The Similarities In Our Struggles.
The funny thing about being human is that we seem to struggle in silence with the same problems that affect each of us, yet rarely do we open up to one another about how we feel.
We suffer in secrecy, living out the answers to the questions that we are often too afraid to ask, and even more afraid to have answered.
When we finally open up and share, we discover that all of our concerns come down to the same few problems that we all experience. And yet we feel like we are alone, and somehow less than each other, because we have our doubts, our worries and our fears.
So today, in the spirit of hopefully showing you that you are not alone, I would share some of my fears and struggles, and see if they sound familiar to you.
I pray you will not judge me too harshly.
I struggle with the fear that I am not a good person. Although I have spent so much time working through awareness and trauma recovery, I am still plagued with unkind thoughts towards others.
Thankfully I’ve learned to stop myself before I say something unkind (well, most of the time) but I struggle to reconcile the good I find within me against the bad that seems ever present and ever potent.
I know I have made changes, but I wonder if they have gone deep enough.
I struggle with questions of reality and eternity. The more I study and learn, the less I am sure of my place in the universe. I find myself experiencing frustration with those who claim to ‘know’ the answers, because at the heart of all their vaunted structures are the unproven, unknowable mysteries that defy logic and reason.
As I try to keep an open mind, I find less upon which I can be sure, and more and more that seems to be beyond my understanding.
At times I feel very alone and lost in a universe that mocks my understanding while it forces my acceptance of its abundant mystery.
I struggle to be sure that I am a good husband and father. The longer I live, the more I see of things that I could have done better, started earlier, or missed out on completely because I allowed my fears to rule where reason was unwelcome.
I see the struggles my family endures as a result of my weakness and failings, and have come to understand the poison of regret in the litany of missed opportunities that colors the history of my days upon this world.
Time is an indiscriminate destroyer.
I find so many of these root struggles in the lives of those who have entrusted their health to me as a Doctor, or their futures to me as a Coach. I realize that my struggles are in no way unique, although their expression in my life might be.
The truth of our common humanity is found not in our genetics, but in our grappling with the problems passed down by our ancestors, and on to our posterity.
So if you are struggling today, please know that it is not your perfections that connect you to each of us, but rather your weaknesses, your fears and your struggles.
You are not alone. You are one of all of us.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings