poverty of speech.

I have encountered many opportunities wherein I needed to be therapeutic, to be understanding, to be able to give the right answers and offer the right advice to my friends, even to strangers, because they have become incapable to do so for themselves at that very moment of vulnerability. It usually comes easy for me to empathize with them but it becomes harder for me to find the right words to say. Its hard when you know somebody trusts you that much to say the right things, to be the one to shake them back into reality but not knowing exactly what the right things are and being incapable of showing them the way back to reality because you’re not sure how to get there yourself.

*

Helping other people and trying to fix their lives for them are two completely different things – this is what I learned today. I got so used to listening to my friends and talking them into doing the right things, the things I believe will do them the most good and having them accept all that I say. I always thought that was how you help people: you try to fix their lives for them. But I was wrong.

There is a limitation to how much any of us can be of any help to everybody else. Selflessness turns into selfishness, and our intentions to help may not turn out helpful at all. There are things that cannot be fixed and there are things that are best left unsaid.

*

I learned that it is easier to make people happy with the smallest things than to try and find the big words to capture their pain.

*

I find it so hard to understand human nature. I find it harder to just passively accept human nature, especially when the behavior is more destructive, more hurtful to oneself and even to others. Some people try to bring out the best in human nature, to try and heal whatever is wrong with it but I guess it is in human nature to naturally resist, desist and defend itself. I wanted to understand why they held back. Is it because of fear of humiliation? Fear of happiness? Or is it because they know that their pain is terminal and that a fleeting sense of happiness would only give them false hope?

There is no book that tells us what the right emotion is for every moment. There is no happy chapter that demonstrates all the possible expressions of happiness, all the avenues, all the sources of happiness. There is no written guidebook to emotions and human nature. They are things that we should discover on our own, things we should deal with on our own. If we decide to try and fix these things for them, we should know when to stop. We should know the limitations and the right expectations. We are but mere mortals with the innate instinct to live and defend oneself. Every perceived threat must be dealt with accordingly.

*

Expectations are not always met and readiness is always just an ideal. Life is not something that was planned for us by any human cognition; it is something we learn to go through as we live it each day. We cannot fully grasp all people, places, events and ideas all at the same time, in one single moment. Our human capacity is bounded by limitations, circumscribed in imperfection. The unexpected and the unknown are concepts known only to powers greater than the human faculty. Our humanity keeps us unready our whole existence. We can never be ready for anything, much less everything. To know fear is to be human. To feel pain is to be human. To endure is human.

delicious ambiguity.