Live at a little and you’ll surely come to learn something: living hurts.
There is collateral damage that comes just from showing up. The simple act of breathing and stepping into each day brings things that will and do wound you.
Little by little we all collect the painful marks of time. We acquire the gradual scars of our participation here.
And the cumulative effect of it all; the adding up of all the defeats and disappointments, and the unexpected land mine disasters our feet land upon can sometimes bring us to the point of exhaustion, right up to the very precipice of desperation.
They can leave you just wanting to stop; stop working on that relationship, stop pursuing that dream, stop seeking justice, stop caring so deeply, stop breathing altogether.
And in those moments, sometimes the only thing you need is to feel a shoulder pressed up against your own.
Some days all you need, is to reminded that someone stands alongside you and in the closest of proximities is present; hurting with you, rooting for you, waiting with you.
Sometimes it is simply that gentle pressure against your upper arm that saves you.
It turns out misery doesn’t really love company. Misery flees from it.
The myth of our own isolation is always our greatest adversary here. It is the mortal enemy of Hope. We can sustain all manner of horrible things as long as we feel we are sustaining them with help.
When we feel truly alone, giving up always becomes easier, almost better. It often feels like the only option.
This is a reminder that you are not alone in this.
These words are a shoulder pressing firmly up against your own, to let you know that you do not face what you face by yourself, even if it feels that way.
There are people who hurt and strive and weep and sweat and bleed right along with you. You may be temporally unable to see them or they may be less obvious from where you are standing, but they are there.
There are those whose names and faces you know well, whose lives are intertwined with yours and who are right beside you (or would gladly be if you were to invite them).
And there is a massive army of those whose names and faces you’ll never know, who in this very moment stand in silent solidarity with you from their own place of great hurting.
There is a strange comfort to be found in the realization that all of us feel alone; an odd community of imagined orphans.
You are one among many, even in your profound loneliness.
Yes, there is great pain to be found here, and yes you may be right to be discouraged and angry and frustrated to the point of collapse right now.
But you would not be right to be hopeless.
To be that, would be to believe the lie that you are alone, that you always will be alone.
To be that, would be to allow yourself to be fooled by your pain into thinking it is your only companion.
To be that, would be to ignore the truth that there is a shoulder pressed firmly against your own.
See it.
Feel it.
Lean into it, and keep going.
