The Challenge of Understanding

Every now and then one of my friends will encounter some challenge in their life that they never saw coming (divorce, rough pregnancy, etc). Suddenly they are thrust into a terrible challenge and they find themselves being judged and hurt by the response of people around them. As they emerge from it they will write a lengthy facebook post preaching about those challenges and how the responses of others has hurt them and how it only added to their burden and made coping more difficult. They go on to plead, with all who read, to show other people, going through their specific challenge, compassion and kindness because it actually is really difficult and can't be understood unless you've also gone through it.

I tend to be of the mindset that the only way to understand what it's really like to go through anything is to actually go through it. Even then, you can only ever know what it's like to go through it as you, with your temperament, personality, intellect and background. So when I see my friends make these kinds of posts I always want to reach out in the comment section and point out that this is true for all people going through all challenges - especially when this is coming from someone who has gone out of their way to paint entire groups of people with harsh judgement, which completely lack perspective and context.

As someone living with chronic invisible pain, I'm constantly facing these sorts of challenges. Yes, it does add to my burden and make coping with a very difficult situation even more difficult. I totally get why they want to reach out and plead with people to understand and be kind to those who are going through the same thing. But I keep finding myself feeling frustrated when the lesson they learn is always specific to their situation. Even if unintentional, their plea that we shouldn't minimize the experience or judge someone going through X, implies it's still okay to think people going through Y are lazy, weak, immoral, or whatever. Again, this feels especially true coming from people who are unapologetically judgemental.

It's the same with politicians. Often times when you find a politician fighting hard for rights, research and policy change for a specific populations it's because they are personally impacted by it. We have a state rep who ran for reelection this year, who boasted in his commercials about how he fought to make it easier for children with autism to have access they didn't have before because he had a child with autism and knew the challenges. That's all well and good for children with autism but I wish the lesson he learned was that all children, facing all kinds physical, mental and socioeconomic challenges deserve the benefits he fought so hard to get exclusively for children with autism.

Why can't we all see that we all deserve the same go at life? When we all do better we ALL do better. Why is that such a hard concept to realize?