What If There Is No Right Thing?
Photo by nandhukumar from Pixabay
A while ago (many months ago, in fact, when I first started to write this post), friend and fabulous writer Lesa Quale Ferguson shared musings that touched on - among other things - the connection between stress and grief and physical pain. She wrote that she knew what she needed to do to address at least one piece of the problem, but she just wasn't there yet. And then she asked readers not to send advice about the how-to of the steps she knew she needed to take, the problem she knew she could control.
This is a reasonable concern, since everyone on social media seems to feel they have the solution no one else has thought of. This is, by the way, not new, or unique to social media. In my family, sending newspaper articles with unasked-for advice is a time honored tradition. (Nowadays I am more likely to send links to parenting articles to my daughter, or podcasts about public health to my son, and they’ll arrive instantly via email or text, rather than as a newspaper clipping in an old-fashioned envelope - same idea, different generation, different communication platform . . .)
Image by Mason@masoncbjpg
And why not? When someone I care about has a problem, I want to help.
But sometimes that effort backfires, or bombs (or some other metaphor for being wildly ineffective for its intended purpose).
Buzz Feed came out with an article on “toxic positivity” - that is, the practice of issuing useless or even harmful platitudes in response to tragedy. (You can read the article here. ) You know the kind of thing: "God never sends you more than you can handle" "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," etc. There are some cringe-worthy items on that list, things that make you wonder: what on earth could the speaker be thinking?
The thing is, I’ve been on both sides of the problem.
I've said entirely the wrong thing, when faced with suffering.
My latest example of a royal screw-up makes my heart ache at the thought that I caused additional pain in a cup already overfull with sadness. A good friend had recently lost her beloved dog, and was considering getting another, but hadn’t yet found her next soulmate. I said some awful pablum about faith and God and “the right” dog coming along when she needs it, and immediately realized the implications: if God is involved in bringing the perfect dog to my friend at just the right time, He/She/They must also have been pulling the strings when her dog crossed the rainbow bridge.
If I could have sucked those words back into my mouth and swallowed them forever, I would have.
Image by Randy Laybourne @randylaybourne
On the other side of that coin, I've been in the midst of deep pain, a Grand Canyon kind of hurt, only to have a friend, family member, or a mere acquaintance exacerbate the pain with their thoughtless, empty, well-meaning words.
Well-meaning is the key. There are certainly some people who have the emotional range of a cement block (to misquote Hermione Granger). But most people really do mean well. Faced with a loved one who is suffering, we want to say something. Because we don’t know what “the right thing” is, we flounder around until we land on anything, and as often as not, our “anything” is the wrong thing.
Which got me wondering whether this isn't, ultimately, a quixotic quest.
In less than a year, I've lost my brother-in-law in horrific circumstances. And I lost a shining-light of a friend. And another beloved family member passed away over the summer. And we’re coming up on the third anniversary of my mom's death. And dear family members are going through a divorce, and another family member experienced a shocking break-up. And a family friend lost his battle with suicide. Outside my circle, our nation just mourned the twenty-first anniversary of 9/11, while grappling with yet another year of mass shootings. And though it looks as though Ukraine may yet defend its independence, their losses are staggering.*
In other words, on a personal and global level, there is much to grieve.
When I'm doing well, I might be able to take a nibble of comfort from "You’ll emerge stronger from this," or feel a tremor of hope when offered a book on grieving. But if you offered me these stock comforts the day after my brother-in-law passed away, it is more likely I would have felt violently, irrationally, angry.
Maybe the truth is that when we are in the throes of pain, nothing helps. There are no magic words, no always-perfect sentences, no "right thing to say” in response to grief.
Maybe there are times when the only response that doesn't actually make things worse is: I'm sorry. I'm here.
(And on a lighter note: I’m sending chocolate. If you’re talking to me, that is. It’s true - chocolate is good for more than just recovering from dementor attacks).
Pablo Merchán Montes @pablomerchanm
Unlike other musings, this post has no conclusion. Which is fitting, because my point is that, maybe, there is no solution to be had, no tidy conclusion to be reached. We have to continue bumbling through as best we can, attempting to be present for each other in our struggles and griefs. We cannot let fear of saying the wrong thing prevent us from caring for each other when care is most needed.
Between writing this and posting it, the news has come out that Russia is mobilizing more troops, and Puerto Rico has been devastated by another hurricane. And of course Ukraine and Puerto Rico are not the only places where suffering is occurring.
