Like many of you, dear readers, I am a very compassionate person. When you tell me your problems, I'm likely to give you meaningless, cliche advice and consolations. You know them. If you know me, I've probably told you some of them. They have good intentions of course.
"I'm sorry. It will get better." [Maybe. Eventually.]
"Everything happens for a reason." [Usually. Except when I can't come up with one.]
"It gets easier." [No, it doesn't. You just forget eventually.]
"Time heals all wounds." [Except the ones it doesn't heal.]
"Lots of people go through this." [Including me, but I'm not going to tell you. I'm perfect.]"There's a light at the end of the tunnel." [Or a brick wall. Guess we'll find out.]
I'M DONE!
People will say "Thanks," and "you're such a great friend," but nothing's changed. That person still feels horrible. Can we please take a minute to just be real with each other? We put on lovely faces of beautiful, happy people for the world to see. But it's just a masquerade. The majority of people I know are scared, angry, lonely, and generally unhappy with life. We learn to be relatively happy on a day to day basis, but many people are still just as heartbroken and lost on the inside. Cliche phrases like "It gets better," don't help; they just further disconnects and isolates people.
Can we stop giving people useless messages that just make ourselves feel better for being good friends? Here's my proposal, readers.
Instead of all of these meaningless phrases we've been throwing out in every situation our whole lives, let us embrace our humanity.
"Me too."
"I've never been through that, but I want to know more."
"You aren't alone."
