Enough about you, let’s talk about me.
Once upon a time I was a god.
Don’t believe me?
Does this sound like something a god could do?
The god walks confidently into a room full of wailing and crying people. Grandma has just died and they have no power to change the evil that has just entered their lives. Demons have come and taken someone they love. But their prayers have been answered because the hotline to heaven called 911 has brought them someone with the power to save her.
As the god enters the house their eyes fill with hope. The god will make it all better. He has the power of life and death at his fingertips. Surely he will bestow life back into Grandma. They reassure each other excitedly, “It’s OK, the paramedics are here!”
The god moves calmly and purposefully. He doesn’t run or appear distressed. His calm demeanor quiets the tumultuous scene that was here before and the family watches him, hoping, praying, pleading, for a miracle.
The god surveys the scene asking quick and pointed questions from the family as he prepares his magical tools and then suddenly he is all action. He removes lightning from the satchel at his hip and rubs his magical paddles together as he intones sacred words, “Get the epinephrine ready.” “Start me a line.” “I need some Lido now!” and his minions scramble to fulfill his desires as quickly as possible.
The god yells loudly at the demons that have taken Grandma from life, “Clear!”
Grandma’s body leaps into the air as the god’s lightning strikes and repels the demons within her.
The god pauses and looks into the screen on his lightning generator. He doesn’t like what he sees and the god repeats his command more fiercely this time, “Clear!”
Once again Grandma’s lifeless body springs into the air as death fights to retain control of her but is losing its grip due to the mighty power of the god’s lightning.
The god, angered by the stubbornness of death, recharges his lightning and his generator whirs with excitement. As the sound of electricity gaining strength reaches a crescendo, the god announces one final time with authority, “Clear!”
Grandma leaps from the ground once more and the god is pleased as he looks into his monitor and sees life entering her lifeless body. He inserts a tube into her lungs and he breathes for her as she slowly gains strength.
The god puts life-giving chemicals into her blood to keep the demons of death at bay until Grandma is strong enough to fight them on her own. He wraps her in sheets and blankets and his minions carry Grandma to his brilliantly lit, shining chariot and they take her to a tower in the sky where special servants called nurses and doctors will ensure that the god’s efforts were not wasted.
Life continues. Grandma will live. The god has defeated death… again.
About Gods
I’m a former paragod, or as most of you know us, a paramedic.
Some folks call us ditch doctors, paramagics, shock jockeys, or just ambulance drivers. We make a living rescuing souls from the clutches of death. Saving lives is all in a day’s work for us. I’m sure you’re thinking that we must be some of the happiest and satisfied people on the planet. After all, it must be so good to be able to save people all day long. But the truth is the opposite.
Sadly, too often the god does not win the battle with death and he must suffer the shame and guilt of failure. He must look into the mirror and play the “what if” game with himself.
What if I hadn’t fumbled with the paddles, or in today’s world the patches, so much. What if I had taken a different route to the residence. What if I had studied more? Maybe there was something I missed. Could it have been a diabetic problem? Maybe just a little D50 would have brought her back.
In short the god puts himself through hell, tortures himself mercilessly, because he failed and he has been taught that he should never fail. In the infamous words of Gene Krantz of Apollo 13 fame, “Failure is not an option.”
But we do fail, frequently, and in the end it is all failure because everyone eventually dies. We lie to ourselves and pretend that we save lives when most of the time what we really do is prolong suffering because a lot of the time, more than we’d like to admit, Grandma never returns even though her body is still alive in the hospital. Her mind is somewhere else, irretrievable.
I wonder often if consciousness chained to a body it no longer has a use for is in a kind of hell when this happens. Does the soul have to wait for its body to die before it can go to its final rest? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
In reality paramedics, firefighters, cops, soldiers, sailors, and all front line professionals are some of the most psychologically haunted and tortured people on the planet.
