Someone told me recently, “Usually
when things go to shit, everything goes to shit”. It’s also true that
there’s never a good time to fall apart; it will never be convenient for the
people around you. It’s why people who are clinically and chronically depressed
feel like they’re "too much", because in a way, our pain and sometimes crippling
emotions are an extra burden for
those around us to bear. I’m in a tough place right now, and I’ve been doing a
fair bit of leaning on other people. But I have to believe—to get through day
after day—that it won’t always be like this and I will emerge from this season
stronger and more resilient to the hurricane-force winds that life brings. And
then I will be someone others can lean on, and I will be fortified so that I
don’t break under the weight of their burdens.
There’s a difference between
feeling inconvenient and being inconvenient. Life is not all about taking care
of ourselves; we also care for others. Others’ needs and feelings and hurts are
rarely if ever convenient, but that doesn’t make them any less important. It’s
in these moments that we do something inconvenient, that we step outside of
ourselves, that we are showing love.
It may seem silly, but when someone
lets me turn right out of a parking lot onto a busy street, I am so grateful. I
feel that they have done something lovely. Do you know why? It was inconvenient
for them. And yet, when I see people waiting to turn right, so often my instant
reaction is that I have somewhere to be, that someone else will wait for them
to turn. But here’s the thing: everyone has somewhere to be. But if we never
act outside of what is entirely comfortable and best for us, what a mad world
it would be. And what a mad world it already is. What if we made it a little
less mad? What if each of us did one thing for someone else that was inconvenient
every day? I don’t know if it would change the world, but I think it would
start to change us.
