Daily life is filled with constant business and hustle. We are thus left to measure our lives in milestones. Some are blatantly positive, such as the first time a child walks or a graduation.
Others can be devastating and difficult to process, such as the first time you see an aging parent fall or the first time chemotherapy leaves your body ravaged and aching ?like hell.
These events serve as pivotal moments in our lives, the culmination of years of ?hard work.
At times, they may also force us to confront an inevitability we’ve tried in vain to prevent or deny. Some of these milestones are highly public, while some are deeply private and known by none other than ourselves.
Qualifying a major life event is relative to the individual’s own perspective. Likewise, the emotions our culture may assign to the experience cannot be generalized to every person.
It is important for us to make room for a neighbor’s ?emotional reactions. However, we cannot compartmentalize people’s feelings and assume their emotional experience will conform to any established norm.
Emotions can be expressed in so many different ways that even apathy can be seen as an outward sign. When we reach a stereotypically exciting milestone, such as the attainment of a better job position, we are expected to react in a positive manner.
However, on the inside, we may actually be mourning the loss of the work and lifestyle we had come to know. Our culture expects a certain degree of visible ?sadness from us when we experience the loss of a loved one or go through a breakup. But in reality, the person that shows no visible sign of grief may be having an unbelievably difficult time coming to terms with their situation.
A key element of being an understanding and supportive force for an individual going through a major life change is to avoid making ?assumptions.
Speaking from personal experience, being told how to feel or being given an observation of how you feel without a seeking of clarification can be extremely frustrating and damaging.
While the person making this offense may be doing so with the best of intentions and be completely unaware of the negative connotations accompanying their line of thinking, it still does not make this error excusable.
In the past, I have met moments like these with little more than silence; hoping to put this tongue-biting behind me, I have vowed to be more assertive and take charge of my emotions and how I experience them. After all, they are mine to own.
I encourage everyone to share in my commitment to challenging assumptions, fostering genuine empathy over shallow sympathy and owning our personal experiences. Let us build a future where we are all liberated from the expected emotional reactions our society forces upon us.
sjdickma@indiana.edu
