I was talking with a client the other day who suffered the grevious loss of a loved one some while back. There was and is no way to sugar coat something that hard and mean feeling. Sometimes things happen that just suck. How we handle things like that is one of the great issues of living.
The client struck me as a person of generous heart who was open with himself and me, so he didn't pretend that he wasn't hurting in that moment. In response, I couldn't pretend I had some great over-arching Big Thought that would change his feeling or make the situation all better. Cheap grace nostrums ("it's all for the best!" or "God wanted him so he called him home") strike me as obscene responses to the toughest moments we face as human beings. We all deserve better.
The one thing I believe we deserve is fellow feeling. Perhaps the biggest gift we give each other is real compassion, which literally means feeling what the other is feeling or feeling something close to that. Maybe not exactly the same pain, but something like it. I can look you in the eye and can let you know by my words, my body-language, my bearing and my reactions that I have some idea of what you're experiencing; and that is an amazing human moment. Suddenly, you and I are not so alone.
Right in that moment of shared compassion, a possibility opens up that dashes past the temptation of hurtful cliches and empty slogans. In that connecting moment we each accept the reality of the loss and the reality of the shared experience. To radically (meaning "at root") accept life as it is in that moment, even an awful moment, unites us at a time when part of me just wants to scream or collapse. "To bear the unbearable sorrow," goes the lyric in Man of La Mancha. We can do it together. We can accept the worst life throws at us. We're not alone.
