Story Library

Rethinking Sympathy

Backstory

There is a tendency to fill the air with words, when expressing sympathy, in person or in writing. Hallmark chooses comforting messages for you. Sometimes empathy presents the best sincerity.

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Rethinking Sympathy – #377

“I know how you feel.” People often say that, to show empathy with someone else. The truth is, you probably have no idea how they feel. And saying that you do may really aggravate the other person or make them want to scream back that you could not possibly feel their pain.

So how do you comfort someone over a loss or a tragedy? You might say – I know how I would feel in that situation. You might even find better words to use.

Often, it’s best to just be quiet. Be a sounding board, rather than someone who gives advice. Let the other person vent or cry on your shoulder. A gentle touch…a hug …the holding of a hand – all those can express empathy better than a speech.

Sometimes you’ll share the tears; sometimes you’ll dry them. Just being there with someone you care for can be the greatest gift in their time of need. Being there…and quiet…and listening…and sharing.

You won’t find that prescription on a bottle of medication. You’ll find it in your soul.

Don’t be afraid of the person in pain. Don’t try to convince them things will be better. Just be there for them, with love in your heart.

It works.

P.S.
Some people have a generous knack for expressing sympathy by doing. We think to take food over right away, but take it again later too. Call with a lunch invitation in a few weeks. If you are turned down, ask again later. Send a “thinking of you” card the next month. Mark your calendar to remember to stay in touch. Don’t let your hurting friend fall between the cracks of your busy life. Good friends are rare – and well worth the extra effort.

[Show #377]

SPECIAL EDITION . . . Post Lockdown – The Next Role of Mature Americans

A FOUR MINUTE READ

With a future uncertain and COVID-19 still with us, normalcy is an illusion. Opening strategies will change from region to region. The post-lockdown demand will be high to “get going.”

Chances are that you are a major decision maker in your household. You are considered the rock. Others look up to you and value your decisions. They will look to you for guidance in this new, unprecedented era.

NEW DECISIONS

With this responsibility, we need to figure out how to arrange our lives depending on our individual case. not what the media has to say. As new opportunities to venture out open, we must balance risk with benefits, on a very local basis with our family and our own best interests in mind.

Amidst confusion and contradiction, you will be required to make swift changes. You have to decide who to trust and what to believe. It’s now all trial and error, no matter what anybody says. None of us has ever been here before.

MISTAKES

The thing about decisions is – you are going to make mistakes. Some may just get you off track a bit. Others could cause tragedy. Don’t let early mistakes cripple future decisions. You are expected to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward. There’s no time to curl up and grieve.

Your adult children are going to make mistakes too, as they navigate through the bizarre future. Those errors will hurt; they affect precious grandchildren. But everyone is weaving their way through the weeds without a GPS. As a pivotal person in your family, continue to be a safe place to land.

In recent months, we have seen and felt fear, suffering and loss, vividly different in each family. If yours included inconvenience, meals at home every day and a shortage of TP, you’re one of the lucky ones. If you have a financial foothold that will see you through, you are truly blessed. So many do not.

During lockdowns, we’ve learned the value of time to pay attention to those we love. The luxury of that free time may well disappear as we get acclimated to the demands of living with COVID-19 and proceeding with life.

RELATIONSHIPS MAY CHANGE

Some of those valued relationships may drop under the weight of the new decisions to be made. Your mom may think the kids were let out too soon. The business owner spouse may think it’s not soon enough. Civil wars could erupt in families. Be ready to defuse the rhetoric.

Think in advance of what your role may be, in the new normal. Imagine a time checkered with mask-wearing, camera-toting and the scent of sanitizer or Clorox on a hand unwilling to shake yours.

CHILDREN AND TEENS

Children were kept busy and taught during lockdown. Parents figured out how to provide continuity during disruption. Now plan for next semester. Keep an eye out for different education tools newly available or pending.

Remember how teenagers needed comfort and accommodation when this all started and their long-anticipated graduations and proms crumbled to the ground. You assured them there would be a tomorrow with new opportunities.

In the months ahead, they will need a new kind of assurance. The ground Is swirling beneath them. Help them to identify their strengths and where they can fit in as an employee or a student or both, in the new future.

Expect emotion from anger, rejection and despair to utter joy, as unexpected happenings occur, including opportunities and delays. Be ready to sooth insecure thoughts and shore up courage.

