Patrick De Vleeschauwer :
After two pandemic years, the world awoke to an unexpected new reality. An unimaginable brutality flows through the world. We look in shock. We are suddenly at the barbarity, human tragedy, and massive destruction sparked by one man’s orders.
An autocratic leader became the most disruptive man of the 21st century. He tries to redraw the map of Europe based on the dogmatic perspective of tunnel vision.
Many people frantically try to board a train heading west toward Europe. Millions of refugees flee their homes. Trying to keep warm, seek food and safety, a disabled, exhausted, elderly woman cries after days in her wheelchair: “I just want to lie down and sleep.” Millions more will likely follow, predicts the UN.
In the twentieth century, many European psychologists fled the brutalities of the Nazis for the U.S. There was one who could not escape: Psychiatrist Victor Frankl. was confined in the concentration camps build by the Nazis.
Maybe we can learn something from his great insights. As an attribute to his great soul, I will share some quotes that might empower us while traumatized, cold, and unaccompanied children are again lost; while children leave their fathers behind in the train station; while mothers leave their country not knowing if they will ever see their house or husband again.
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me”, said Victor Frankl.
Europe chooses immediately to open its borders unconditionally for all the victims. Buses are waiting at the European borders to pick up the refugees and distribute them over many countries. Europe chooses to act more united than it ever did.
NATO chooses to respond connected on one line. The Europe-U.S. connection chooses to be stronger than ever before. The UN chooses to condemn the situation with almost one voice.
People choosing to oppose the false narrative of the lone autocrat are locked up in prison. It seems that our choice for human connection is our supreme emotional strength.
The emotional situation becomes worse by the day. Fear is in the sleepless eyes of the Ukrainian people. Anger runs through the restless and confused mind of millions. A new nuclear disaster threatens Eurasia, a new Chernobyl disaster, by destruction of Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant-or will it be by the use of nuclear weapons?
Maternity hospitals are bombarded. Cities full of living humans are torn apart. The emotional life of the Ukrainian people changed overnight. A deep emotional drama unfolds on the Eurasian continent. All the emotional tips and tricks fall short for such a catastrophe.
What can we do when our sleep is disrupted for weeks? What can we do when fear and anger colonize our mind. Many brave soldiers will die and never see their children again. Many women and children will lose their husbands and fathers. Generations will suffer the tragedy caused by one selfish leader supported by his oligarchs.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”, advised Victor Frankl.
All the women and children fleeing Ukraine and entering Europe receive money, food, and the best possible health care. Hundreds of entrepreneurs and big companies leave Russia in the hope that the people will awaken and see the reality created by their leader, who has cruelly fashioned a political system to eliminate opposition and reality itself; who has the power to cause profound human loss and misery. Millions of lives could be destroyed to satisfy his Cold War obsession.
I still listen to the stories of the children who saw their houses being bombed by Hitler’s Nazis. Now, 80 years later, they still remember many of the details. The young children will remember how we choose to respond now. Emotional memories are made for their lifetime.
“In the concentration camps, … in this living laboratory and on the testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentials within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions”, observed Victor Frankl.
“The more one forgets himself-by giving himself to a cause he serves or another person he loves-the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself”, said Victor Frankl. It could as well have been said by the great humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow.
A dark summer awaits for Europe after two pandemic years, while energy prices are exploding. The emotional challenge will have an extremely high impact on our mental well-being. Will we become the examples of a new, free generation that has chosen human connection as its greatest strength? This could become the highest possibility humanity can give. Which potential will we actualize?
(Patrick De Vleeschauwer, Drs., created a blueprint for a new learning, “Embodied Emotional Intelligence”: how to live together with eight billion vulnerable bodies with precious minds on a breathtakingly beautiful but extremely fragile planet).