True compassion

What an interesting couple of weeks I’ve had. After my friend died, my brother’s children came unexpectedly to stay with us. At a multitude of other things happened as well. I must be doing some sort of adjustment because my energies have been reversed more often than not. This has made things difficult and at times impossible to deal with. But enough about me.

I have been thinking about a question that was asked me recently. Often times when we are ill and we get better we tend to think now our job is to heal others. I used to be that person, and even though I’m still on the healing journey I used to impose my opinions on other people. I collected a wealth of knowledge, thinking that I needed it to help cure people. Now I begin to understand that it’s not tools that I needed all along. It was compassion.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. “ ~Henri Nouwen

Now, having been on the other end of things for so long, I’ve learned that what people need is simply love and compassion. They do not need someone to give or sell them a cure, they do not need someone to fix them. We are not the ones to judge another person’s path and find it wanting because they do not fit where we think they ought to be. What if the very challenge they are undertaking is exactly what they need in the eternal scheme of things. What if all they need from you is simply support for the journey they have undertaken? Food for thought.