The Play’s Impact
It’s been several nights since I took this picture, the cast, jubilant, after the performance. The nights have capped days of long and deep reflection, exploring not only the stories the scenarios told but also a question that reaches farther back than immediate response. What is the deepest human need? You might think food, clean water, shelter, safety and security. And these are human needs to be sure, but the deepest, most important need, the one that is essential for survival, is Connection. It is not a question of “who is near me,” who is in proximity, but of “who will act with me.”
Early humans depended on Connection with others to hunt, gather, prepare and share food and child rearing, organize clothing and shelter. Being denied the resources and protection of Connection would most likely result in death. Over time, as living conditions improved, this type of survival Connection became less and less behaviorally important, but nonetheless remained as a functional artifact in the DNA.
The Play’s Impact
As I remembered the play; thought about the play; wrote about the play; I kept thinking: How do we stop this? What I was seeing was the behaviors of the characters toward one particular individual. Seeing it this way was complicated by the fact that I knew some of the cast personally. I knew how wonderful they were as people and I thought and thought about what acting in this particular play might do to them, to how they saw themselves, that ephemeral thing we call Identity.
But I also realized, underneath all the words I used to describe it, how much it physically and emotionally hurt. Truthfully, I draw away, however reluctantly, from trying to find the words because truly I think there are none. Truly I think this level, like trauma, is beyond human comprehension, too tiny and delicate to perceive.
But I also wondered: How do we Really Fix This. What I saw was that characters banded together as groups and mobbed their target, taking advantage of vulnerabilities and weaknesses. For days I muddled in Cognitive Dissonance, the state where one input directly contradicts another. My mind would not resolve the two states of wonderful people behaving horribly. Why?
The Why was not about the play itself, because the play bore highlights of pure genius in that it hit the issues precisely as I knew them from direct experience. And this is very hard to do, because this preciseness is not often encountered in casual conversation. And the recommendations were those that are recommended by the Mental Health Community over all. The play and the production accomplished their missions.
So it wasn’t about that. The question was more at What could make a group of ordinary people turn savage, turn on one of their own and pursue the activity to its terminus. That was the question: Put simply, Why did they do that?
Prehistory
So I thought: What would cause the most Fear? My current conclusion is that it’s Abandonment. Because in prehistory, Abandonment meant certain death, from cold, from starvation, from becoming prey. And that Fear, Fear of the loss of Connection, is so old, it is deep-seated and doesn’t usually show up cognitively. Instead, it shows up physically.
If we look at scenario 1 through this lens, loss of Connection, we see Willem isolated in a corner playing video games. Willem was once part of the group of five, but losing his girlfriend has been terrible for him and he has retreated into himself and his games as solace for his wounds.
If we look at it from the group’s perspective, we see that they see they have lost a friend, a colleague, a teammate: they have lost a close Connection. They can see him; he is there but he is not “with” them. He is some place far away in his own mind and grief although he is physically present.
There is no logic that arises to say that the loss of a member is important. Instead there is only the Fear, that deep, historic, visceral, understanding that Connection is absolutely necessary for survival. And so they express that Fear, becoming more and more savage in their assault as the Fear deepens with every movement Willem makes away from them.
But there is a whole other side to this scenario. One that relies on those deep-seated understandings, but uses them to create protection for them, enabling them to present the play while keeping those experiences that make them who they are intact.
Protection: The Magic of Love
From when I first entered the rehearsal space that Saturday, I felt openness, space, ease among the people. It felt nice. Over time and interactions with people, it continued to feel nice. I didn’t put any words or stories to this at the time, just followed along on the feeling of niceness. It was comfortable; Pablo made me feel really at home and didn’t make me feel like I had a spotlight on me.
So it was against this background that a pattern emerged. But the words seemed to fit naturally with what I was feeling and so it took me a while to get it, and then another while to figure out how to talk about it.
The pattern was that everyone was talking about how wonderful the team was. Not the “teamwork” as one might expect, but the team members themselves. The people who made the production happen with love and dedication. That’s what was the subtle music for the group. They loved and respected each other deeply. And it showed, it showed in how they talked about each other, how they moved together. And I kept hearing it over and over and I just didn’t see it, because it fit the experience I was literally basking in so comfortably. It was too much of an overlay for me to see the distinction.
And then someone said it directly to me; it wasn’t just the casual hearing, the way things come up in friendly, casual conversation. And I thought, If this person whose opinion and ideas I value so highly is insisting about this, there has to be something I’m missing.
So I turned it around, and instead of using my understanding of teams and the ease in the space of happy teams, I looked instead at what people were actually saying. This was something different from your average really good team. People talked about the team. That is: They Talked. About it.
I suddenly saw it as a circle, protection within the circle’s space. The cast and everyone were working with some extremely powerful material. There was danger in the exposure that maybe no one said and no one talked about or maybe they did. Because they intuitively built this really close group, a group where the Connection and the proximity protected them from the often-devasting material they were enacting. And they intuitively kept reinforcing the Connections, drawing on their power for survival, not just physically but psychologically, emotionally. At the rehearsal that Saturday, Ebony’s response to Ramirez’ loss was so deeply felt by her and by me that I was crying with her. How many times were there moments like this for people over the days and weeks of rehearsals, of meetings, of decisions and actions.
Would I know all this this way if I hadn’t been there? If the Universe hadn’t conspired in some fashion to put all the right options in front of me? No, I wouldn’t. Because observations on this level of nuance and understanding can’t be represented in words because they don’t have sound or feeling.
But What If They Didn’t Do That?
But, and this is the point of this Reflection, really: Suicide Prevention is doing what it can with the current model, and everyone agrees there is room for improvement, new ways of looking at things that can perhaps go beyond assisting individuals in immediate crisis. What if we look at stopping the behaviors that stress and challenge people who are struggling, people who are vulnerable? In 4 Suicides, all four scenarios used some form of abusive behavior to push the person beyond their ability to cope at that moment.
But what if they didn’t do that? What if they understood that their behavior was saying they were afraid because they had lost their friend, their teammate, their comrade? What if what they were really saying was, We have lost you. Come back, please. We need you. What if they knew what they were really saying with the attacks? Would they change to protect their loved ones from the final escape?
People really do need to know things like this. That some of the things we do are ancient, historic, literally baked-in to our DNA. They need to know they can change their behavior and prevent bad things like losing loved ones from happening.
Is It Worth Changing?
I have a song for people who may think that understanding behavior is not useful as a Suicide Prevention method. I wrote it for my baby Zeke; he was 12; he was feral and he added so much to my life. It’s called The Very Last Time. Think on it maybe because “gone” in this world is “forever.”
