One of the biggest difficulties we face in life is seeing a loved one in pain. We insert ourselves into their situation to try to save them from this pain. Watching them suffer causes us so much discomfort that we feel we HAVE to act, if only in hopes of relieving our own pain!
Yet, how successful are we in doing this? How often does a loved one in the midst of suffering look at us and say, “Thanks. Now I know I don’t have to do what I was doing.” Ummm…rarely, right?
This is why we have to learn to see this horrible pain differently. If we said to ourselves “Hmmm, I bet they’re going to learn a lot from this…hopefully really soon,” our grief and rush to save them is diminished.
We learn most from direct experience— not from someone directly giving us the lesson from a journey we never took. Those lessons stick! They can hurt, but we learn and grow a lot from them. I don’t expect that to change in my lifetime.