Statistically Speaking
You can find statistics from the National Institute of Health, the Center for Disease Control, the American Hospital Association, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and thousands of studies and theses about the prevalence of depression, anxiety, suicide, exhaustion, frustration, burnout, divorce, domestic violence and every other mental health issue known to mankind and how they appear with vigor in the lives of societies protectors.
No two studies will agree. They all have different percentages and prevalences. But the gist of the data is obvious. Minor gods, like paramedics, are mentally ill and they are suffering.
Our job is to protect you… and we know we’re failing.
We can’t save lives.
We can’t bring the dead back.
We can’t keep the bad guys from trafficking children.
We can’t stop the endless tide of viruses, bacteria, stroke, diabetes, cancer, car accidents, alzheimers, heart disease, violence and just plain stupidity that kills humans off like bugs sprayed with Raid.
We spend our lives trying to learn and grow, to gain skills that will protect, and save our fellow humans. We delude ourselves into thinking that there is a way to overcome the pain, suffering and evil in the world if we simply study enough, prepare enough, work hard enough or become fast enough.
We’re fighting against nature and we can’t win.
As it turns out, the number one cause of death in the world is birth!
Little “g” Gods
Every time we feel good about something reality comes back with a vengeance and reminds us of our own impotence. We are little “g” gods. We are not big “G” gods.
We expect ourselves to perform the miracles of a big “G” God when we are merely idiot deities, incapable, incompetent, impure, impotent images of big “G” God.
I spent 30 years seeing the best and the worst of society, battling depression, divorce, bankruptcy, guilt, shame, anger, sleep deprivation, fatigue, and more.
After my divorce I lived alone in a teepee for three winters struggling with… how should I say it? Issues. I got burnt out, tried to make it with a “real” job three times and still went back to hell. I was mad at the world. I almost knocked out my boss, who was also a deputy sheriff, got in fights with my co-workers, alienated just about everyone I thought I loved, tried to drown myself in the job by working two EMS jobs at the same time, sometimes pulling 72 hour shifts which, if you know anything about EMS is the equivalent of never going home, and nearly killing my patients, my partners and my bosses in the process.
I had anger issues. I was depressed. I was mentally ill and I still am in comparison with the so-called “normal” people out there.
I’m not “normal.”
But I have a secret.
I’ve been to hell… and back.
I’ve got something that “normal” Americans and even most therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, or even doctors don’t.
Don’t get me wrong. Mental health professionals do wonderful things, they can give us clues or insights from talking to others who’ve been to hell, but unless they’ve been to hell they can’t possibly tell us the way out. We, who’ve been there, have to take responsibility for each other and send down a ladder to those trapped in the basement.
I travelled through hell for 30 years and I’ve made it back again. I know that I’ll never be “normal.” Anyone who has seen and done the things I have for as long as I have can’t ever be “normal” again even if the therapists tell you that you can be. But that’s OK. I have a map to hell that you can’t find on Google maps. You have to have lived it to know it.
I heard a story once of an Inuit shaman named Igjugaarjuk. It was the story of how he became a shaman for his village.
In an eskimo village the shaman is the therapist, doctor, and advisor all at once. They aren’t “normal” people and that’s why they are valued. He said that the only way to become a shaman, one who knows the things that are hidden, is through suffering.
Everywhere you see immense suffering you will also see intense faith… not in everyone… but there are always those who refuse to capitulate to denying God and their faith seems to increase boundlessly the more they are tortured for it. The Gulags of Soviet Russia come to mind.
Sorry Gen Z but watching life on videos is different from living life “for real” and not all information is on the internet.
Life must be lived to be of value, not simply watched, and suffering is the path to wisdom.
Some of us suffer voluntarily and some of us have it forced upon us but we all suffer. Maybe “normal” isn’t so “normal” after all. Maybe our society is missing something important by placing so much emphasis on being “happy” all the time and having “fun” as the ultimate goals in life. Continual happiness is not normal, despite what the advertisers say.
And if there is one thing in life that I have absolutely no doubts about it’s this… once you’ve lived with death as your co-worker you’ll never be what Americans call “normal” again.
