You Were Born / Usted Nacio
(Original Printable) En Espanol
“I’m sorry I’ve been so distant. I am trying to get back to feeling at least somewhat okay. I’m giving myself a timeframe to just get myself back together. I just want you to know that I’m not giving up. I’m okay and I’m trying to just get out of this depression.”
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He knew. Her apology was not necessary. Her emotions in her distanceness were as familiar and flavorful to him as a canter of mint tea or a woman with quiet tears welling in her eyes. The scent of familiar faces with those familiar eyes of tears pierced his mind.
He knew because each person is a cup, a cup with some more and others less, that can hold of level of stress and anxiety where-upon exceeding the volume that the cup can hold, inevitably spills into depression where the less than-experienced practitioners of mental health claim the cup is imbalanced or bi-polar when the cup even if chipped and cracked is still perfectly good in holding the amount stress of it’s finite capacity. The anxiety inherent in such a vessel is the anxiety to avoid the traumatically painful, physical or psychological circumstances it has experienced before, but now under the added stress of knowing the pain and consequences and the guilt the vessel feels toward itself for having been of an inexperienced or lesser capacity to see and avoid falling into that pit of pain.
People endeavor to avoid the mistakes and resulting pain of the past because Providence created them that way. Providence designed them to desire to not repeat the error of their lack of knowledge, but now knowing that danger, they lack the knowledge of how to again prevent that danger, or how to exactly stop the anxiety that has flooded their cup and continues to rise. And now they know that an overflowing cup will mercifully wash them into depression.
Reasonable people judge people in such circumstances as they have judged themselves - as a person deserving of help.
But we were born into a strange world where the right kind of help is a difficult question.
He recalls as a child watching the eggs in an incubator begin to hatch. From the inside the chicks would peck away. Then they would stop. His empathic response was that of almost any child - to take his little fingers and peel away the cracking shell to free the little chick. But in doing this the chick may die by the tearing of blood vessels that have not yet receded.
We rarely know with certainty that we understand the totality of a person's circumstances to know exactly when, and exactly how to help them. In our minds, we question if the help is truly right or if the help is simply removing a challenge in their life that they can accept and mostly overcome without our judgment and interference, and be that stronger person from our telling them that we love them, that we believe in them and that we are there to help them determine the best action to take if and when they need us.
And so there are times that not with our eyes but with our thoughts we watch the distant person that we love. We feel their pain. We ask ourselves what they should do, what we should do, or what others could do, and instead of clarity, we often experience confusion.
A confused mind always says no. No to action. Even to empathic action. Maybe that is a Divine proposition that governs us so that we reserve our resources for when we absolutely know what the person needs, that they are ready to accept it and we or someone else who has what they need is ready to give it.
His inability to help you in some ways, and uncertainty as to the appropriateness of one way or another to aid you when he sees you struggling and in such pain, is never a reflection of a lack of love for you. When you are most distant, is when he most certainly knows you are struggling, and most acutely feels your pain.
And what is that pain we feel for others and especially for you, if not anything, but love?
-Zado Ingles