Someone on Facebook has been responding to my happy and celebrational posts with painful comments.
I hope that what I wrote to her recently might be helpful to her and others:
It is so interesting to me that you and I seem to be in two different worlds, sharing the same planet, but projecting our two very different inner movies onto the screen of life. It seems to be from your comments on my posts that your movie is quite scary and painful, and that you suffer in response to all the suffering and injustice you see around you in the world.
I’m sorry it’s so hard for you. I’m an empath too, and I know how it feels to have my heart breaking almost everywhere I look.
I have spent many years in the movie theater where you seem to be abiding. I have learned many things, including compassion and patience, from all the suffering inside me and around me.
But there does come a time when you realize that you are free to leave the scary and painful movie, and go visit the musical comedy that’s playing right next door in the same multiplex.
I hope that my posts offer you a coming attraction, perhaps a trailer of a more joyful movie playing at a theater within you that you can watch and enjoy anytime.
You buy a ticket to the fun show by giving your attention and appreciation to all the good the world has to offer.
There really are more choices and ways of perceiving life on this planet than being an empath unwittingly soaking up (and in) all the pain in the world. Seeing injustice through the eyes of a wounded and broken heart eventually burns us out and creates drama and dis-ease in the body.
But that burn-out is a good thing, cause for most of us, it is only when we are totally defeated and burned out that we accept that another way is possible.
Suffering to help end suffering is a no-win scenario. And a very long and endless movie as well, filled with tragedy and extremely rotten tomatoes.
“Where there is sadness, let me sow joy.”
– Francis of Assisi
