With Great Nagging, Comes Great Responsibility (Trying to be better human beings to each other)

Hello everyone! I've been gone awhile, I know, but I have dearly missed you all. I'm ready to jump back in and get this party started. I haven't really posted anything of substance in two years or so, so I'd like to start with something worth saying. I'm not sure I'll always have some great knowledge to drop on you, but I'm gonna try like hell to do just that.

I've been thinking here lately about empathy, sympathy, patience, and understanding. That's a mouthful, right? Right! Not only a mouthful my friend, a mindful. As a matter of fact, these are the things we need to practice to be mindful. People, in general, are self serving. This isn't a bad thing. Even the nicest people are. Hell, I am. You are too. Everything we experience is in our heads, where we live. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in that, that we forget that we can also "selfishly" enjoy helping others, or stepping out of our comfort zone to learn how another human being feels.

Even when we do things that seem selfless, we still benefit from them, it makes us feel good. Even if it doesn't make us feel good, we learn something from it, so in a sense, it is still an act that is serving our own needs. This is perfectly normal and healthy. There are times that we don't realize this, that is where it isn't necessarily healthy. If we don't actively know we are learning from our fellow human beings, it is easy to forget the lesson down the road.

Empathy and sympathy are both great teachers for us. When someone is going through a tough time (or a great one), if we have experienced it for ourselves we feel empathy toward that person. We can actively put ourselves in their shoes and experience it vicariously through them. We can relate, and with that, we create bonds with other people. When we haven't experienced the same situations or emotions, sometimes we know other people that have and can apply what they went through to that individual. Both empathy and sympathy are very important to have, it makes us more understanding to an individual who might mean a lot to us.

Okay Jessica smarty pants, how in the hell does sympathy help me with my life? Well, Let me tell you! When we have sympathy for another, we grow and learn as a person. Sympathy is also more vocalized, because we haven't been through something (yet) we will offer words of encouragement like "my such and such went through this, and it can be hard to overcome". Also, if we happen to go through a situation that might be similar to a person we have sympathized with, we can apply the emotions, or solutions that they used to get through an especially hard day. Because we were sympathetic to their needs, we our self benefit from what we learn by helping someone.

That was an easy one! If we already know what someone is going through, then how does empathy help me out then, huh? Huh? HUH?! Okay, let me dazzle you once more, my friends. Even though we currently know and can feel what another person is going through, that doesn't mean that we can't learn something from them. Luckily for us, we are all beautifully different. When we go through something, we handle it the best way we know how to, essentially, we manage. By showing empathy, we can learn new ways to handle our problems. Hopefully less stressful ways. Empathy can be an unspoken connection with other, because we feel what they feel, sometimes (not all) we don't even have to say it, they can tell. We learn coping, behavior, even the way we speak, we learn from other people. When we see someone doing anything, we pick up all kinds of things from them. We are constantly learning from each other.

Which brings me to understanding. Being understanding to another person isn't just comprehending what they are going through, it is both the knowledge of their situation, and their emotions. You take that and use it to give advice, or even just listen. A lot of times, someone isn't even looking for you to pull them from the fire, they just need you to listen. When we talk about the things that bother us, or just the things we go through day to day, we work them out as we speak. When we are there for someone who just needs a listener, and we really pay attention, we can see it happening. They put their feelings to words, and as they do it, they start to realize the emotion they are having. We do it as well, we have to understand what we are feeling. If we just feel it, and don't assign it, it can evolve into another emotion we didn't even have in the first place.

A good example of not realizing what your feeling would be this: Say, for instance, someone says/does something that hurts your feelings. You feel surprised and hurt. You are wounded. Now say you have no one to talk to about it, or that you just don't talk to someone about it. Because you aren't working your feelings out in a healthy way, you aren't fully acknowledging them. That hurt you feel, mixed with the surprise of it happening, it's gonna build. Then when it gets good and sore, it's gonna pour out of you like red hot anger, and if not anger, then your going to start to feel depressed over it.

You definitely do not want that. What you do want is to go ahead and experience the hurt feelings you have. We have a full scope of emotions for a reason, because it's healthy for us to feel them. They keep us from feeling worse down the line. If we work through them, let them out, and resolve the problem, then we can move on from them. We can teach others to do the same, which will make us feel good, and it's just the cool thing to do anyway. Feeling hurt, sad, or any emotional pain isn't bad. Pain like this makes us smarter and it builds our tolerances which gives us strength. Best of all, when we go through pain, and have a bad day, when we start having good days again, we truly appreciate them. To know something is really good, means knowing what the bad feels like. If it were good ALL of the time, then we wouldn't interpret it as such. we would take it for granted.

Lastly, we really need patience. There's a reason they say it's a virtue. When things get rocky, we tend to bolt. Yes, yes, yes! We don't like to admit it, but we do it all the time on a smaller scale. In a time where everything is instantaneous, we get used to being pleased all the time. We can reach out to each other more easily, and from great distances now. We are all truly connected. I have already touched on this in another post, so if you haven't read it, please do. The point is, patience makes us strong. We assign words to patient people like sweet, caring, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And hey, these are all true, but you know what else is? That scrambled eggs are delicious? Well, yes, but that's not what I'm getting at. People who are patient, who are understanding, who practice both empathy and sympathy and resilient. They tend to be the most well rounded humans. People respect them, and go out of their way to do things for them, because they are beneficial to have around. They are some of the strongest people we know.

If you really think about it, who was your favorite person. Your Granny? Mother? Father? Papaw? If you think about it, the person who you look up to probably has at least 2 if not all of these traits. The person that when you think about it you try to model yourself after is a person who was understanding with you when you needed it the most. You probably have a love and respect for this person that is unrivaled by most of the shitty people you know now. That's because when you put all of these traits in a blender, what you end up pouring out is compassion and wisdom. Kinda puts it in perspective doesn't it?

And as for some of those shitty people you hang with now, at least the ones that mean well, don't write them off. Is it not possible that they just need a little understanding? Maybe you could lend a little of your patience to them? And don't worry, you'll get plenty out of it too! You'll be a better person for it, you might just learn something about yourself , and maybe you'll earn some of that respect you think you deserve so badly.

Mostly, just try not to be a dick, okay?