Beneath the surface

Muhammad, my 34 year old tour guide in Sarajevo, showed me the shrapnel he has had in his leg since he was hit by mortar shells in the early days of the Bosnian war. He was a bored 10 year old boy who didn't truly understand why they had moved to the basement and who lost the blissful naiveté of childhood when he snuck out one night to kick around his soccer ball. While Muhammad has turned his shrapnel and all that accompanied his experiences of the 4 year war into his passion and life's work, I realized that all of us have shrapnel of sorts that we may not be dealing with so positively.

Shrapnel is just under the surface. It is the residual effect of a trauma or deep hurt, a forever shadow that can cast doubt, fear, uncertainty, dread and undermine our self-confidence. We can forget about it for long periods of time until our body or psyche gets rattled by certain triggers. Some people, like Muhammad, have found a way to excise the spot and thus have a sense of healing and relief. Some people spend their life trying to ignore it or push it farther down.

How we handle our individual shrapnel has helped define who we have become. The fact that we all have hurt and pain should bring us together, but too often separates and isolates us. We make our anguish a secret, giving it more power. We are protective of our own suffering and find it hard to reach out and be vulnerable. Couples and families who struggle with fertility, addiction, mental illness, financial insecurity, well, all the troubles of life, either deal with the issues and resulting shrapnel out in the open and together or send up splitting apart.

Muhammed wears his shrapnel as a point of pride. He survived. As we walked by buildings still bearing mortar and bullet holes, he talked about the collective shrapnel that Bosnians share, how coming out the other side of the war has made them a stronger people. Power of all kinds and access to it is what universally divides us. Events like the Bosnian war, like 9/11 and the current fires in Canada provide common emotional shrapnel to a neighborhood, community, a nation and can bring us together one minute and, like the families mentioned above, separate us as we each deal with the consequences in our own way.

Being with Muhammad was humbling, fun, somber, eye-opening and challenging. It was a good afternoon that entertained, educated and made me think. Now I pass a piece of my vacation along to you. Shrapnel is very personal no matter how it got there. This week let’s all take a stab at facing one piece of shrapnel with the aim of changing its role in our lives. Let’s be like Muhammad.

Marilyn