How We Turn Our Pain into Our Advantage

(TCU) - Yousef Bashir is a troublesome child who matures into a man to tell his story about the harsh living conditions during the Palestine-Israel conflict. Israel was seen as fighting for their democracy against Palestine and retaliated by occupying parts of Palestine during the war. Yousef’s family happen to be innocent bystanders living peacefully on their farm which was passed down for generations for over 300 years. His story of pain and perseverance brings inspiration to many around the world as they get insight into what is happening to innocent people during the Palestine-Israel conflict. One of the most prominent stories told by Yousef Bashir was when he was shot in his spine by an M-16 gun when he was a teenage boy which changed his life forever. “One shot had caused me to fall paralyzed to the ground, and it had not been my fault. I had done nothing. I was intensely angry about everything (102).” It was a remarkable feat Yousef was able to walk even after several surgeries. He would open his eyes at a waking moment only to scream for nurses to make him go back to sleep. “I wanted to sleep all the time. Sleep was pills, and wakefulness was pain. Every time I woke up, I was so scared and upset because I knew that it would just be moments before the pain hit me again (108).” I reflect on his pain through my own life experience and awareness of the world by remembering the time my appendix burst. The doctor said the pain of an appendix bursting can be the equivalent to a gunshot wound. My mom told me the doctor said “If I didn’t make it to the hospital when I did, I could have died (B.A. Pace, 2004, Henrico Doctors' Hospital)” because I was internally bleeding. They gave me oxycodone; I passed out and woke up stitched up in a hospital bed with my mom by my bed side. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life. Yousef’s pain experience and my pain experience alter our brains in a sense that makes us mentally stronger and capable of dealing with pain easier.  We understand our pain threshold and have a high tolerance to pain that may seem more excruciating to others that may not have felt as much pain as us. We have a perspective lens on life that helps us laugh at situations that may seem challenging only because we know what it means to be a situation which could be life or death. We can get through hard times with that in the back of our minds. When you go through a near death experience, there is a certain spiritual awakening upon your life like no other. You begin to take your life a little more seriously and get a clearer sense of your life’s purpose. You don’t take your family for granted as they were with you the whole time through your near-death experience. Yousef exemplifies this spiritual awakening by describing all the nurses as “angels”. “The nurses made me think of my mother when they were washing me, but they did not use a piece of fiber tree and they never hurt me. All the nurses looked so young and so beautiful, even the ones who told me they were mothers (107).”

You see a level on maturity develop in Yousef at a young age when the Israeli soldiers came to occupy his home. “My special love was football. I was always collecting football stickers. Every time I brought a new sticker I could not wait to get home and put it in my album hoping that someday I would win something, even though that never happened (26).” The situation went from being a jokester in class with dreams of being a professional football player and no cares in the world to living in solitary confinement every night in his living room with his family. Yousef was forced to get the education his father had been enthusiastically encouraging him to do all along. From the point when he got shot in the back, Yousef had to make several adjustments to his life which required him to move from place to place, which he is still doing to this day spreading the message of peace for his people. “My father did not want to leave his home, but I had to. I have to find a place where I can build a future of peace (193).” He would move to his aunt’s house, to the boarding school, to The Seeds of Peace, back home to his family, and then finally off to college in America.  I reflect on his memoir through my own life experience and awareness of the world by remembering how I was a child before I had my appendectomy surgery. I was a young child who did not have much care for my academic success if I got to go play basketball, play football, and ride my bike after school. My mother was a single mother which forced us to constantly move from home to home as our leases ended. This forced me to have to adjust frequently, making new friends everywhere I went like Yousef. Although, I have never experienced the military occupying my house and destroying everything I’ve owned. I do relate to Yousef in the sense that I always had to be on the move. This changes your social structure as you are now connecting with more people and increasing your social network. You are now leaving a lasting impression on more people that come into your life which is how Yousef can tell the memories he shared at the Seeds of Peace camp. “There was another Youssef. He was from Egypt and seemed to spend his entire time trying to trade beds with someone else. As soon as he switched beds, he would want to change again. Nabih, a Jordanian swimmer, was there just to swim, it seemed. Shabi, slept on the bed above mine; he was always singing and smiling at someone. Tariq was an aspiring actor who found me very funny (148).” Having to make new friends on the go is a good and bad thing in a sense that you can either stay situated in one home your whole life and create stronger relationships with a smaller circle, or you can move from home to home making more friends with a weaker connection because your circle is now bigger. Here, we get a sense of how we can turn our traumas and mishaps into advantages. Yousef and I share a certain mental toughness you can only gain by going through a near-death experience in the hospital when all you have is your own strength to carry you through. We also share the experience of having to move many times throughout our childhood, teenage, and adult life. This allowed us to experience more culture, see different places, and create lasting memories with more friends. These memories would be worth sharing years later as we come to see that we are all cousins, like Yousef describes the Israeli soldier who shot him. We are all created by God and all sharing the same human experience together.