I watched a show last night that demonstrated the lifelong angst, pain, and struggle that early life abuse creates. The story was difficult to watch, and made me think a lot about how we can't be sensitive enough to the struggles and stories every person holds within--often if an adult is acting strangely or in worrisome ways, that behavior is based on early life events--events that created anger, struggle, hatred, pain, and lack of coping skills.
Too often, our culture uses punishmentt rather than help when people struggle. And too often, the helpways that people choose when family members and friends struggle are insufficient, and not as helpful as they could be.
How can we help one another more? What can we do?
I think we can start by helping people have more reasonable lives. When people are overworked and underpaid, they don't have the time or capacity to think and serve one another well. Overworked and underpaid people are often too tired, distracted, and oppressed to be able to help one another in optimal ways.
Also, we have to think about ways that we can educate each other more about the best ways to help one another--there's a lot of good information out there about how to help each other in ways that matter, and the more that we can use that information to educate each other, the better our world will be.
And, we have to be open to asking for help when we need it. To stay stuck in a troubling matter, is to make that matter worse.
We have to be courageous too. It takes courage to reach out for help for yourself or others when problems occur. We have to encourage our loved ones to reach out for help too--too many who struggle, stay silent and don't reach out to get the help they need.
As a society, I believe that our efforts to build stronger, more loving communities are efforts that will empower more people to help one another--do what they can to lift lives in positive ways rather than allow people to stay stuck with struggle or exasperate the problems they spread or endure.
This help begins with being observant, and then working in ways that you can to help one another live good lives. Onward.