One of the bitter realities of being an individual is realizing that the hurt others add into your life are, more often than not, not even meant to to cause you pain.
– The repeated suggestions and comments made by loved ones for you to give up a pet animal or a ‘hobby’ or a dream because all they see is the trouble those things give you – not realizing that the pain and suffering of your letting go is a thousand times greater than your current struggles and discomforts.
– A friend who travels halfway across the country to attend your wedding out of kindness and support for you while knowing – and feeling – that your immaturity and lack of awareness of how your past interactions with her family has estranged you from her own loved ones, to the point that she does not even feel free to let her close friends and family know she is attending your wedding.
The flip side also exists, of course, where things said and done bring far more joy and peace than the actions and words seem to warrant.
For example, how seen and cared-for you feel when you hop down from a training board (for climbing), and someone behind you offers their chalk bag, saying, “I saw you look at your hands.”
Whether life-giving or destructive, these moments cannot quite be explained to others or solved just with “sorry.” The subjective and highly contextualized nature of how the current circumstance, past experiences, and private hopes and fears come together to give specific weight and meaning to the moment that could only mean that to that one person, is what makes this sort of pain or joy so poignant and exquisite.
And precisely because no one knows all of that about you – and even if they do, they are not you and therefore simply do not feel or experience it in precisely the same way – something innocent and even well-meaning can be damning and cruel to the one the words are directed towards.
Sometimes a talk to explain and stop this unconscious hurting of each other is necessary and good. But even that is limited by our inidividuality and our inability to fully see something from another perspective.
And so we forgive each other seventy times seven times, and continue moving forward. We pay close attention to how our words and actions affect others (especially the subconscious flinches and the eyes); and instead of telling them we understand perfectly and that everything is fine, we show them we would stay with them and that they do not need to be alone.