Sometimes Things Come Crashing--A Paragraph a Day

I find it important to keep in mind that things like holidays can be catalysts, and not always in a good way.  This year, for example, I've experienced a great deal of loss in several different ways.  And while I'm not dwelling on the losses, once Christmas comes around, I've found that those things come back to me very quickly and very forcefully, even though I didn't know exactly what was happening.  It wasn't like I was focusing on the loss and therefore became miserable--rather, I started feeling very strange, and only after a little while did I realize exactly why I was feeling the way I was.  And if this can happen to me, then I can only imagine how other people are feeling about their own losses, many of which have been much more drastic than those I've experienced.  It's a good reminder to me to show compassion all that I can, and to withhold judgment about why people are feeling the things they feel, and reacting the ways they're reacting.  I can do much more good in the world understanding people more than I judge them, and there's nothing like a bit of my own pain to remind me just how much pain other people are feeling, usually solely as a result of outside forces.  I don't want to be the person who judges someone else and therefore decides to be judgmental rather than compassionate; I really want to be the person who shows compassion and thus helps someone else to work their way through problems they're experiencing, and there are very few teachers more effective than my own pain and loss to help me to understand the pain and loss that other people are feeling.  It's important to mourn and grieve when we feel our own loss, and it's also important to try to understand the lessons that our pain and loss are teaching us, even as we're going through the misery that we feel.  If we learn from our loss, it's a much better thing than if we just feel sorry for ourselves.