More heart...

You can write down whatever it is that is haunting you. You can attempt to express the tumultuous feelings that envelop you when you are least prepared. You can try and talk to someone to ease the pain just that little bit. The truth, however, is that you are alone in your pain, in your frustration, in the sheer intensity of your emotion.

How can another human being fathom the depths of turmoil within you? It is simply not possible. All of us view our world through different lenses. The lenses themselves are determined by age, upbringing, environment, health, stress and any number of other factors. When no two people perceive their world in the same way, it is safe to assume that no two people process stimuli in exactly the same way as well. So no one can understand another’s response especially to conditions that they themselves have not been put through.

The thing about wanting to communicate is that it is a very human trait. Everyone wants someone to talk to, to listen to, to care about, to be cared for by. And sometimes you and your loved one share a problem so deep that he or she can actually do nothing to assuage you. Indeed, how do you ask for consolation from someone who is going through the same pain you are albeit in a different manner?

That is why we have friends to turn to. Most usually I feel free to vent. But there are days that hit you so hard that you want to be understood without having to explain. You are embarrassed at feeling too much, at knowing that talking is futile, at wanting to simply not have to be this way any more. So talking too becomes difficult. And when it becomes difficult, the words convey less than nothing. You feel lonelier than ever.

To those who classify this as whining, I point out that a whiner never takes responsibility or acts. It is not my nature to be irresponsible or laze around. However, many things that fall to our lot are not choices at all. They are challenges that last a lifetime if we are unlucky and a few months if we are lucky. I hate platitudes and I absolutely hate the statement that ‘Five years from now this won’t matter’. Really? Platitudes from people who are impatient in a traffic jam, who think not having the right dress to wear classifies as an emergency, who believe that their child not getting 99% in some exam is the disaster of a century are utterly ridiculous. Five years from now you could ostensibly forget your less than perfect dress or an affair-having spouse but can you forget that your child faces progressively worse complications that threaten the quality of his life? So never say to anyone “it doesn’t matter”, “my aunt’s son has it worse so count yourself lucky” or “you will come out stronger for it”. Just shut the hell up and leave if you cannot stand in silent solidarity. Pain is ugly. Grief is uncomfortable. If you only have friends to have fun, then you don’t know the meaning of either friendship or love.

Like I said, we are each of us alone in our pain. If you have it in you to make a suffering soul feel even for a moment, some alleviation of agony, then you have heart. More heart makes all the difference…