Oh, the things we learn, give or take an L

What I’m going to say is not shocking. I doubt it will surprise anyone, really. But I believe it’s still worth repeating. Or recognizing.

Statistically speaking, just from a purely empirical (and admittedly anecdotal) standpoint, people who have been through some hard experience are far more likely to respond when someone else goes through the same (or a similar) thing.

Not shocking!

Of course, there are exceptions. There are those amazing people—who haven’t been through it—whose antennae are nonetheless naturally/instinctively attuned to the needs and suffering and heartache of others. Bless all of them.

And still, generally speaking, in my limited sample size of troubling life experiences, the people who reach out? They’ve been there before, for the most part.

Let’s get to that anecdotal evidence!

Last year, when we first thought we were going to lose my father-in-law, is my Exhibit A. Doug had a heart attack on a Friday, was taken to the ER where he had to be put on a respirator to breathe for him. He was in a coma, unresponsive save for some very unnerving convulsions. All momentum was trending towards the family ultimately having to decide to disconnect the respirator and plan a funeral. Lest you think I’m being dramatic, I don’t think any staff at the hospital would disagree that Doug had a <7% probability of survival. That number is probably high. We had our kids come into the room, with grandpa all tubed up, to say goodbye.

Word got out.

Before he was even gone (the longer story I won’t tell here is that he somehow miraculously rebounded—beating that 7% probability—before being placed¹ in hospice and ultimately passing, surrounded by a grateful family who got to say our proper goodbyes, a week later) Holly and I had so many people reach out to us:

-two close friends who had lost a child at birth and recently lost her father

-a couple, both of whose² dads had died—hers when she was maybe 20, his just last year

-a neighbor whose mother died a few years ago

-a former ecclesiastical leader (whose dad died when he was quite young) and spouse

-another neighbor whose father died when she was in her teens

-another close friend whose dad died during the pandemic

-yet another friend who’s currently going through a rough (are there other kinds?) divorce

-neighbors whose sister—a neighborhood staple, a name-in-the-opening-credits person if our neighborhood was a tv show—died far too young

-a high school friend whose twins died as infants

-our daughter’s piano teacher who recently lost her husband and whose grandfather had died when she was my daughter’s age

-there are more.

People are good. Kind. Compassionate. They brought all sorts of baked goods³. They checked in with us, in-person and via text. Some of them even cleaned our house. They took our kids when we needed to be with Doug. They brought warm homemade meals. They sent flowers. They wrote kind notes. They sent immensely thoughtful, personal gifts. They did all kinds of really, really gracious and perceptive things. Not by official assignment. Not as a box to be checked. Just because of their nature.

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It’s uncontroversial to posit that empathy is learned. Not shocking, again. It’s not profound or revelatory, either.

If we drop the first letter from learned, it all makes even more sense: empathy is earned, whether we want to earn it or not. The things that earn you membership in this particular club are not things anyone would choose in their life. They are wholly non-refundable dues.

I’ve told the story a million times but will tell it once more because it’s how this lesson first drove all the way home for me:

Back in 2010, the morning of my older brother Ben’s funeral, Holly & I were getting dressed and trying to get our kids (2 years old and 5 months old) ready. There was a knock at the front door. And there, at our doorstep, stood my cousin Marie (maybe other kind people, sorry other kind people!!!) with a plate full of still-warm, homemade cinnamon rolls.

They knew. They knew. They knew it would be a tough morning and they knew that the last thing we wanted to worry about was breakfast and/or putting our kids through all of the funeral/cemetery stuff on empty stomachs. We didn’t even really know that, not yet.

How they knew was this: Marie had lost her mom (my mom’s cousin) years before to cancer. She knew what it felt like. She had been there, in the grief generally but also specifically in the morning of a funeral that came too soon. And she acted accordingly.

That—the acting accordingly part—is the piece my mind keeps circling back to.

When Ben died, my initial rebound response was to harden emotionally, to shake my fist at God and the sky and anyone really, to sneer at the “everything happens for a reason” people, to want to uppercut anyone who said “he’s in a better place”, to grit my teeth against the whole of the universe. I did all those things, instinctively, sometimes all at once.

I don’t fault myself for some of those reactions, really. I reserve a bit of grace for myself. My responses were not unnatural or, given the circumstances, even unreasonable. It would be weird if we didn’t feel unwieldy, unhinged emotions when presented with tragedy. We’re human. But, long-term, the way to act accordingly is to not harden but to let these things open you up⁴.

I’d love to tell you that that epiphany dawned on me that same day, that I dusted myself off, shook off my bitterness and anger and gritting teeth. It did not and I did not. It took years. I took years.

Is it a shame that it takes Going Through It Ourselves for many of us to have the lightbulb illuminate above our heads? Or is it simply a critical piece of the human experience, gaining empathy a fraction at a time, part of divine design (if you believe in that sort of thing)?

We can take the things that happen to us and use them to make the world a better place. Does that sound like a sixth grader running for class president? Or a naive college student at a rally for (enter cause du jour here)? Or, worse, a company’s Q4 mission statement? So be it. Doesn’t make it less true.

A neighbor, facing the unthinkable with her husband in the thick sick of another round of chemotherapy, addressed the idea of “everything happens for a reason” in a recent church meeting. She talked about how she didn’t really buy into that notion, and how some things just….happen (cancer, heart attacks, disease, tragedy etc). But—and I loved this—she also spoke about how we can make sure the things that “just happen” are meaningful, how she was trying to make sure her family’s experience with cancer meant something. Profound, to me.

We can give the things that “just happen” meaning, make sure we’re not just beings upon whom luck falls (or doesn’t). It’s a rather subtle distinction and maybe it’s just a trick of the (semantic) light, but it rang true to me.

We make our own trials and losses and heartbreaks meaningful when we use them to help and love others. We give them meaning. In fact, we wrest them from the festering, cankering clutches of self-pity⁵ and bitterness⁶ and angst.⁷

I don’t think that those feelings necessarily cease to exist. I wouldn’t say that creating meaning fills the voids in us, either. They’re still there. We’re only human. But they do cease to own the story.

1. I don’t know the verbiage here. Is someone “put” in hospice? Are they “entered into” hospice? Or is hospice “decided upon”? All of this is (anecdotal, again) evidence that we don’t like to talk about such things.

2. whom’s?

3. I got very accustomed to a steady stream of baked goods. People talk about college students gaining the Freshman 15, but nobody tells you about the Grief 10.

4. I felt a similar Oh So This Is How It Is way after we had our first child and our neighborhood congregation took such amazing care of us with meals; we now always make sure to sign up to bring a meal for families with newborns when we can.

5. Been there.

6. Been there.

7. Been there.