ENDANGERED SPECIES – OVER 65

Those over 65 with extra weight, type 2 diabetes, and medical issues continue to be at high risk. How many seniors in your world does that include? Very possibly the majority. You help them survive by staying away.

The silver generation has little choice but to bunker down at home. Galas are a fond memory. Grandparents don’t thrive in a culture where generational hugs are forbidden.

However, seniors who remain safe at home actually have little change from normal life. Their maturity helps. They’ve seen a lot, have handled crises before, and have more resources and resilience than you may imagine.

Sheltering in place has the most consequences for retirement-aged employees. Consider your health robust and return to work? Or take the safe route and finally pull up a front porch rocker?

This new era is birthing a major new wave of software and social media that may leave seniors in the dust. Just when they conquered ZOOM, along comes TikTok and Messenger Room.

NEW THINKING

Staying at home, many people have had the time to consider new concepts of how to live their life. Some have developed ideas on how to improve the world. Others are using the pattern-interrupt caused by the pandemic to establish new behaviors, attitudes and habits to bring into the new future.

NEW WORK CULTURE

For the new work world, skills will be sharpened – or changed – depending on where you land on the career ladder. You will see new manufacturing, astounding new software, and new global competition. Not just USA, China and Russia. Watch for other regions to pop up. Success will come from the different status and approaches taken daringly during the pandemic.

People who never worked from home found that they preferred it. This is your chance to get more of it. Others who lost their position got up the courage to offer their talents in the new marketplace as an entrepreneur. People are dragging out and polishing up former skills and experience as they recognize new openings for employment or innovation, post-lockdown.

Take a hard look at the new work culture. What are the new needs? How quickly will those needs disappear? What is likely to replace those needs? People sewed masks, made videos, delivered meals. What else can we do? Jump out of the box to think unconventionally and from new perspectives.

OLD OR NEW?

The unbelievable happening of a global pandemic shook us into re-thinking the way we do so many things. As we start coming back, do we just put the pieces back together? Or do we create a new and more evolved world that includes the values we’ve recognized anew in recent months.

Lots of decisions to make in the months and years to come about how we recover from this crisis. Be open to change. Don’t be defined by what we lost to this virus but by how we responded to it and what we gained.

BUILDING THE FUTURE

We have been sheltering in place. That role is over. Now is the time to take our place in the new world unfolding before our eyes. We can be powerful role models. We are beautifully strong souls. Let’s pilot direction for our families. We may have to be courageous and take a leap in some areas. Let’s help find a silver lining in this mess.

Make your decisions with a new vision. Not a snapshot that shows only your world in tiny focus. Rather, take a panoramic view of the diversity of age, race, gender, spirit and interests around you.

Take your place with strength and confidence – even if that confidence is a bit shaky right now. Be ready to change on a dime as circumstances reverse, loses occur and needs go back and forth

Your life is a narrative still being written. Who you are, what you do and what you say matters today and impacts tomorrow. Let’s fulfill our part in building and occupying the new future.

Annette E. Petrick
https://considerthisradioshow.com/

New Abnormal

Backstory

We can’t control what happens, but we can always control our reaction. I had just had a vivid example of the benefits of positivity. It inspired a message about coping with change.

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New Abnormal – #376

Most of us come into this world in perfect condition: ten fingers and toes – although I have always wondered why counting digits is so important to new parents. Anyway, we perfect beings have minds ready to learn, bodies ready to grow and perform.

Then somewhere along the way, something may happen – accident…disease…chronic illness. It could happen when you are 26…or 39…or 74.

Suddenly, things are no longer normal. All the things you could do before are no longer easy or fast. You’re slowed down. You could easily be convinced that you are sidelined. You’re not perfect anymore.

That’s when attitude becomes as important as the right treatment. You have to decide on your own personal new normal. Set new goals within your current capacity. You can sit and bemoan the loss of the old normal – or work toward improvement, but within the accepted new normal.

Learning to accept help graciously can be an important part of relearning. Those who do so often find they can again have a good life with much joy and many adventures. Maybe not as elaborate as when you first came into the world, but fine enough to say Life is Good – even in my new normal.

P.S.

Happiness is relative. Things don’t need to be perfect for you to be happy. Count your blessings and don’t fret if the list is not as long as it used to be. The point is to build on what we have today and give thanks. Always give thanks.

