Tea and a Truth Biscuit: What Do I Do With My Outrage?

Today I visited the COPE Visitor Centre here in Vientiane, Laos.

Heavy. Emotional. Inspiring.

And horrifying.

Because sometimes you stand in front of the evidence of what humans are capable of doing to one another—and are still capable of doing to one another—and there really aren’t words.

Between 1964 and 1973, during what became known as the U.S. “Secret War” in Laos, more than 580,000 bombing missions were flown over this little country.

More than 2 million tons of ordnance were dropped.

Think about that for a second.

That works out to roughly one bombing mission every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.

Laos became, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in history.

Among those weapons were an estimated 270 million cluster submunitions, or “bombies.”

Up to 30 percent failed to explode.

That left an estimated 80 million unexploded bombies scattered across the country when the war ended.

And they didn’t magically disappear when the war ended.

They’re still here.

In fields.

In forests.

Underneath villages.

Places where children play.

Places where farmers grow food.

More than 50,000 people have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance in Laos since 1964. And here’s one number that absolutely gutted me: during the most recent decade reported by Laos’ national UXO authority, half of the casualties were children under 18.

Fifty f*cking years later.

And here comes my Tantrum.

Because I can watch my human immediately slip right back into some very old programming.

Outrage.

Disgust.

Judgment.

“Anti-war Laura” comes roaring out.

And internally I’m screaming:

WTF?

The United States dropped this shit. Why, more than 50 years later, isn’t every last piece of it cleaned up? Why are Lao children still paying the price for something human beings decided to do generations before they were even born?

Now, the complete story is more complicated. The United States has supported UXO clearance in Laos since the 1990s, alongside the Lao government, COPE, and many international organizations.

And still…

The bombs remain.

The suffering remains.

And I can feel that outrage rising inside me.

But this is where my Triumph begins.

Because the more layers of programming I shed through Holistic Scaffolding™, the more quickly I can recognize what is actually happening inside of me.

I can be horrified by something without becoming the horror.

I can acknowledge injustice without filling myself with hatred.

I can care deeply without turning my anger into another energetic weapon I launch into the world.

Because what does my rage actually change?

Does it remove one bomb?

Does it give one person a prosthetic leg?

Does it make one child safer?

No.

And this has become one of the hardest—and perhaps most important—things I am learning:

The only human I can truly work on is me.

So I keep returning to the True Self underneath all the programming that every one of us has accumulated simply by being human.

And every day, I choose again to do the work.

Not perfectly.

Not because I never have a tantrum.

Ohhhhh, I have the f*cking Tantrum.

I can notice it.

Feel it.

Question it.

Learn from it.

And choose what I send out next.

Maybe something I write reaches one human at precisely the right moment.

Maybe something I share helps somebody question one piece of their own bullsh*t programming.

Maybe a Love Wave I send toward somebody changes absolutely nothing that I can see.

Maybe smiling at the unhappy human standing beside me creates a ripple I will never know about.

And that’s okay.

Because I’m not doing any of this because I want to grow a community.

I’m not doing it because I want to make money.

I’m not doing it because I need somebody to know my name.

I’m doing it because this is the human I choose to be while I’m here.

That is enough.

Travel has an extraordinary way of holding a mirror in front of you.

It can open your eyes.

It can destroy comfortable narratives.

It can shift your perspective.

And, if you allow it…

It can crack your heart wide f*cking open.

Today, COPE did that for me.

And perhaps the answer isn’t to harden my heart because of what humans have done to one another.

Perhaps the work is to keep it open anyway.

Wisdom Nugget:
You don’t have to stop caring to release your outrage. You can see the horror, feel the horror, and still choose not to become another source of it.

I love all you people.

Love and ((HUGS)),

Laura Foster, Founder of Souls Healing Humanity