I keep trying to write…something.
I’ve got nuthin’.
The draft file is growing exponentially, but I’ve been feeding it only creepy fast-foodish stuff that has questionable origins and no real nutritional value at all.
Life’s a bit of a mess right now, and there’s no getting around it. Everything is upheaval and turmoil and transition and angst and pain.
And exhaustion.
Many people write to expel their demons, to survive their treks through the dark. It’s a help to spew all of it on paper and get the grief and anger out of your system. For me, though, such writing is best burned, and never shared. And these days, that sort of kindling is all I’ve got.
Looking around, the awful fact of the matter is I’m not the only one dealing with a hard situation. So many of us are trekking through the dark, and it seems as though we’re completely alone.
We’re not.
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“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” -Elisabeth Kubler Ross
Someone you know is dealing with the grief of a broken friendship.
Someone you know is aching over lost love.
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“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” -Ernest Hemingway
Someone you know is aching because their children are hurting.
Someone you know is aching from the pain of a difficult disease.
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“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.” -Gautama Buddha
Someone you know is carrying heavy financial burdens.
Someone you know has recently lost someone they love.
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“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” -Milan Kundera
Someone you know has been betrayed by someone they trust.
Someone you know is weighted down by guilt.
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“When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.” -Criss Jami
Someone you know is carrying several of these burdens all at once.
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“Walk with me for awhile, my friend—you in my shoes, I in yours—and then let us talk.” -Richelle E. Goodrich
Reach out if you’re able, and grab the hand of someone else who’s hurting. Love is a weird thing: it grows when it’s given away. In the weird math of grace, helping someone carry their burden oddly lessens the weight of your own.