Each of us enters life alone. We wake up each day and walk, sit, crawl, or fall alone. Even if we’re lucky enough to have a significant other who loves us, friends who will fight for us, and a family who’s there for us, we’re inescapably alone. No one can take our challenges or face them.
We cannot ever really feel another’s pain. Even if we’ve been exactly where they are, we cannot feel what they feel at that individual moment. We can see struggle on their face, but we can’t feel it. It’s for them alone.
Our solitude makes life epic. We must face everything even when shoulder to shoulder with loved ones. We have to play our part.
Reaching out for another will not end any hurts we have. They cannot erase unkind words from another, nor change our past. They can’t heal our scars.
But when someone looks us in the eye and listens to us, really listens, we know it. We understand they’ve crossed a line and opened the realm of their own world to enter ours.
That’s why listening to another person is such a big deal. We cannot leave our world, but when we hear another person, we give them our world.
A complete human, with struggles and laundry, drops it all for those seconds, minutes, or hours, and is there for another. Attention is the greatest gift we can provide because we’ve opened our doors. We haven’t left our body, our hurt, our life; rather we’ve shifted focus. The floodgates are open.
Through our own will, we give the greatest gift: we give our lives for that moment. What could we do more for another person than surrendering seconds of the time we have left?
Maybe we don’t know what to say or do to help them; after all, we can’t really save them. However, the very act of hearing the person we’re with is a way of saying, “I see your life, I see you hurt too, and I’m here with you.”
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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