No Comparison

I’ve been thinking about comparative suffering. It needs to go extinct. Everyone has something. If we all wore signs sharing what difficulty was permeating our lives, we’d spend each day reading words like: my dad just died, my mom has cancer, I’m getting a divorce, my children ignore me, I lost my job, I have a chronic illness, I can’t pay my rent, I need surgery. . . I’m sure we would treat the bearer of these signs with more grace than we usually do.

There is no difficulty continuum where one difficulty has a lower or higher rating than another. A difficulty in our lives is just that. It doesn’t matter if you are dealing the loss of a limb or the loss of hair. They are both losses and difficult. Whether you had chemo for your cancer or just surgery doesn’t make the journey any less difficult and scary. I feel grieved when people compare their thing to mine. “I have this thing going on, but it isn’t as bad as yours.” I cringe. No! Your thing is difficult and hard and that is okay.

Every person has to find a way through their tragedy. Every person has to find a way to grieve the loss. Every person has to decide if they will find gratitude in the pain or just feel the pain. Every person has to decide which face to wear among family, friends and strangers. Will they get the raw and real you, the strong and together you, or the broken and grieving you? Every person has to find their path through the pain. The amount of pain doesn’t matter. The amount of loss doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is you are hurting and I am so sorry. I know it is hard. I understand.