I remember thinking, when my grandmother died, that thank goodness it seemed all her kids had partners to help them through her death, people who it seemed matched them well. Because for as long as I can remember they had had very few of those.

Then, not even a year later, that same partner killed my aunt.

And we talk, the surviving members of my family, about how wonderful it is, and powerful, that these people have been drawn into our lives (my uncle’s partner, my own partner, my dad’s, etc.) and I can’t help thinking, if these people are really drawn to us, what does that mean for HIM? For THAT ONE?

That search for meaning with regards to violence… Yeah… I don’t know where the boundaries are or should be. I really don’t.

Do we find meaning in the violence? Can we? Should we? I don’t know. I’ve been too busy trying to find meaning in where it left me.

I know this sounds kind of superficial, but your comment really reminded me of Harry Potter, Tyrone. Assuming you’re familiar with the series… there’s a part at the end when Harry can’t conjure up any happiness for his Patronus, but Luna reminds him that they, his friends, are still there. Still fighting. For some reason that scene helps me function. Which is kinda fucked up. You’d think cosmic battles between good and evil would just make me despair about violence even *more.* But it is what it is, I guess. It might just be the feeling of thinking “beyond” myself–beyond this one perspective– that makes mind-numbing cruelty easier to deal with. There’s something meditative about children’s lit..

and thanks too for the thoughtful comments above – nezua, thank you so, so much for this:

“violence, as i see it, was not what hurt me. not in the important ways.

it was always…the cruelty. the willful cruelty behind the kinetic occurrence; that malevolent human consciousness…it was becoming aware of that force, that this world contained such a spirit, and that this life was so open and without limit that this terrible spirit could be brought to bear upon me with more weight than water, with more strength than even my most trusted protector would summon. it was that terrible knowledge that marked me.”

– and also for the observation that “the suffering i go through always carves a channel through which i can connect to humanity better…in the sense of “positive worth” in a long picture, yeah. in the sense of “deserved” or “good for me,” no.”

The idea of meaning in violence itself is somewhere my brain can’t really go, but i do find meaning in survival. Spiritual survival, not only physical survival – maintaining the ability to love, feel compassion and connection, care for ourselves and each other, resist the terror and theft of humanity that can come with violence, with someone (or some institution) “declaring your life of no significant meaning, and acting upon that.” The knowledge that so many of us do resist and survive, in various ways, and that resistance and survival can strengthen people and communities and movements even in the face of great violence – that’s what feels meaningful to me.

So where do you go from there?

i see meaning as coming about from a moment, every moment. like you say, “by walking it.” by how we engage it, how we choose to see it..the great thing about this is that it is never over, or has never ended yet. finding meaning in sunlight, in wax, in dust, in cleaning the tub, in resting a moment, in refusing to rest….we are given so many ways to create it, and recreate it.

i can relate to things like being choked into consciousness by hands in the dark. yet in every case…violence, as i see it, was not what hurt me. not in the important ways.

it was always…the cruelty. the willful cruelty behind the kinetic occurrence; that malevolent human consciousness…it was becoming aware of that force, that this world contained such a spirit, and that this life was so open and without limit that this terrible spirit could be brought to bear upon me with more weight than water, with more strength than even my most trusted protector would summon. it was that terrible knowledge that marked me.

violence is everywhere. in fact, you cannot build a strong home without exerting violent force upon the world. eating a meal is violence. cleaning a room displaces so many organisms and changes their lives forever.

“and it is not even that i cannot find meaning in violence. it is that i am afraid to. if i say that rape, my husband choking me in the middle of the night, all of the times i didnt say no because i was too tired, all of the times that someone yelled at me with a gun in one hand a license to kill in the other, all of the micro aggressions, and ridicule, my dad’s ptsd and schizophrenia, all of it wrapped in one ball, if i say that all of it has meaning other than survival…i am opening the door to justifying the violence in the first place. to letting my x be right and he was really doing it for my own good. doing it so that my life had meaning.”

i love “all the micro aggressions.” those spiritual paper cuts that leave you so raw.

i am struggling to grasp what “meaning” means in the passage above. does ‘meaning,’ here mean “positive worth”? in that sense, i’d say sure. i cannot see in your heart, but for myself the suffering i go through always carves a channel through which i can connect to humanity better. some of that may be what i choose to do with the pain. though…i think this shape of awareness is part of who i happen to be. not sure of that stuff. but yes…in the sense of “positive worth” in a long picture, yeah. in the sense of “deserved” or “good for me,” no. violence not good for me. “meaning” in the sense of “fitting into a larger picture and thus might be judged in context of everything else,” sure. in the sense of “fair” or “right,” no. some people have such violence brought up on them, obviously, that they don’t even make it past a few years. ‘meaning’ in terms of “sense,” no. it seems to me violence can as easily chew up a “good” person as a “bad,” at just the right time, or not. (i think now of those bombs planted by the polish resistence under hitler’s car that didn’t go off but could have saved so many lives if they did.)

thanks for the thoughtful post…