I've been thinking about our cultural need for comparison and certainty. Both ultimately thwart our ability to connect with one another as a society. Depending on our degree of unawareness, both can bring us extra measures of dysfunction and pain unnecessarily. 

I have a story. I attend group therapy. This week I was sharing my struggles as a single parent feeling limited, and wondering about whether this was holding me back. And also desperately wanting to get past this difficult stage in my life. I'm not very patient, you see. I have so many dreams I'm striving to realize and trying not to lose hope in the immensity of the struggle I feel. It's hard, and really, that's the message for which I was seeking support this week.

I finished sharing this particular thought, and a married woman in the group leaned in and said, "I feel like a single parent." Beautiful, right? This is the goal of group therapy, to deepen our ability to be vulnerable and to connect with each other. Her emotional bid was meant to be connective and sweet. A few days later, I see that she just wanted to connect with me. Unfortunately, that's not what I felt or perceived at the time. And I guess it's what I learned from both perspectives of this experience that I want to share.  

How little understanding we really have of someone else's situation until we walk with them; and how invalidating it can sometimes feel to hear "I feel like ____ too" when someone else hasn't been through what we've been through. I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that kind of statement. And I think what we're trying to say to each other is "I see you, I can relate to you, you matter, and we're in this together". It often feels more like a slap in the face, especially when I'm stuck in an unhealthy space. Honestly, I couldn't get past wishing my family lived in the same state as me, or that I had someone to leave my kids with, or that someone else was also responsible for helping me with my bills (or anything for that matter, other than Jesus). And these comparisons came between she and I and my ability to connect with her. 

Ultimately, I did the same thing in response: I compared, and used it as a wedge.

In that moment I said, "see, I feel so angry when people say that." I do in a very real and honest way. My ten second justification is that it's really hard to hear someone say that they feel like a single parent when there is another person there. It's hard to grasp the depth of loss when the partnership is over. Even when you know it's coming, you can't be totally prepared. 

BUT. I also know that there's real suffering in both healthy and unhealthy relationships. And it's not about whose is worse, it's about listening and loving and believing in the future. It's about connecting. And it's about the power of connection, and focusing on that power. 

So, the thing that I sensed and didn't have the insight to articulate at the time (or the maturity) is that comparative suffering isn't real. We all suffer. She could have said that she was suffering, too. Even though she didn't, it doesn't mean I can't understand her meaning. Suffering is inherent in the human condition because we all live through disappointments, losses, and crises. And it's these difficult challenges that shape much of our stories. The most important piece of these stories of suffering is the connections and ties that we build into our lives in response. Literally, these communities have the power to save us and change our trajectory.

Neuroscientists, immunologists, therapists, and cardiologists (to name a few ologies) have known for decades that the impact of positive social support is powerful in allowing our organism to thrive. Our brains tend to function properly and tend to relate to fewer incidences of mental disorders, our immune systems better protect us from illness, we tend to perform better in the tasks of life, and our hearts even have mechanisms that defend against heart damage under duress. It's remarkable how we've been programmed to thrive with social support. The buzz word is empathy. We can get through anything with empathy. Thanks, Dr. Brown. 

Often today, what we're experiencing is the exact opposite of love. We're more divided than ever. We compare, criticize, and despair. We suffer in silence, and we're alone. I feel as sad as anyone that this is what society has adopted, but then I'm also part of the problem. It's important to own that part.

I want to detour for a second: I was watching "Becoming" on Netflix earlier this week, and noticed that Michelle Obama's brother was wearing a t-shirt that said, "it's harder to hate up close". It stuck with me. I realized that's part of what happened in group. I didn't let someone get close to me, and maybe they didn't really let me get close to them. We all had some kind of barriers to connection. Then I realized that we all do this. We think we have the solutions to someone else's suffering, we think we know the "right" way to engage in politics or medicine, we wed ourselves to ideals and ideologies over people, and as a result people are getting hurt. We're collectively suffering, and we're collectively causing that suffering because we don't understand what it looks like to connect.

We need to value seeing each other honestly.

I wish I could tell you that the other members in the group and I were able to find peace in our connection whether or not we agreed. As I processed this experience with one of my most insightful friends, she observed that we've lost this ability somehow in our culture. Or, maybe it's our generation. We're lacking the skills to connect with each other and validate each other's stories whether or not we agree, and instead we're obsessed with the details. We can't see the forest for the trees. 

When the people around us are lost in their personal forests, it's so important that we recognize this and forsake the trees.

Speaking of trees, I was listening to a TED Talk on environmental conservatism, and the speaker offered this statement, "we conserve what we love, we love what we understand, and we understand what we've been taught." So then in my mind, this idea followed: If we're taught how to be a community, then we will likely understand how to conserve that community. I thought this was so brilliant that I ran for paper, rewound the talk, and slowly played it back through as I wrote it down:

"We conserve what we love, 
we love what we understand,
and we understand what we've been taught."

Oh my gosh, we need to be taught how to understand each other. It's so simple. We just need to see each other. "It's harder to hate up close." Hell yes, brother! I hear you. I dare you to learn someone's story of suffering and pain, and see how they overcame it and the people they loved, and still try to hate them. I'm not sure it's possible if we honestly know how to do it. 

There's something funny about that conservation statement. When I read it back to my friends over zoom or the phone, it always sounds like I'm saying "can serve" rather than "conserve". And that's an intriguing idea too. "We can serve what we love, we love what we understand, and we understand what we've been taught." Maybe a better conceptualization is:

"We can serve who we love, 
we love who we understand, 
and we understand who we've been taught to understand."

Maybe it's not about certainty and comparisons at all. Maybe it's just about coming back together to learn what it means to be a community, learning to love and value each other's stories, and serving formative roles in each others' lives. Maybe the trees never really mattered at all.