When Objects of My Envy Have Bad Days

​One day recently, while reading the work of other writers, I ran across an essay that took my breath away. The vivid imagery, the flow, the use of language: it absorbed me from the start and wouldn’t let me go. The author’s bio noted she’s published in many top literary journals—way, way more “top” than I have.

I was so bedazzled I wrote her an email in praise of her writing. She thanked me for the note and said she was saving it “to read on the hard days.”

And my lizard brain thought, What hard days? She’s got it made! A major literary success!

This kind of thing ever happen to you?

So many of us, from what I’ve seen, are Jedi masters at comparing ourselves with others, evaluating our worth against theirs, the better to place ourselves on some arbitrary hierarchical ladder of quality. I do this and end up with a pile of worthless wishes: I wish my writing were as good as hers; I wish I had x credential; I wish I’d “made it” like her so the “hard days” wouldn’t happen.

But the hard days happen to everyone. (I know, no surprise. But I forget.) Every human being, if they’ve lived long enough, has endured loss, trauma, intense pain, tragedy, the dreck of life. Those things are hard—excruciating—no matter who experiences them.

Here’s why I’m writing this. We’re at a point in history where certain groups live with the legacy of unimaginable horror. Black Americans and Indigenous folks, notably, continue to endure the shadows of slavery and genocide. The resulting pain, and the pain of other groups that have lived with oppression, merit the utmost compassion and listening, always.

And, at the same time, what if we extend that utmost compassion and listening to everyone? What if we keep in mind that they, like us, have experienced the brutal knocks life dishes out? I find that when someone mentions the difficulties in their own lives, my heart automatically opens to them, and out flow empathy, love, all manner of good things.

Acting this way one-on-one is a tiny act of kindness. But what if we start tiny—and set our hearts to lead with compassion? What might happen to our world?

Yes, the systemic oppression and centuries of ingrained behavior need more than listening and compassion; they need resolution. But leading with the clarity that everyone has hard days, and years, and lifetimes: that’s something my tiny one-person’s self can do now. Perhaps it can even grease the wheels for the much harder, more relentless work of justice.
As always, I’d love to hear what you think.