Self-Knowledge • Trauma & Childhood
Those of Us Who Need a War Zone
We naturally assume that a life in a peaceful country will always be preferable to one in a war torn one. But the history of journalism reveals a more puzzling minor phenomenon: that of the war reporter, a person who willingly and repeatedly places themselves in conflict situations and chooses to exchange a secure base for a home in a stricken zone. In public, the war reporter may explain their motives in geopolitical terms (through their work, they will bring victims’ suffering to world attention or apply pressure on a dictator), but in private, they may admit to more nuanced impulses. They may mention finding war psychologically ‘easier’ than peace, they may describe a wish to submit themselves to threats they simultaneously dread and are enlivened by; the conflicts they keep returning to may be logistically and physically arduous and yet they also spare them the deadness and eeriness they associate with outward harmony, tranquillity and undisturbed afternoons.
Without having any of their outward idealism or bravery, some of us may have more of a kinship with these war reporters than we imagine. In our personal lives, in the way we chose to arrange our relationships or govern our careers, we too may be rather more drawn to ‘war’ – conflict, intensity, anxiety, fear and jeopardy – than we are to ‘peace’, understanding, calm, trust, love and ease.
In our relationships, we may gravitate towards difficult characters around whom giving and receiving affection will be fraught. We may never be more in our element than in the company of an avoidant personality who isn’t sure they want to be involved with us or who has trouble regulating their moods or communicating their intentions. When we are introduced to more mature resolved characters, we may appreciate their kindness, composure and openness of heart. But nor can we deny an uncomfortable emotion as we walk away from our rendez-vous in the cafe: fateful boredom.
In our professional lives too, we may drive ourselves towards periods of crisis, engineering tough deadlines and threats from creditors. We may never feel more alive than when matters edge towards catastrophe.
To explain our proclivities, we need to look backwards. We are likely to have grown up in conflict zones – not involving guns and grenades, but parents who shouted or drank, hit or bullied, childhoods of drama, fear and humiliation.
It may not have been pleasant, but our whole personalities were shaped to cope. The past taught us to be hypervigilant, to scan the room, to sleep very lightly, to trust no one and to expect the worst. And this is why we are now allergic to the calm we claim to long for. We prefer shouting to tender whispers. We are more unnerved by kindness than withheld affection. When there is only good news, we wonder with mounting intensity what horror is about to be unleashed. In the end, we may simply find peace too arduous; we prefer to destroy the happy relationship, blow up the business and seek out pain before it finds us of its own accord.
It may be too ambitious to hope for a wholesale transformation in our natures. We may not be able to get the war reporter inside us, a veteran of years in the Mekong Delta or the Bekaa valley, to adjust to life in a placid suburb of Zurich or Birmingham.
But we may hope for greater ease by at least acknowledging our paradoxes. Whatever we may state about seeking contented love or workplace stability, we should darkly accept that we are not made for such luxuries. Once we can square up to the war reporter inside us, we may learn to live as sensibly as we can within the boundaries of our follies. We might, as it were, buy the best flak jackets and travel in marked convoys. And when we next find ourselves in turmoil, we should remind ourselves that there is a central part of us that very much wanted to keep an appointment here.
But perhaps once we have fully accepted our dread of calm and harmony, we may eventually surprise ourselves with an occasional pleasure at a day that unfolds without crisis or tolerate a new partner who seems only to want to be kind to us. We may yet lose some of the terrors of peace.
