If someone seems to be falling apart....help them

Have you ever felt as if you're somehow ''pixelating''?

(With pixelating I mean slowly breaking apart into tiny

little pieces.)

I opened the book and read the first sentence.

''Life is suffering'' it said.

I read it again. Life is suffering. Wow. I was impressed.

For once someone dared to spit it out without sugar

coating it. 

Next sentence was just as punchy: ''life isn't fair.''

With those six words the author in my view managed 

to disassemble two of mankind's biggest illusions.

We may not want to admit to ourselves that deep down

we believe that life should be fair and we should not

have to suffer, but we do.

The illusions that life should be fair and that we

shouldn't have to suffer I believe has the potential

to make it much harder for us to cope with unfairness 

and suffering when such afflicts us.

I mean, a lot of time our first response to suffering and

 unfairness goes something like this: 

''Why is this happening to me? or I don't deserve this!''.

Though there is ample evidence of suffering and

unfairness happening to others everywhere and

every second of every day, we are still somehow able

to block it out so that we don't see it, hear it,

or feel it.

Worse still, when it happens to others we often

tend to become ''judgy'' about it.

''Well, he/she/they should have known better, why didn't he/she

/they do something, try something, what did he/she/they expect 

when he/she/they ........ etc. etc. etc.''

No matter how much we may want to believe that ''bad''

things only happens to ''bad'' people, as far as I

can ascertain, both illusions.

As is this: ''good'' things only happens to people who

deserve it.

However, bad things do happen to good people and good things

do happen to bad(don't deserve it) people.

This leads me to conclude that the same laws 

of nature that underlie all causes and effects, do so without

any prejudice or inherent moral implications.

What I am pondering at the moment is why we are

still so inept at being compassionate and empathetic

toward people in pain.

When we see people suffering why do we so often

tend to offer suggestions of how to ''fix'' it before

we offer a shoulder to cry on?

Why do we seem to find it easier to offer platitudes

then heartfelt words of compassion?

Why do we seem to prefer to avoid contact with people

in pain/suffering rather than to listen to them explain what they

are going through?

Yet, .... should we find ourselves in a similar predicament,

.........it's often their discourse we seek.

I believe we can do better.

I believe we need to do better.

We can choose to put down our gavels and

stop viewing our fellow human beings

with judgement and prejudice.

We can choose kindness and compassion

instead of debating life's fairness.

We can choose to listen instead of speaking,

we can choose to be present rather than absent.

''Life is suffering, life isn't fair.

But lucky for us, life can be shared.

If you know someone, 

someone not doing so great,

call them up don't hesitate,

 wait too long and they may pixelate.''

(Citizen Z)

about the image: acrylic on large cardboard

Cropped and then edited in Elements