How do you deal with sorrow around you? There's just so much terrorism, crime, poverty and misery around. The recent news of crime around the area where I live, and the Mumbai blasts and the economic recession etc. seem too much to bear. They raise questions about why the world is the way it is and whether or not we as a species are evolving and how we can define 'ideal conditions' in the world. Given the laws of nature and human temperament, can too much stability for too long bring happiness either? And hence, are we to take suffering in our stride and just preoccupy ourselves in solving problems? In any case, the antagonism and terror around the world, and the unthinking dependence on the material world for happiness, seem like a sad state of affairs.
My husband and I recently met a homeless guy who got talking to us. He initially danced and fooled around and made us laugh. In a few minutes he told us his whole life story and it was very sad. He was from Alaska, he said, and he and his wife, out of compassion, let a bum live with them. The bum, it turned out, was the villain of their lives. He raped this man's wife. In his rage this man shot the guy and then spent years in prison. The man cried his heart out. Was it all true? Was some of it fabricated? Was all of it fabricated? Was he demented and was this the story his mind had come up with? Who knows... but the sorrow in his being was real. It was genuine. It could not be contained. The guy was looking back at his life, thinking of the road not taken - that's the worst form of remorse, I think. He said he and his wife at some point had refused shelter to a teen aged girl who was homeless, and then when this other villain of a bum came along, they simply had to help him, to rid themselves of their guilt. He was imagining the path his life would have taken had they helped the first bum.
How do we deal with sorrow? How do *you* deal with sorrow around you? One aspect is dealing with it emotionally yourself, the other is, what you can do to alleviate it. Guess we can all focus on one cause and work towards it. There really is no place for feeble heartedness.
Did the Buddha feel the same pang of pain when he saw suffering in the world?
What are your stories? How have others' lives and difficulties affected you? How do you cope with them emotionally? How do you strengthen yourself and help the situtation and the people around you?
"How did humans get to life?"
9 years ago
5 comments:
It is a coincidence that i read this poem just before i read your post. I felt that it was so much related to your topic and decided to post it......
i still do not have my own answers about "Dealing with sorrow around you"..........
When I have one i will write more.
Is baar nahin
Is baar jab woh choti si bachchi mere paas apni kharonch le kar aayegi
Main usey phoo phoo kar nahin behlaoonga
Panapney doonga uski tees ko
Is baar nahin
(This time when that little girl comes to me with her bruises, I will not blow gently at her wound, nor distract her, I will let her pain grow.
Not this time.)
Is baar jab main chehron par dard likha dekhoonga
Nahin gaoonga geet peeda bhula dene wale
Dard ko risney doonga,utarney doonga andar gehrey
Is baar nahin
(This time when I see pain on faces
I will not sing the song that eases pain
I will let the pain seep in, deep�.
Not this time.)
Is baar main na marham lagaoonga
Na hi uthaoonga rui ke phahey
Aur na hi kahoonga ki tum aankein band karlo,gardan udhar kar lo main dawa lagata hoon
Dekhney doonga sabko hum sabko khuley nangey ghaav
Is baar nahin
(This time I won't apply any balm
Nor will I ask you to shut your eyes
and turn your head
While I gingerly apply medicine
I will let everyone see the open, naked wounds�
Not this time.)
Is baar jab uljhaney dekhoonga,chatpatahat dekhoonga
Nahin daudoonga uljhee door lapetney
Uljhaney doonga jab tak ulajh sake
Is baar nahin
(This time when I see difficulty, uneasiness
I will not run to solve the problems
I will let them become complicated�
Not this time.)
Is baar karm ka hawala de kar nahin uthaoonga auzaar
Nahin karoonga phir se ek nayee shuruaat
Nahin banoonga misaal ek karmyogi ki
Nahin aaney doonga zindagi ko aasani se patri par
Utarney doonga usey keechad main,tedhey medhey raston pe
Nahin sookhney doonga deewaron par laga khoon
Halka nahin padney doonga uska rang
Is baar nahin banney doonga usey itna laachaar
Ki paan ki peek aur khoon ka fark hi khatm ho jaye
Is baar nahin
(This time I won't pick up my tools as a matter of duty
I will not make a new beginning
Nor will I stand as an example of one dedicated to my job
I will not let life easily return to normalcy
I will let it descend into muck, on the twisting paths
I will not let the blood on the walls dry out
Nor will I let its colour fade away
This time I won't let it become so helpless
That you can't tell blood from paan-spit
Not this time.)