Show #376

Daily Miracles of Love

Backstory

I was at the height of my career. In demand. Lots of travel, awards, attention. Then I’d return to our simple, quiet farmhouse in rural Virginia. No glitz, no spotlights. He wondered if it was enough.

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Daily Miracles – #015

We were sitting on the porch, watching the early evening clouds change colors as sunset approached. He turned to me and asked, “Do you enjoy sitting here quietly just taking it all in?”

He referred to the mountains that rose from the other side of the road, the flowers and the swaying trees, the birds, twittering happily in the evening shadows.

“Sometimes I wonder if this is too staid for you,” he added.

How could I possibly express to him all it meant to sit next to him and take in the daily miracles that so often go unnoticed in our hurried world. To hear the sounds of nature instead of the ringing of the house phone, the office phone, the cell phone.

To sit here knowing this is the final destination of the day. No more need to wedge my way into the traffic and claim my share of blacktop to get me home. The most peaceful time of day when my heart sings and my hand touching his is divinely intimate. It is the essence of every love song.

“This is my favorite part,” I shared softly, tears of joy gathering in my eyes. And I believe he understood everything expressed by those few little words.

P.S.

To have career satisfaction and at home, a soft place to land. A huge blessing found by many here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

[Show #15]

We Early Risers

Backstory

As a writer, I’m used to working alone. The early morning hours seem to be my best time to explore big ideas and dissect everyday happenings to look at them a different way. Watching the sun issue in a new day is exhilarating.

I was thinking about how other people find their most productive time to work. When is yours?

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We Early Risers – #606

What time do you get up in the morning?

I’m an early riser – 5 a.m. for the most part. Love to see the sun lighten the sky and insist on a new day as it grows bright.

That’s my best time to think. It’s when these Consider This shows are written.

It’s quiet and personal and the day’s responsibilities can be held at bay long enough for thoughts of love and gratitude and joy to be celebrated first.

I find myself smiling, in front of the computer screen in those early hours.

I never pay bills at that hour, or plan a budget or open the mail. Save those for the afternoon, when energy is waning and mundane things can be done.

Early mornings are meant for thinking . . . planning . . . being mesmerized by the consideration of things that are and dare to be.

It’s not a time for Facebook or websites that present other people’s thoughts and ideas. In early morning, I want to feel my own thoughts; take them out, explore them, see if they stand up to early morning scrutiny.

Sometimes they don’t. And a show half written crumbles away like a lyric by Adele. Concepts that do not deserve your ear are burned at the stake and you never hear them.

How do you spend your early mornings? Please come to our online blog and post your response. If you have no early morning rituals, tell when you do contemplate or meditate or evaluate thoughts and ideas. I would so like to hear.

P.S.

During the days of self-quarantine, many people found new ways to concentrate, connect and reach their inner selves. Makes you wonder what the long-term result will be of our experiences with an overabundance of togetherness for some, loneliness for others. Blessed are those who managed to achieve balance between the two.

[Show #606]

Salute to Young Moms

Backstory

With the added duties of sudden home-schooling and the need for daily creative eat-ins, moms have a right to be harried this year. Take time though, to celebrate the magic of motherhood. You have the ability to make it all better. And you do. Thanks for all that.

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Salute to Young Moms- #292

It’s so difficult to be a young mother today. There are so many restraints that require concern and worry. The media’s emphasis on negative happenings can convince you there’s a boogie man around every corner.

How do you teach children to be open and sociable and yet wary of strangers at the same time? Outside forces are influencing your children and they seem to get exposed to less gentle things so very early.

Yet in most families here in the country there is a loving young mother doing her best to counteract the downsides: to make life safe and sweet and secure.; to assure that her children know that they are loved and the benefits of being good, obedient, and respectful.

It’s hard to know how much of an impression you are making. But you know what, don’t stop. Kids learn the lessons you are teaching. They learn from the examples you set by what you do and say. It will serve them well in the years ahead when they have hard choices to make. You are setting their moral compass, and that’s never easy.

To those young mothers, accept this salute for the fine job you are doing as you juggle home, job, volunteering, and most of all caring for your children in helping them to grow and prosper, meeting each day’s challenge.

Thanks for all you do young moms. Never give up. We are counting on you.

P.S.

Young mothers often don’t recognize that there is help available if they are overwhelmed. Moms groups, adoptive grandparents, girls and boys clubs, scouts, church groups, local parks & rec activities and social agencies are worth looking into. They could provide what is needed to get you to the next step.

[Show #292]

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