See Through Her Life, Not Mine

If you have a dear friend who has an “un-fixable” problem, do you listen or judge? Do you offer support? Or see your friend’s intense difficulty solely through your own life, perhaps currently void of intense difficulty?

If you ask her how she is doing, do you want a truthful answer, or do you want her to help put the frosting on your own day? 

Like most of us, I am learning every day that I may not be able to fix a friend’s problem or even offer a helpful suggestion, but I can listen with my ears and try to see things through HER life, not mine. 

Not all of us can be empathetic to every situation, relating to someone else’s pain. For example, most of us have not gone weeks without food. 

But we can all be compassionate, defined as a “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”