Humanity is so confusing. We cover anguish with a smile, isolate ourselves when we feel lonely, and struggle in silence while insisting we're fine. What would the world be like, I wonder, if we all felt safe enough to share our hurts and fears and battles with others so we didn't feel so alone? The human experience is not so very different at its roots, after all, no matter where we live on this hope-filled, hurting planet. We all suffer. We all love. We're all afraid. We all hope and dream and try and fail and try again...and again. And we all need to be heard and understood and appreciated. What if we tried being honest for a change? What if we shared our deepest pain and hardest battles and darkest fears with each other? What if we shared our dearest hopes and wildest dreams and proudest successes and most crushing defeats? What would life be like if we humans finally accepted our own perfectly imperfect humanity and admitted that we need each other in this wild, wonderful world?

We have to share the hurts pain the love the joy of the other and in that way we're sharing that sense of ruching were limping that person and then pick ourselves up in the same process because we're giving for sharing something of ourselves.

I’ve also learned that the more we diminish our own pain, or rank it compared to what others have survived, the less empathic we are to everyone. That when we surrender our own joy to make those in pain feel less alone or to make ourselves feel less guilty or seem more committed, we deplete ourselves of what it takes to feel fully alive and fueled by purpose.

To know someone's pain is to share in it. And to share in it is to relieve some of it.

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

The more we can be with our own difficulty, our own pain, the easier it is to be with the pain and difficulties of others.

We have an obligation to try to reduce the pains of others, wherever they are, and however the pains have been caused.

We are suffering, and if we could all acknowledge that suffering has content, we could all understand, as a community, somewhat better how to help each other.

I was deeply interested in conveying what is a deeply felt conviction of my own. This is simply to suggest that human beings must involve themselves in the anguish of other human beings. This, I submit to you, is not a political thesis at all. It is simply an expression of what I would hope might be ultimately a simple humanity for humanity's sake.