[Music]
when I was a boy I was told by men with
guns have smoke cigarette and liquor
breath that a normal childhood was given
a five-year-old boy a gun and ordered
him to shoot with his eyes closed but
the boy who just witnessed the death of
his family sure not grief because the
grief was to be weak and being weak was
a death sentence to survive when a gun
pointed to my head I was taught but the
effect of trauma does not linger like
time it passes leaving behind no
evidence or trace its ass their life
their normal became mine and I suppress
or else Immanuel Kant wrote that it is
our duty to improve ourselves but how
can we do that as individuals or as a
collective when were still prisoners of
our past when individuals or society
fails to process trauma The effect of it
lingers even behind cracks in the
foundation of who we are what they do
after whether the process that trauma or
suppress it then becomes their version
of normal but what happens when your
version of normal is just plainly wrong
take for example this country we went
from suppressing Native Americans to
enslaving Africans to excluding Chinese
immigrants to putting japanese-americans
and interment camps to excluding Jews
fleeing political versailles seeking
political asylum
when fleeing the Holocaust when we
examined these historic trauma we think
we've come the long way
we think we've succeeded after all
slavery ended and we defeated the Nazis
but if we were to take a closer look and
evaluate the remnant for was normal in
the past and it's affecting us today and
perhaps we would be in a much better
place to ensure that these events do not
occur again but because we haven't we
are now separating babies from their
parents at the border this trauma have
been locked up in cages and have a
lingering effect on their lives
it'll take not just time the specific
treatment for these kids
two years ago my ex-girlfriend of almost
three years lost her grandfather she was
upset she was sad she was angry I told
her that I was sorry for her loss here's
what I didn't do I didn't hug her I
didn't tell her that I loved her or that
everything would be okay why would I I
was taught but the effect of trauma
there's not linger my time it passes so
I thought she would be okay I give her
the space that I thought she needed
without asking her what she wanted a few
years a couple months later she told me
that she was annoyed that I was
insensitive me insensitive
how dare she I thought how dare she
impose her standard of grief on me see
from five to nine I was taught that the
effect of trauma there's not linger it
passes with time and over time it
disappears
but for the first time in my life I
evaluated myself I took a mirror and saw
for the first time that the lingering
effect of trauma
I saw the cracks in the foundation of
who I was so I went back to my
ex-girlfriend and I apologized I
apologize for my lack of understanding I
apologized for not being emotional I
famed and you found understanding of my
inability to emotionally connect with
her and I believed it I believed every
single word that I told her and that was
it
from then on I wanted her to move on
I've apologized I've done my job and
life is supposed to go back to normal
but it wasn't in Colombia at a
conversation and hostel with new friends
talking about the current state of the
world the kind of conversation often had
over plenty of cheap beers and Cuba
libres when all of a sudden my black
European friend stated how difficult it
was for her as an educated woman but in
nine years the educated black woman with
a non-european name to get a job back
home and the perfectly yet - dismissed
response a white countryman responded
that he too doesn't have a job he had
somehow managed to distort her point of
view
she continued but that's not what I was
getting at and his response was well not
everything is about race I feel like
people should take responsibility for
their actions and not blame something
that happened just
specific groups of people 100 or 200
years ago sit in there I didn't have a
well-thought-out response to what this
diversely international groups of
travelers were saying but to drive his
point home he used the US as an example
after 150 years after slavery ended
America elected its first black
president I wish I could have told him
that the election of President Barack
Obama does not yield generational trauma
and that there was a mistaken assumption
to think that he did but I didn't tell
him that that conversation however it's
a microcosm of how we as society often
deals with problems of the past
what is generational trauma how do you
explain to someone born today that an
event that happened a hundred years two
hundred years before they were born
still have an effect on who they are
today the answer to that depends on who
you ask
researchers will tell you that the mark
left behind by previous generation is
called epigenetics the process by which
our DNA is modified without changing our
DNA code on either researcher nor
geneticist but imagine a child who grew
up in a domestic-abuse household
imagined that child as an adult in a
relationship either the abuser too
abused
should we tell that child or now adult
that the trauma that they experienced as
a child did not happen to them directly
that happened to their parent she which
tell that child that it is their
responsibility it is their fault
for getting into that relationship in
the first place what are the things in
our everyday lives that we can connect
back to ground great-grandparents that
we have never met one of the things that
we do as a family that we often just
chug up to tradition but we still
continue to do it it's still important
for Allah in our lives now imagine that
same child as a parent how do you think
their child would fare that is called
generational trauma see unlike what I
was taught in the jungles of Civil War
Sierra Leone the passage of time alone
does not heal generational trauma it
takes time and we as a society should
address it thank you
[Applause]