Almost everyone has a story to tell about adversity of some sort. Some will have been through really dreadful experiences. Some will just be "catastrophisers", some are very self absorbed & will think that whatever experience they have is worse than yours - It's almost a competition.
But, in order to really empathise with adversity, you have to bring some experience of your own to be able to understand. So, the chances are the older you are the more experience you have & the more you can be an empathetic listener.
You don't have to go through exactly the same experience. You don't have to have had cancer yourself to be able to care & support someone who has it. On the other hand, if you are young & at the beginning or middle of your life, it takes quite an effort to really understand how someone might feel if they are towards the end of their lives. It is also very difficult to truly comprehend losing a partner, someone you love & have shared your life with 24/7, if you have never had that sort of long standing, loving relationship & loss.
So, to an extent it is true. You do have to go through it to be able to go through it with someone else in a really helpful way.
The other meaning is to do with life's journey. Whatever the adverse event is you do "have to go through it". There isn't much alternative after all - either you do & come out the other side or you give up & stop living. Only you know which choice is right for you - And it is a choice - And your choice affects all those who are close to you.
In the absence of any personal conventional religious belief, I do really believe that we are changed, for better or worse, by the events that we experience in life. Our experiences & the way we deal with them, shape us from raw beings into the beings we can become. All life really is is that journey towards becoming.
If we make the right choices we can become better. "Going through it" without being destroyed by whatever the event is means that we stand a chance of being the best being we can be. That is worth the pain.
So much raw experience and pain here. I’m so sorry. Your life companion was taken from you cruelly early- something many of us dread but can’t truly feel the agony until it happens to them. My mum would absolutely concur with everything here (though she was lucky enough not to reach this lonely state until 87 - doesn’t help her to know that!).
ReplyDeleteHi Griselda
ReplyDeleteI wasn't only thinking of myself. I was also thinking of swimming Kate & the impact her death must have had on her family. So many others I've known have had really difficult lives too.