Is baar ghawon ko dekhna hai
Gaur se
Thoda lambe wakt tak
Kuch faisley
Aur uskey baad hausley
Kahin toh shuruat karni hi hogi
Is baar yahi tay kiya hai
(This time the wounds need to be watched
Carefully
For a long time
Some decisions are needed
And then some brave moves to be made
We have to begin somewhere�
This time this is what I have resolved)
… Prasoon Joshi
I resolve pain in two ways - 1. Try my best to find a solution to fix the cause, or 2. a) Experience the pain fully and vent out my emotions till I feel drained, 2b). Try to find a "closure" or means of accepting it, to move on. In the transition between experiencing pain and trying to accept the situation, I try to orient myself on the positive aspects of my life.
I often get disturbed and touched by many others' pains. I try to offer empathy and help when I am near them, or remind myself of their courage when I need to face something similar. I derive my confidence through inspirations.
I have personally never met any Holocaust survivors. But my heart bleeds everytime I read about it. This is one human suffering that has really touched me deep. In any difficult scenario, I remind myself of all the strength and courage of so many survivors and my own problems and pain seem trivial in contrast.
Such contrasts help me put my problems in perspective, and that according to me is a key step in coping with sorrow.
A very difficult question to answer truthfully. I often wonder whether Moksha is a state where you remain in a state of pure being and everything relative seems to be lesser. I try to take this viewpoint when I see suffering around me, but somehow it doesn't seem to click. The relativity of suffering doesn't help, either. For instance, how does one compare the suffering of a poor man struggling to make his family find basic sustenance and a rich woman who has lost her offspring? In order to be truly empathetic, one has to be able to internalise the sufferings of other people, and because of our busy lifestyle, that isn't possible. So we are left in a position where we reconcile ourselves to suffering as the curse of human birth, and life goes on. Well, this is what I do - I relate it to human birth, past karmas etc. and try to find justification. This is not an attitude born out of compassion, but out of a sense of fairness and justice. Perhaps the feeling aspect in me isn't sufficiently developed to appreciate the fact that suffering cannot be viewed objectively as I choose to view it. I could be justified in doing so if I were to view even all of my own past and present sufferings objectively, but the ego plays spoilsport in the process of objectively analysing personal suffering.
It is true that suffering is on account of personal karmas, but then why is writeen in the Bhagavad Gita that the Cosmic Consciousness takes birth in human form when human suffering goes beyond the ken of human beings? Does this mean that God Himself recognises that there should be an end to suffering even if it is on account of past misdeeds of the sufferers? Does it mean that an attitude of pure justice and fairness without compassion is eventually mindless and cold? Perhaps so.
What worries me is not the apparent lack of compassion within me - what truly worries me is that it doesn't seem to matter to me that I am lacking in this aspect of "normal" human empathy.
One of my friends wrote me an Orkut testimonial that says that I don't do evil because I choose not to, and I don't do good because I'm too lazy - perhaps that is the real problem - we're so preoccupied with ourselves that we don't have time or patience for other people's sufferings. Part of this attitude comes from the apathy that we notice in other people when we are ourselves in the suffering mode, so this becomes a self-serving vicious circle.
There is no easy answer to this question, and the only way I can reconcile myself to all this is by reminding myself that I have to get out of this loop of human suffering permanently, else one never knows what new suffering one may land oneself in - a rather self-centered attitude, if I may add.
Human life in itself comes embedded with in-built suffering, and there is no person who can claim that he or she has not encountered suffering in life. We ourselves take heart in the face of suffering by reminding ourselves that there are others in a worse situation - if you extend this relativity there is really no end to it.
I think there is nothing that can truly assuage or heal that comes from another person - any kind of healing or assurance has to come from the sufferer himself. There are also points in life when you become so inured to suffering that it doesn't seem to affect you anymore. We realise that others may encounter similar situations, and reconcile ourselves to their getting accustomed to suiffering as a normal part of their lives. We are, after all, ordinary human beings and not divine incarnations meant to heal the world of its specific sufferings. We might harbour notions of grandeur, but in the end, apart from being mostly bystanders to others' sufferings, we really have very little choice. We can do our own bit to alleviate the suffering of others, but it can never be enough, so we eventually have to ask ourselves whether we're trying to alleviate others' suffering truly for their sake or for our own objective of wanting to do something about others' suffering.
