It was years ago now that some lady on the Internet said how it had been a year since she lost her husband, and how before she'd become a widow she always knew how awful it must be to lose one's spouse. She said, however, that a year after losing her own husband she would never again underestimate how bad it really was; because before she found herself in that situation she simply hadn't realized/understood exactly what kind of things people deal with when they do.
That's kind of how it is with everything (particularly the bad stuff, but also the good stuff in life). We can "only imagine" (and sometimes, maybe, imagine accurately - sort of, maybe). Still, all the tiny little stuff that one goes through when dealing with anything (big, small, good, bad) is often not what others can truly understand (or at least have a slightly better idea about than if they didn't have some similar/comparable experience. Even then, though, there are individual differences that make one experience completely (or at least sort of) different between different individuals.
If there's one thing that I've figured out in life it's that when it comes to some of the more serious and/or complicated experiences (whether that's something like grief or something like a serious and/or complicated medical condition/injury; it's that things generally take a lot longer to heal than those who experience them think they should, thought they would, or hoped they would. That's something we learn when experience some of those things in life. But, as we experience them we also figure out how to get through them AND how, even if they take longer than we thought we can usually see slow improvement (slower than we want, but improvement nonetheless). That all is, as they say, how it is.
The real challenge for people can be, though, that while they manage their way through whatever process there is in getting over something and/or healing; the real problem isn't always the impatience of the person going though something/getting past something. The complicating and difficult part of getting through a bad time or past a bad experience, or healing from some medical issues isn't really even the frustrating, disappointing, or challenging discovery that healing takes longer than the person going through it wanted or thought it should; but that others around him who haven't gone through the same thing tend to think healing and moving on and "getting-past" are taking longer than they should - which amounts to judging what one knows little or nothing about (or even "over-imagining" /"mis-imagining" one thing or another about the experience/situation).
And so, while the individual going through the thing himself can see slow and steady progress, he must deal with the schedule or time limit that someone else (who doesn't know enough about the experience/problem) has deemed "ought to have done it" for the person who "should have been over it" or "more over it" than he is.
Strong, capable, self-assured, people can find this challenging but may know enough to kind of withdraw from anyone who comes across as judging. I think, though, that it can be a whole other thing for the less-sure (maybe, children for example) and/or more tired (maybe elderly, for example); or for that matter, anyone who has had more than the usual number of some types of experiences than might be considered "average".
And, what it all amounts to, I'd guess, is a whole lot of people in this world being judged and driven into isolation when what they need is at least better understanding - not the judgment of others who, as they say, don't have a clue and don't even have a clue about not having a clue.
No comments:
Post a Comment