My truest moments of community have always seemed to work in the following way.
Everybody starts by laying down their cross. Confident that their suffering is the heaviest. Convinced that they would trade places with anyone if they could. But once they take a look around, once they really feel the weight of the suffering other people have been carrying, they reach down and pick their cross right back up.
You know, on second thought, my problems aren’t so bad after all.
It’s a beautiful and surprising moment. Accepting our mistakes as proof of our humanness, it doesn’t get much better than that.
It reminds me of a passage from a recovery devotional. The former addict explained that joy was multiplied in direct proportion to the extent that she shared it.
Which then means, that pain is divided in direct proportion to the same. Once we admit what we think we are alone with, magically, we grow closer together. We realize we’re less alone than we thought. And we learn that underneath people’s perfectly curated masks of pleasure, there is always a fellow human being beset with problems and difficulties just as we are.
It’s not about misery loving company, it’s about failure finding everybody.
Remember, bravely going forward alone isn’t a sustainable coping strategy. Move your heart out of isolation contraction and into connection.
Tap into the power of we.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
When was the last time you admitted what you thought you were alone with?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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