Two years ago my friend S. was very ill. Before her, her child fell ill, with a treacherous pathology and stormy outcomes. And then she fell ill, with a disease that doesn’t even have a name. It was at that precise moment that I began to struggle with the desire to say something right and the inability to find adequate vocabulary. I wasn’t so clear on how to be close to her because anything I could say in the face of her pain seemed superfluous to me. Unsuitable. Incongruous. A sour note.
«I’m sorry, nanny.” “I like it a lot”. Between aphasia and well-meaning interventions, I felt inadequate. Even a bad friend.
I didn’t rest. Is it possible that I could not say more? Yet the disease had been walking close to me for a long time: I look into the lives of others and tell them in the articles I write for Vita. Even so, familiarity with other people’s pain wasn’t giving me an edge.
I have lived with this state of inadequacy for a long time. Until, a few months ago, a painful event of illness upset my family. Faced with this fact, I traced in my closest friends the same awkwardness that I exhibited in front of S.. I recognized her in the messages: «I’m sorry Sabi, I wish I could do something, but I don’t know what». “I am sorry. If I can help you, don’t hesitate to ask.” “If you want to talk, call me. I’m here.”
Although I am certain that they are messages written by people who love me, I must admit that these words have slipped on me like a bar of soap on wet marble. I recorded them in my mind as a fact (my friend Stella loves me and thinks of me), but they left me with nothing.
I thought back to my friend S., and I started wondering: now that I’m on the other side, now that I belong to the world of breakdowns, of those to whom everyone feels compelled to say a word of comfort, of consolation, a beautiful word (what are “beautiful” words after all?), what would I like to hear?
Actually, even today, despite the change of perspective, I don’t know.
I’m not even sure that words are the most suitable tool to bring relief, soothe the pain.
Then it happened that my friend S., a few days ago, sent me the link to one on WhatsApp reflection written by Michela Murgia in 2021, in which he commented on what he had learned after watching a video on youtube in which Kim Tae-hyung, the leader of BTS (the most famous Korean pop group in the world) collapses on the red carpet. It was an article I had read, but I no longer remembered. The story goes like this: while Kim Tae falls to his knees, Murgia says, another member of the band, the oldest, also falls to his knees and stays that way until the leader gets back on his feet.
The scene generates an awareness in the writer. I copy her words here:
«The fact that no one can stand in your place does not prevent them from kneeling at your side. That video showed me that in the face of fragility there is not only the answer of strength relationships, where you are forced to ask yourself who is more powerful, who is less, who can help who and who cannot. Somewhere in the world there was also the category of fragile parity, of the non-innate ability to flex together with the same wind until the wind passes, even if it lasts only the few seconds of a drop in pressure in front of the photographers».
Bang.
It was then that through Michela Murgia’s reflections, and the link I share from S., that I too understood. Thus I understood that when words fail, if we wish to help a friend who is in a temporary or permanent condition of fragility, what we can do is kneel down with her, to return to the story of Kim Tae-hyung from BTS , stand next to her, stop. A small, delicate and powerful gesture that gives substance to her effort, gives it light, sharpness, respect. Even just for a moment.
Because every person who suffers, every individual who for a short or eternal moment, doesn’t even think for a moment that they are like a tree that falls silently in the forest, without anyone hearing it. Feel his fatigue.
Then I thought about the words that get flooded, the ones that arrive late because they’ve played hide and seek, the ones that besiege us, the ones that heal.
On my phone I had saved this reflection shared by Roberta Marasco on the facebook page “Rosa by chance”. I repeat it here:
«I didn’t understand it right away, it took me a few days, but then it became clear: the words that heal us are ours, not those that others tell us. Explaining to a friend in difficulty what she should do only serves to make her feel even more wrong and inadequate. We should listen more to the stories of the people we want to help, without scrambling to bury their apparent weakness with the illusory force of our good advice».
Second bang.
I had memorized it for these two reflections. First: “the words that heal us are our own, not those that others tell us”. Second: “without bothering to bury their apparent weakness with the illusory force of our good advice”
Luigi Pintor, atheist and communist intellectual, wrote: «There is no more important thing in a lifetime to do than bend down so that another, embracing your neck, can get up.”.
All of this doesn’t make the pain bearable, but it probably makes it not unbearable.