Just Let Me Be Where I Am... please?

Waiting. Sharing. Relationshipping. Forgiving. Growing up. Pregnancy. Parenting. Aging. Ailing. Dying.  All things that are difficult. And I’d argue that they are difficult for everyone, regardless of age, life stage, experiences, knowledge, wisdom, circumstance, or any other distinguishing factor. Strangely though, these difficult things can become just one more variable in the ever-present and all-encompassing desire to compare oneself to another. It seems odd to use a word like “desire” to articulate such a phenomenon , but the more lost I get in thinking about this topic, the more I clearly see that this is what it is. Subconsciously or not, conversations between friends, family, well-meaning acquaintances, and even ignorant strangers often turn to a tit-for-tat “my life is harder than your life” struggle. Don’t believe me?

Perhaps you’ve recently been asked how you are feeling. MAYBE you’re comfortable enough with the inquiring party to offer a real answer-- you know, not just “Fine, thanks. How are you?”. So you offer up that you have been feeling a bit stressed out. Oh, I suppose I forgot to mention that you are 21, engaged, finishing up your final semester of college, and worried about the next chapter. While the intended response from the listening party would have been understanding, compassion, and perhaps even empathy, you instead receive something along the lines of: “You think you are stressed now? Just wait…”

After all, what could POSSIBLY be stressing you out? You’re 21, which to the entire world who USED to be 21 means: no wrinkles and legalized booze. You’re engaged, which translates to young, puppy love- how adorable? You’re finishing up school- you don’t even know stress yet since you don’t live in “the real world”. Yeah. Just wait until you have REAL worries and concerns (not small things like working and attending school full-time, accruing loads of debt and wondering if you will secure a job to ever pay it all back, planning a wedding from a different city than your fiance, the church, your family/friends, and, oh yeah, the ever-present fear of the scary “real world” that everyone thinks you’ve never heard of before..

Maybe you’ve not been there. But I’d equate this situation to being pregnant in the 3rd trimester (or being the soon-to-be-dad whose wife is). Same question: “how are you?” While the truth is: EXHAUSTED. SORE. HOT. IMPATIENT. UNCOMFORTABLE. IRRITABLE. BUSY. STRESSED. ANXIOUS AND EAGER, (and somehow simultaneously overflowing with excitement, gratitude, and contentment), you learn very quickly that if any of these sorts of words escapes your always-trying-to-smile lips, you are most certainly going to here: “You just wait…”  I know, I know… wait until the baby keeps you up at night, THEN you’ll be tired. Wait until you have a toddler melting down in the aisle of a grocery store, THEN you’ll be stressed. Wait until your kid is about to go to elementary school, THEN you’ll be anxious. And so on…

Now, again, I know these folks are [usually] well-meaning. They generally have experience with the matter and are trying to relate to you somehow. But here’s what the reality is, and here is what my insides are screaming: JUST LET ME BE WHERE I AM, PLEASE?!

You see, they are right. Life is going to get harder. Life has always gotten harder. Think about the first word of this blog: waiting. It is hard to sit in a car-seat and wait to arrive at a destination when you have no concept of time. It is hard to wait your turn for the swing when the swingset is all full at recess. It is hard to wait in line at a grocery store or in a traffic jam. It’s hard to wait to find the one whom you will marry. It’s hard to wait to get pregnant. It’s hard to wait to meet your baby. It’s hard to wait for test results when you’re aging. It’s hard to wait. Period. Always. My point is that being told it’s going to only get harder or that it’s already harder for someone else doesn’t help. Instead, it can diminish identity, trust, relatability, known-ness, and relevance. This may sound dramatic, but I believe it, and have felt it, to be true.

This sort of conversation is somewhat archetypal, and I would suggest that it applies to many other experiences throughout life: receiving a poor grade for the first time, graduating, buying a house, getting a divorce, experiencing the loss of a loved one, changing careers, experiencing financial problems, losing a job, moving to a new place, receiving a diagnosis, retirement, and so on. It takes serious vulnerability to admit that we are struggling in any life stage. That we’re not perfect. That we don’t have our lives together. It takes trust to share the not-so-marketable parts of us. It takes a desire to know and be known to open up about these things, and the second someone says “just you wait”, it becomes a new conversation: a “one-up” battle of belittling the tension in someone else’s life to magnify that of their own. It’s no longer about sincerely asking how someone is feeling in his/her current stage. It is now about “my life is harder than yours because I’m further along in it” or “you haven’t even experienced hard yet”. Take a moment to think about the truth here.

Disclaimer: this is NOT to say that age, experience, and life stage mean nothing. Obviously the cycle of life allows folks who have been in a particular stage before to offer wisdom, advice, assistance, guidance, and the like. And those of us who are young and experiencing things for the first time NEED that desperately. We need assurance that life is going to go on and that things will not be “like this” (whatever that means at the time) forever and that good things can come from struggles. We also need to know that the next stage is “not always rainbows and butterflies; it’s compromise that moves us along” (Thanks, Maroon 5- we got it).

I guess what I am saying is this:

Experienced folks: the next time someone begins to open up about the things that are sticky, ugly, uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing, or just plain annoying, resist the urge to say “just you wait” or “that’s not so bad”. Listen to what they are saying and how they are feeling. Nod with compassion. Remember when you were there- not how you are now- but when you were THERE… before you knew the outcome and how much better [or worse] you would be in the long run. Sympathize and avoid belittling these things that ARE big right now for that person. Wait for them to ask what’s next.

Non-experienced folks: Be honest. Be where you are right now and don’t be apologetic, embarrassed,or self-deprecating. Understand that your issues ARE relevant and do deserve to be heard, felt, and experienced. Consider the beautiful parts of the struggle if you can find them-- because later you will miss it (that message is loud and clear, too. Thanks, Trace Adkins.). Then, when you learn to be where you are, not just living for the next thing… be humble and ask for help because, yes, you’re going to need it. And someone else HAS been there.

Life is hard. It probably won’t be any less hard in the next stage. It probably isn’t any less hard for people in a different stage from us. None of us knows everything. Let’s just try to be better to one another. Fair enough?