first episodes of Deep Space Nine are relevant here too. The soon to be in charge of said station encounters the non-linear beings (who live outside time) as he despairs while being pulled back to the day he lost his wife in an attack by superior foes, 

I don't know if you can understand. I see her like this every time I close my eyes. In the darkness, in the blink of an eye, I see her… like this.

…

Jennifer Prophet: So, you choose to exist here.

[Sisko nods]

Couching it as a choice is hard, though it may seem like that to those outside the pain. How many have heard something along the lines of "You should have got over it by now"!!!

However, Heidi Priebe says.

"As long as there is love there will be grief because grief is love's natural continuation. "

Which is sort of what Vision says in Wandavision, but let's stay in one franchise! Love, in one way, is a choice, but in others, it isn't. To choose to stay in the painful places after love is gone or to mourn the love we should have got as a child. Ultimately, it is to acknowledge the story we got is not the one we thought we should have, the one our inner child knows we deserve. Perhaps we need to get to the place where we can give ourselves the love that was missing or that we had and lost.

Picard has the help of an omnipotent being to access hidden memories, but finally has to forgive himself. To forgive the boy he was and to see that his parents were not who he thought they were. Can we do that for ourselves - with help from community, even online ones, friends or a therapist? 

"Healing starts with telling and accepting the truth" (We The Urban). Come unstuck from what was and return to the now.

Feel the "soft animal of your body", as Mary Oliver calls it, and be here to let it "love what it loves".

Return to the story that is, not the one that has gone.

Live Long and Prosper