I am tired of these “things you should never say to
<insert category of society>”articles. Working moms. Stay at home moms. Divorced
dads. Parents of children with special needs. Single people. Overweight people.
Veterans. Or any other group of people.
Like, seriously. These articles about what we should be
careful about NOT saying to other people, because we “don’t truly understand
what they are going through” or because we don’t want to “offend” them is
exhausting. And yet these articles go VIRAL.
What if our focus was just “Be kind to one another”? What if
we stopped caring so much about what NOT to say and instead focused on what we
SHOULD say?
And maybe it’s okay to say “I seriously have no clue what
you are going through, but I love you a heck of a lot, so if you want to cry
right now, I swear I won’t judge you. And if you just want to laugh and pretend
like our problems are not real right now, that’s totally cool with me, too.”
When did it get to the point where there is such a sense of
entitlement that if people don’t know EXACTLY what it’s like to be you in your
SPECIFIC life circumstance, that we can’t just be a loving community
regardless? We do ourselves a disservice when we create these dividing walls
among us.
Truthfully, very few of my friends are single parents. There
was definitely a time in my life when I felt like I had to prove to people – my
inner circle, my most beloved kindreds – that my life was harder than theirs
and that they certainly did not understand how heroic I was for enduring it.
There is a label for that: DRAMA QUEEN.
Because the reality is, everyone’s life is challenging in
unique ways. Why are we competing? Why are we tiptoeing around each other’s
realities and trying so hard to not offend each other by staying surface level
instead of radically loving someone just where they are at?
My guy works nights and I share custody of my tiny diva, so
I am home alone at night. It’s been a LONG, DREARY, ALONE-FUL week for me. But I
have friends who never get breaks from life or from kids or from work and would
give their left foot for a night or two of solitude. When B called me tonight
for our nightly phone date, I was down in the dumps and mopey. BECAUSE I AM AN
EXTROVERT AND PEOPLE ENERGIZE ME AND THE ONLY PEOPLE I EVEN SPOKE WORDS ALOUD
TO TODAY WERE MY MOTHER ON THE TELEPHONE (and that was great, Mom, love you!)
AND THE LEASING AGENT WHO SHOWED ME AN APARTMENT AND THE PEOPLE ON TV DIDN’T
TALK BACK TO ME WHEN I TRIED TO ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION TONIGHT. (JERKS.)
So yeah, there’s that. We will save my incoherence of TV
personalities being fictional characters for another day.
But I felt TEARS welling up in my pathetic eyeballs tonight
because I am just lonely, and I didn’t want to admit that to anyone because
there are 1) way worse problems in the world and 2) most of my friends would
kill to have my “free time.” Yet, that dose of reality didn’t improve the mood
in my tiny apartment. Because my petty, whiny, “I miss my friends” pity party
is tied to the much bigger issue that I am unmarried and without my child this
week, which I could tie back to all my divorce drama and blah, blah, blah.
My point is…my story is my story. And your story is your
story. And the differences in our story are what make us a beautiful, diverse,
mixed up group of people. So how about I just say it’s okay that your story is
your story, and you do the same?
How about if we just focus on showing kindness to each other
and not making assumptions about each other’s lives, and instead, just pass the
love around? We are all different. Let’s overwhelm each other with grace and
joy and all the good things in life instead of worrying that we might bring up
a touchy subject. Because maybe those touchy subjects are painful, but maybe
that person needs to talk about them, or needs a different perspective, but they’re
just waiting for someone to talk about it cushioned by love and un-judginess.
Let’s just be intentional. Let’s just be good to each other.
