I don’t like hospitals.
Hospitals make me survey my own mortality. And of course everyone recognizes the fragility in everyone but themselves. So, I avoid them at all cost.
But I carry this belief in people—for people, that they believe in themselves. Either that, or I’ve become numb to not asking happy people if they’re truly happy.
We like to showcase the best versions of ourselves in front of others. No one likes the interrogating question that follow, “no, I’m having a bad day;” so instead, we do just enough to fly under the radar of seeming hurt.
So, when someone asks, “How are you?” we respond, “Good,” and continue to drift under anyone’s warning flares.
“Fine thanks… and you?” Cordial and safe. Pushing the weight on to the one who asks; fearful that our dark secret may be uncovered; our reputation blemished leaving us naked for judgment.
We’re afraid to say how we truly feel, perhaps because we care too much on how others view us. It’s an opinion that feel is so necessary—in school; popularity, success. We need the support of others. We need to know we’re not in this alone. But that desire for connection also leads to the fear that we in fact are alone. It’s vulnerability, and it’s scary as hell.
So, often this feeling becomes sealed shut. For weeks, months, sometimes much longer. It becomes camouflaged in our relationships, marriages, careers, habits. So afraid of unearthing the problem, that we just carry it with us until we grow numb to it and assume that it’s a part of who we are. It’s not…
It’s the lie we let ourselves believe…
But we have a goal. That goal is not to maintain a spiritually broken generation. It’s to feel complete. To feel wanted. Every single person reading this deserves better. We deserve to be taken seriously, and have our heart worth taking in what life affords us. We’re not here to be put together in public only to shatter when we get in the car to go home. We were built more stable than that. And for substance worthy of holding something. Deep personal connections.
People genuinely wish happiness towards others—mostly. The problem is living inside our own problems, which creates blinders in seeing the hard truths others are being trapped in.
Usually the lies we carry with us carry on, because we think we’re alone in our struggles. Our generation must do a better job of breaking down our own barriers. Gently. Out of love. But the one thing this world is meant for is a place to connect with others. The more we treat others like status updates instead of real people, the more distant and surface we grow from each other. And without human connection, the purpose of life becomes dangerously irrelevant.
-Jason O’Toole
(Source: memoir.jasonotoole.com)
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