Fortunately, I don’t have to be “normal” like most people. I only have to be “normal” like people who have seen reality without the rose colored glasses. My fellow first responders are the people who have looked into the abyss, as Nietzsche has said, and have had it look back at them.
It doesn’t make sense to compare ourselves to people who have never experienced what we, on the front lines, have experienced. We don’t believe that simply using your correct pronouns is going to stop all the bad in the world from happening and we’re not hiding our heads in the sand hoping it will go away.
We look death in the eyes and fight with him. Sometimes we win. Mostly we lose. But we never quit on a patient or a victim or a brother in arms. The only place we quit is on ourselves when we are alone with our thoughts and memories.
You can’t make an apple an orange. You can’t regain the innocence of childhood after you’re grown. You can’t make a butterfly into a moth again. We’ve risen above that perspective.
We are the ones who have volunteered to confront the shadows of humanity and we suffer because of it.
But we must remember that we volunteered to suffer for our society. We take pride in the fact that the job is difficult, most people can’t do it, and we are mentally stronger than they are. We’re the sheep dogs, they’re the sheep. I hate to say it that way but it’s the best analogy I know of.
We are stuck in a society that perceives us as ill because we “know” the truth. Everything dies. Life exists on the bones of the dead. Time erases all things. Wolves are everywhere. Ultimately our sacrifices are meaningless, the universe collapses and we all die.
That’s the scientific version of the truth.
Morbid and depressing isn’t it?
But there is more…
Points of View
Although the truth is morbid and depressing there’s another side to the story. A side of the story that I know you’ve heard before but you’ve rejected because of the morbidity and depression that you’ve encountered in life. The truth is that evil is everywhere and we will never defeat it… but we can understand it.
The world is a different place for each one of us. My world is not your world. Your world may overlap mine but your point of view reveals aspects of the world that I can’t see no matter how hard I try and vice versa.
If I show you a pinecone you may describe something circular with rough edges and overlapping scales spreading out from a central point. I’ll disagree with you and say the pinecone is oblong with layers of scales in ascending circles and terminating in a point on one end and blunt on the other.
You’re looking at the base of the pinecone and I’m looking at the side. Who’s right?
Both of us are correct but if we assume there is only one correct world view we’ll never agree. We can argue about it… or we can understand it. Understanding this other point of view contains the secret that will allow us to persevere in our missions with enthusiasm and fortitude. It will allow us to forgive ourselves for being idiot deities.
So imagine you are a big “G” God.
If a child dies from cancer is it a tragedy? They’re coming home to where they can’t suffer again.
If someone’s Grandmother passes away after years of suffering and chronic pain and illness, is that a bad thing? She’s being given a new body that is pain free and young.
If you are tortured and beaten and thrown into prison for crimes you did not commit… then hung by nails driven through your hands and feet on a cross until you drowned in your own body fluids… was there no purpose to it?
You see where I’m going with this.
Scroll… if you’re scared. But someday you’ll have to deal with it and this is the ONLY point of view that makes any sense to a logical mind that can still see a trace of the light that shines through the darkness of our world.
The answer to meaningless suffering and death is that it isn’t meaningless. It has a purpose. Its purpose is to open our minds to wisdom.
Igjugaarjuk made a living suffering for his village… isn’t that what we do… and can’t we bring some of the hard-earned wisdom we’ve found back to our villages? Maybe the best thing we can do is to let our village know that it’s OK to not be happy all the time.
Part of the wisdom I’ve found is that even though He lets us suffer God does care about us.
He cares so much that He became man, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day, willingly, voluntarily, to save us from ourselves.
You can believe that or not but before you toss it aside as a meaningless fable created by people who delude themselves I challenge you to find a better reason for why people choose to suffer for each other.
Front line professionals are fulfilling His mission by willingly suffering for others. We are emulating in real life the character and compassion of the One who created us. We are striving to become the thing that we were created in the image of.
That’s what I believe.
But why believe me? I’m just a dummygod.