The Only Way to Bear a Burden: Share It
by Anne Marie Vivienne
Overcoming the belief that our worries, hurts, insecurities, and fears are too silly or too heavy to share––that we should bear the burden alone and figure out our messy selves before we package our “crazy” into a nice pretty bow to present to our loved ones, colleagues, and neighbors is a daily battle. Good news: there's a better, more authentic way.
“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
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You're Not the Only One
The etymology of the word despair comes from the Latin root, desperare: without hope. When we are sad, fearful, or angry it usually stems from a situation that didn’t turn out how we had hoped it would––we are now crushed by the disappointment that we couldn’t control the situation after all the planning, convincing, and protecting we carefully did. We ask ourselves, what went wrong? What did I do wrong? We worry about becoming desperate in other people’s eyes, and so we lock up our despair where nobody can see it because we’re ashamed of our despair, which is rooted in fear and disappointment.
“Evolution made its bet that suffering was an acceptable price to pay for all the rewards of being human.”
Show me a human without fear and disappointment. Can’t find one? If you did, you made up some lovely and fictitious story about their life. No one escapes fear and disappointment. We are more alike than we acknowledge. We are cut from the same cloth of evolution. And so, as we consider our similarities rather than our differences, the first step is to acknowledge that there is indeed suffering in the world and you are not the only person who experiences waves of pain, hurt, disease, betrayal, loss, and rage. Acknowledge there is joy too. It’s all here, and we experience everything. Everything. All of us will experience loss, disappointment, pain, and the frailties of old age. When we acknowledge that none of us can escape the unease and transience of life, we will know we’re not alone nor are we crazy.
“There are times in our lives when we wish we could change the ending of the story. Sometimes we lose what we care about, we are separated from those we love, our bodies fail us as we get older, we feel helpless or hurt, or our lives just seem to be slipping away...Suffering...does not necessarily mean grave physical pain, but rather the mental suffering we undergo when our tendency to hold onto pleasure encounters the fleeting nature of life, and our experiences become unsatisfying and ungovernable.”
Despair can make us feel desperate, like a drowning person who fears taking down their rescuer. Breathe. Because when you feel desperate, you’re feeling separate and alone, and there will be no one who can you pull you out of this one. When you’re drowning, you need help. Stay calm and ask for help, knowing that when you share with friends and family in a cooperative way, you’ll both make it to shore alive and grateful for a newfound love and gratitude for life.
Return the Favor, Golden Rule Style
“We love seeing raw truth and openness in other people, but we’re afraid to let them see it in us. We’re afraid that our truth isn’t enough––that what we have to offer isn’t enough without the bells and whistles, without editing, and impressing...My kitchen-table self is too messy, to imperfect, too unpredictable. Here’s the crux of the struggle: I want to experience your vulnerability but I don’t want to be vulnerable.
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You know that feeling of gratitude and honor and respect that wells up in you when someone is courageous and shares with you something that is breaking their heart or consuming their thoughts? That feeling that someone trusted you enough to let you see them, even when they feel inadequate and like their life is falling apart? This is compassion. We are reminded of our humanity and the threads that bind us together. We understand that we are in this together and that we must be willing to see and be seen. This is the human exchange of a thriving economy of the soul. We all participate.
Share and receive. It keeps everything moving in lightness, rather than stagnant in heaviness.
Perspective Shifts & Light Filters Through
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
When you share how your desire turned to despair when it wasn’t realized with a trusted person, they offer you the opportunity to hear yourself. Often we can feel that we were being silly or dramatic, and we make a judgement on ourselves that we have reacted wrongly or in weakness. Perhaps we even feel spoiled and laugh about “first-world problems.” And yet, these judgements on our own pain continue the thread of separation and difference from humanity––they do not weave a tapestry of unity. We all experience disappointment the entire world over––woven together with our joys, this makes a life meaningful.
When you share your despair and disappointment with someone else you allow yourself to move through the suffering rather than damming it up inside your body––where it will stay for later outbursts of greater magnitude. Better shed a few tears now rather than experience a breakdown of infinite length later. Care for your suffering with gentle humor for the quickest way to lightness and expansive perspective. It’s truly quite funny, truly absurd, how we fixate on one solution, one plan, one possibility and when it doesn’t happen in the way that our limited imagination expects, and we lose it.
But what if––what if!––there are endless possibilities and we’re open to whatever happens? As we share our disappointments with others, they can help us see the situation from another perspective. Our confidant doesn’t have to deny our suffering or put a shiny spin on it. All they have to do is witness us––by witnessing us they remind us that we are loved and valued. They see us, and this is the light we need to help us see the situation for what it is in the long game.
We remember that the burden can become light in two ways when we share:
- We have someone we can lean on when things get hard: when we need company, when we need ideas, when we need resources. How can others help us if we don't share our burden?
- Our mind lights up with all the possibilities of how we'll get through this situation and the nature of the situation shifts in our mind's eye. We see light where we might have seen a foggy murkiness before. As you converse with others about your sorrows and frustrations, you will hear yourself and hear your confidant's words that will lead you to a place of greater expansive knowledge.
We're All Needy
“Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.”
As social beings, we do actually need each other. Does that make us all needy? Absolutely. We need each other to feed ourselves, shelter ourselves, protect ourselves––even still in this modern day world where we can create illusions of individuality. I think when we say someone is “needy,” what we’re actually experiencing is a grasping desperateness––a person who has been traumatized by loss and disappointment. We’re all fed stories of happy endings where everything stabilizes––what if the medicine for desperateness is back to that idea of acknowledging that everything changes, nothing is permanent?
What if we show up for each other, bear the burden together, when things fall apart? What if when we sense someone’s desperate calls for help, we calmly sit with them, listen to them, and remind them that we believe in their abilities to take the next step? What if we could do that for ourselves? For each other? We can bear the suffering we’re bound to experience if we simply know that in this very moment we’re actually ok and supported?
You’re not needy. Sometimes we’re desperate. We’re always capable of taking the next step.
Make Time For Suffering
So many of us are in a constant battle with busy. We don’t take time to care for ourselves, so how are we supposed to care for others when a need arises? We know that we’re busy, so why would our friends and family be immune from this modern day disease? What if we committed to be less busy so that we had space in our days to care for ourselves and for others? What if we planned open spaces in our day that could be filled with attending to suffering? Because it’s going to happen.
We live in denial if we make a plan for the day that is filled only with joy, accomplishment, and reward. The truth is, we will probably need time for a ten minute walk after a stressful meeting or an hour conversation with a friend or family member who needs a listening ear and an embrace. Have you ever had a day when you or someone close to you did not experience suffering and a need to heal and reach out?
Make time to share and listen. Make time to care for yourself and the people who show up in your day. Make and keep boundaries? Absolutely. If you need to tell someone you’ll call them back later, do it. If you need to recommend someone talk to a professional for counseling, do it with love. Barriers? Not so much. Be open with your availability and ability to be supportive. Learn how to listen and support without putting gasoline on the flames. You’re there to love, love, love.
As we are willing to share and to listen when help is needed, we’ll all cultivate a trusting, loving, and present community of belonging. No one has to hide in the shadows ashamed of what we’re all experiencing and trying to get through with grace, humility, joy, and understanding. Ultimately, sharing shifts our perspective––things never turn out how we expected, but they alway, in the long run, seem to turn out better.
