What It Means To Understand Someone
It’s hard to understand people when you don’t know what they’re going through. It’s hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it.
My dad died in 2016 and it was one of the worst things to ever happen in my life. My friends didn’t understand. They all still had both their parents. They didn’t want to talk about it, and we largely talked around it.
I would bring it up and they wouldn’t know what to say. I was numb and consumed by my grief.
Then, I had one friend who lost her mom one week before my dad died. She got it. We were able to revel in our shared sadness and grief and comfort each other. Because we each had personal experience with what it was like to lose a parent, we could relate to each other.
We bond best over shared experiences. Experiences are what bring us together. It makes perfect sense. You aren’t going to be able to relate to someone else’s emotions until you have dealt with them yourself. If you don’t share an experience, how could you be expected to understand it?
It’s like food. You don’t know if you like it until you’ve tasted it. You won’t understand another’s experience until you go through it yourself.
Granted nobody is ever going to have the exact same experience as you, but the commonalities are what bring us closer together.
Over the years, I’ve met other people who have lost a parent, and when I bring it up they just get it. They understand the crushing grief of it. They understand what it’s like because they’ve been through the same experience.
We all share in the dead parents club or dead dads club in my case. It sounds morbid until you’re a part of it, and then you’re grateful to be a part of it because then you know that you’re not alone.
Ultimately, this is what it comes down to. Knowing that you’re not alone in your struggle. Nobody wants to feel alone. It’s a really crappy feeling, so anything that bonds us forges a community you can be a part of. In the end, we want to be a part of a community, even if it’s one that sucks.
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