Perspectives

I have a friend who is colour blind. 

He sees shades of gray and that's about it.

I am fascinated by this. 

As I sit with him in my living room, which is replete with pops of turquoise, orange, yellow, teal, green, violet and blue - all placed there for my esthetic pleasure - I try to imagine how he experiences that room. And I feel deep sadness in my heart. Even more curious, when he sees a rainbow, he sees shades of grey with an inability to see some colours at all.  His monotone rainbow is actually missing spectrums altogether.  They are there, he just can't see them.  He is robbed of such a simple joy. A joy I take for granted.

I speak of this because it's a reminder of how difficult it is to see another persons perspective let alone imagine another persons reality. If we are curious we can engage our imaginations and get a fleeting glimpse of it, but we can never fully understand or appreciate their day to day experience. 

We all wear our own prescriptive glasses unique to our perspective. The understanding and empathy we can extend to another is often stymied by this disconnect.  This came to me recently when I was faced with a friend who, in her sincere expression of compassion tried to fix my situation. I walked away feeling frustrated with myself for being unable to succinctly articulate my problem. I didn't blame her for failing to understand. It was only when another friend...one who is literally walking the exact same path as me...understood exactly the situation I was dealing with.  The reality is that some things just defy understanding unless you are currently walking that path or have walked it in the past. Some things are too big. Complicated. And firmly outside the realm of normal. 

The word I dropped with my friend, in an effort to describe the context of my situation, was the word trauma. A neat and tidy 6 letter word that sounds so benign. Speaking of benign, I might as well have said the word cancer. Another small 6 letter word that, unless you've had it touch your life, you can't possibly imagine its devastation. The struggle to endure it. The fear in combatting it. The ravages of it. The side effects. How it transforms you. It was as though I had told her I had brain cancer and in her attempt to understand and relate to me...to offer advice...a fix...she mentioned she once had ticks in her hair. (The ticks and the brain cancer are figurative in case I failed to make that clear).  She got rid of those nasty bugs by lighting a match to those little suckers back-sides.  And as soon as she did, they backed out real quick and she was free of them.  There. A fix. Just burn that cancerous tumour out. That's all I had to do. You are all chuckling a little right now, seeing the ridiculous nature of such a suggestion, but ask anyone who's experienced a chronic disease the things people say to them in an attempt to fix...but yeah...I digress.

My point...and you must see it by now...some problems are a lot more complicated. Some a little more dire. Some involve a greater measure of fear...for good reason. They are a little more life threatening. Some problems don't have simple solutions. Or easy recovery times. How I wish they did. And frankly if I could light the posterior portion of my enemies and hold the flame there until they fled..trust me I WOULD!! Seems fitting given the liar, liar, pants on fire missive...but I highly doubt the judge would see it as a viable option.

Some solutions just don't fit the problem.

No matter the good intentions. 

So the next time a friend reveals to you that they have cancer (6 devastating letters) or suffers from trauma (another 6 devastating letters), or even a broken heart, don't offer a fix. Don't offer a solution. Just look around the room and take notice of the colours she is unable to see. Feel her sadness for the briefest of moments.  Then love her just a little bit extra.