Someone else's pain is not a competition
For some reason, we sometimes compare suffering.
- "What are you worried about, my mother-in-law lived with me for a week!"
- "Do you think you're feeling bad? But I, in 2008..."
Listen, this is not an Olympics of misfortunes. No one wins if they have it worse.
Sometimes a person does not need their suffering to be outweighed or evaluated.
It is enough for him for someone nearby to simply say:
— “Listen, I don’t know how to help. But I’m here. And I care.”
Humanity is not a weakness, it’s a superpower (quiet, but powerful)
Being human is being able to shut up when you want to say “well, it’s your own fault.”
It’s texting a friend “how are you?” not only when you’re bored.
It’s moving over on the subway, even if you’re more mentally tired than physically tired.
It’s about those little things that don’t shout about themselves, but make the world a little more human.
Why is this important? Because tomorrow — you
Today you’re an observer.
Tomorrow — a participant.
Today you supported, tomorrow — you’ll be supported. Or they won’t.
Sympathy is like a pillow: it’s better to have than to urgently look for it later when you’ve fallen.
And no matter how much we want to wear the mask of “I’m ok”, each of us at least once in our lives needed someone to simply understand.
Not save, not solve, not analyze.
Just understand. And if I can’t sympathize?
Start with something simple: close your mouth and open your heart.
Seriously. Sometimes the main thing is to just not insert:
- “Oh well, it will pass.”
- “You just take everything too personally.”
- “I’ve been through worse!”
Sometimes silence with a warm look heals better than 1000 words from Google.
So yes: to sympathize, you don’t need to be a psychologist, a saint, or “someone who has been through the same thing.”
You just need to be human.
Alive. Real.
With a soft heart and turned off cynicism.
Because we all have the same fragile self inside us that just wants to be noticed and not judged when it cries.