I never understood this. I don’t want to suffer. Why would anyone else want to?
In time I learned why. People often can’t hear the lessons that other people try to share with them. They don’t think it applies to them, and their ego and pride cause them to think they are stronger than they are.
I think also that many people haven’t suffered enough. People talk about how tough they are, but very few people have the strength to question their beliefs and to look at themselves honestly. Fewer still have the strength to go against the crowd and show a more helpful example of how to behave.
I have seen in my life friends and family who just seemed incapable of learning the lesson. There were a few alcoholics that I got to see up close. One lived next door and was my grandfather. Strange that two grandfathers had problems with alcohol, but I had three grandfathers total. No I didn’t have multiple families, I was adopted, and my grandmother remarried. She left the alcoholic who continued to drink beer until his death.
Why am I sharing this? I used to go over to his house and help clean since it was filthy. I felt sorry for him and hoped that he would see that someone still cared for him. At the same time my other grandmother on the other parents side who didn’t marry him was taking me to volunteer at the old folks home. So working with another old person was natural and easy for me.
I am not saying this to make myself look good. I am saying that I saw someone who was poorly educated, never had therapy, average intelligence who couldn’t let his addiction go. His daughter my aunt brought him groceries because he couldn’t drive. When I talked to him he seemed normal, but something was wrong in him I realized as a young child. He missed part of being human in being able to recognize that his situation wasn’t helping him.
Why am I saying all this? To tell you this. He eventually had to move to a nursing home and died alone. I always felt that it was a tragedy to die alone and not around the people who loved you. However few people loved him, and as a kid I couldn’t travel to visit him in the nursing home. I always want to be connected to someone I love, and nothing not the temporary high from drugs/alcohol can be more meaningful than being loved everyday.
Why is it so hard to realize that compared to love, nothing else matters?