Very interesting question, but very difficult to answer. I have been thinking a lot, lately, about how to handle pain, sorrow, or the negative emotions that I feel. I separated out these feelings into two 'buckets' for lack of a better term. 1. Feelings that arise out of empathy - essentially dealing with others' sorrows or things I feel from seeing or hearing someone else's plight.
2. Feelings that arise out of my own disillusionment, disappointment, loss etc.
In the first case, I observed some interesting things, especially about myself. For one, when someone actually talks to me about a problem they have, one of my first instincts is (or used to be) to try to solve the problem for them. My mind would race in possible "If then else" evaluations and I would make suggestions for what the person should do. It actually took me a while to realise that that was almost never the correct first step and by trying to 'solve' that problem, I was honoring my own instinct or requirement to solve, not necessarily helping that person. To say the very least, it made me a bad or unsatisfactory listener. I discovered that the first few suggestions I give are almost always redundant. Instead, why not simply listen. Let the other person speak, vent and get it out of their system? If the problem is such that speaking out is what helps, I've solved it without doing a thing. If not, I try harder to understand the real pain point, analyse the situation, use my knowledge of the person and other such happenings and then make a suggestion that they could not have come up with themselves. Or at least need some prodding to implement. Then there is the other set of issues that I learn about as a third person. And it is these that I have to internalise, rationalise and somehow digest. The Mumbai attacks, for example. I cried when I heard the news... several times. I cannot answer the 'Why' questions. I can think of psychology, or philosophy, but nothing soothes other than detachment or reminding myself of the time heals adages or sometimes of my humility. Same thing for natural disasters... Sometimes it isnt even happenings that provokes these feelings of sorrow. Depending on the phase in life I am in, I can e acutely sensitive to many things. For example, I was taking a walk in the snow this morning, admiring the prettiness of the dazzling white surroundings when I suddenly felt a pang of guilt. What of the many homeless people who dont have a home and hearth to return to, like me. Would they be seeing any beauty at all in these frozen settings? But then I had to tell myself that I would NEVER be able to find any peace or joy in any thing. Because the nature of our world is such that behind every single thing, you can find something to feel sorrow about. Another example - during the mumbai attacks, there was clear news that 180 people had succumbed. An aquaintance's brother was thought to be in the area at the time. We immediately said that we hoped he wasnt in the tragedy... but what good does that do? Are we not just trying to increase the distance between us and the tragedy? 180 people are dead, somebody's somebody is definitely dead. Then what is the point of hoping that it is not my somebody's somebody? Somehow, am I not trying to deal with the sorrow by wishing more distance from it? It makes no real sense, but this is how we think.
I am not able to rationalize things assuming that there is some divine counting system that mets out justice based on current or past lives good or bad deeds. I dont believe in rebirth, and I dont understand the math that could be used in these calculations.
Amazingly, the thing that hurts me the most, more than anything else is the plight of animals. I start crying and feel deeply even when I see advertisements for pet shelters. I am unable to watch 'Animal Police' on Animal Planet because I literally cannot bear to see cruelty towards animals. And I still find it extremely hard to rationalise wrongdoing or misfortunes towards the dumb creature. And yet, 2 years ago I became non-veg. So there is some filtering somewhere, some hypocrisy. Why does the life of a dumb chicken matter less to me. I cannot bring myself to eat any other kind of meat, but what did the chicken do?? I dont know - I dont have an answer.
I realize I've been rambling a bit, so getting back to the second point of
dealing with personal sorrow. The times when there has been a death in the family have been brutal. I have almost always taken a long long time to heal. Keeping the feeling in myself, experiencing the loss over and over. All the comparisons, all the 'they are in a better place' or 'at least they are not in pain' dont soothe for the first several days. After that somehow you end up getting back to life. From remembering all the sad things, you move on to remembering happy things. Being able to talk about the deceased person to someone (family) who has also experienced the loss is very soothing. In fact, nothing soothes better. Just listening to others talk is also medicinal.
And then we shift focus. Our ability to shift focus is a great boon, according to me. It helps us live our own lives. Otherwise we would be forever entwined in the past or the turmoils of the present. In some perverse way, we also dissociate from the pain. It must be a survival instinct. Becase like physical needs, happiness is a critical requirement that we all try to fulfil. By doing good, by giving what we can, by listening, by reaching out, by lending a shoulder, by donating, by empathising, by forgetting, by refocussing, we try to deal with our own sorrow and others'. Otherwise life would be so much more complex and unbearable!!
Thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts! Those were so many different points of view.
Now I'll make an attempt to express my own.
To begin with, I think anything anyone does is selfish. The prime mover of all action in man's life is selfishness, in a way. I say this because even when a person does something out of empathy or love, it is *their* feeling towards the other person that makes them want to do a certain thing. When you love someone, or care about them, their pain becomes your pain. If they go through some situation similar to yours, you empathize with them because you relate to what they are going through. People who are extremely social and host parties, too, do it because of *their* social need. In this sense, expectations become irrelevant too.
Now, why is empathy or supportiveness or lovingness considered a virtue? I believe that's because it's necessary for our sustenance as a race, just part of the cooperation/competition equation.
But even given these ideas, I find unempathetic people dry. There are people who are very self absorbed and news of earthquakes or genocides may not affect them at all unless it impacts them directly. By my assumptions, I should be able to accept this because everything is selfish, and this other set of unempathetic people are selfish in a different kind of way. But I usually find hard heartedness difficult to digest, because it's subliminally come to be my (our) expectation that people should be 'considerate', kind etc.; a large part of it has to do with ego and our association and identifying ourselves with humankind.
That was a bit of my thoughts on kindness and empathy as qualities.
Moving on to how I feel empathy and how I try to deal with it and help people, sometimes I take others' suffering to heart, and in certain situations it's hard to do anything about it. I feel handicapped, like in the case of natural disasters or in the case of terrorism. In these cases, time of course, dulls the pain - I don't know if time "heals" anything, but it certainly dulls and numbs our pain. And this is true of all suffering, our own and others'.
To help others' suffering, honestly, I haven't done much social work or anything. I mostly have tried to help monetarily so far. I also believe that one's being passionate about what they do or about life in general can automatically bring about a difference at least within their realm of influence. There's more inspiration around. So there are some things I do passionately and purely selfishly (going by the traditional notion of 'selfish' as opposed to an all encompassing notion that I earlier described) and I hope that it influences people without my being aware of it.
When it comes to consciously helping someone I know who's suffering, I usually lend a ear to problems and actively try to make suggestions. Since I mostly approach problems from the intellectual angle, trying to suggest solutions is what comes naturally to me. Moreover, when I am in a mess, I usually pour out my woes only to those that are likely to be active listeners, rather than passive listeners. This goes to say that I don't usully want to "vent out" without any end. I like to get people's point of view if not a solution; so by doing the same myself I usually think I am exposing the person to another way of thinking which might help them. In reference to Lightrain's point about "just listening", it's enlightening to know that there may be people who want to talk without expecting any participation. It's difficult for me to understand since I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum, but an interesting point of view.
Another way I try to help people in pain is by offering inspiration when I can. This cannot help in hopeless situtaions like a loved one's death, but can help in dealing with surmountable problems. Death is something that no one can deal with by rationalizing. The believers have their own way of dealing with it, the non believers have their own way of dealing with it, and so do the people in limbo. Essentially what is intersting is that all three camps deal with it by distracting themselves- the believers turn to religion and spirituality that gives them solace as well as distracts them, the non believers and the ones in limbo engage themselves in other activities to distract themselves. People also use other people to deal with death. For e.g., when a loved one dies, the thought of other loved ones who are still alive and care about one's suffering makes them consciously try and return to normalcy sooner. Also of course, human (limited) memory is funny, and a big blessing that way.
I can see that some people may want to deal with suffering through intellectual means, by assuming a Karmic justice system etc. Personally I find it hard to assume things that cannot be proven; by the same token I don't claim to not believe in rebirth either, since it can't be proved one way or another. I just assume I am limited in my understanding of the universe and can't reason to find out certain truths. When it comes to helping other people, these personal beliefs become irrelevant too...
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