Rob’s Bubble.

Lately I have been counseling/advising a couple of friends about certain issues which are getting them down… Although these problems superficially seem so disparate, when you really dig down to the cause of their grief, in its simplest form, you’ll always find the same culprit – a loss.

It’s become so clear to me that all of life’s problems are essentially the result of a loss of some sort. Every depression of your life, every negative emotional experience you have ever felt was a result of a loss. Its not an extremely profound impression of the world, but it is something that has definitely captured my own interest. If we know what worsens the human predicament, then why can’t we predict it? Why aren’t we better prepared? Haven’t we experienced a loss before? Why should this time be any different?

But you don’t understand, you don’t know what is like!

The answer is the degree of the loss – it is almost always different. The greater the loss, the greater the hurt. Even so, why do different people react differently to almost identical losses? My theory is that the probable return of what once was greatly effects the feeling and the severity of the loss. If you know something will never return, it becomes more black and white and our defence mechanisms kick in to help deal with the certain loss – at least in the short term. In most cases the dark reality of death never sinks in – we, as humans, are incapable of fully comprehending loss due to death. No matter how much time will pass, our minds will confuse our hearts with a type of pseudo-acceptance, but intermittently your mind will let its guard down only to open your heart up to further undealt hurt. We will never truly understand death and so will never truly accept that an end is in-fact an end. I guess this has fuelled our obsession with cryogenics, mummification, the immortal existence – and perhaps even religion?

Taking a lesser loss, such as a break up, because it is not so black and white, because there is never a complete certainty, the grey area of loss will always exist. This is where the most philosophical questions come from, when the heart is broken and when the power of control is lost, the heart yearns for an answer to a question which doesn’t really exist. Its hard to tell someone to eat some reality pie and deal with it because for some strange reason, that is probably more instinctive than anything else, they will just not understand whilst in that frame of mind. This is why hindsight is such a wonderful thing.

So if loss is the root of all evil, how exactly do you advise a broken heart? How do you console a broken spirit? You listen. Then when you are done, you listen again. In fact you have to listen to every bit of their reasoning, you have to be that friend who is there to hear it all. And if you don’t hear it all ask more questions. I guess this is probably the most gruelling period of it all, especially when you feel your advice has fallen on deaf ears – but we all know that the best advice comes from yourself – that is until you fail on your own advice.

So my question to you is how do you cheer up a friend who is slowly losing the will to carry on? How do you mop up the mess of a blubbering 50 something? How do you encourage them to stay the fuck away from the poison that made them sick if they truly believe it is the cure? I guess we’ll never know, you just have to try and be there….