There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room.
–George Eliot (1819 – 1880)
The quote I’ve selected for this week’s WQW encapsulates something that we all know to be true; and if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s because we are afraid of our own vulnerabilities. The dying cancer patient and starving homeless person are mirrors reflecting our mortality. Only the sheerest fabric of fate flutters between us.
Some transcend these natural, existential fears to recognize humanity in the diseased and the downtrodden; but, unfortunately, this too often occurs when they are inescapably confronted by the sufferings of their own loved ones. Such is human nature and not for the better.
There’s no insulation from such cold; we must train to brave it.
The Skeptic's Kaddish 🇮🇱 
[…] THE SKEPTIC’S KADDISH – THE CHILL WE AVOID […]
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I have spent most of my adult life trying to communicate the abstracts of my inherited from childhood thought patterns into communication with others – to be compassionate and yet, also, to ask, “Can/Can’t you see how you yourself would react/be if you were in same circumstances’? to me, when something is repugnant to me/I have a visceral reaction to? I just always ask myself – ‘why? Reasonable or not? True or not? Projection of your own fears or not? Ignoring because of your hopes? Or not? ” – to me, it feels as if I’ve ALWAYS been that way, but I know it’s not true – not really – I’m working my way back from me own ‘dark winter of the soul’ even though, in reality??? I don’t have the challenges and restrictions blocking my heart/soul way that so ever many in the world, have, and need to focus on and often? Need something more than just ‘them/their will to survive’ to count upon – war, economics, cultural/leadership/societal/spiritual systems often try to answer, but in the end, always, there is one human, their inheritances, their current needs for survival and what resources they have within/without to meet basic, inner, hardwired, physical plane of biological existence, survival – EVEN when on one front or the other or many – humans ‘get it’ but we are not immune – to our physiology, our environment, our beliefs or the systems in which we strive to survive then thrive within –
We just are a whole – all of it – the good, the bad, the ugly, the loving, the fearful, the healthy the sick, the content, the rebellious – I’ll never live long enough to know all the answers, and yet – over and over? Breadcrumbs & shelter is built/left for me, to survive, long enough, in order to ‘ponder/live this path, here on earth’ just a tad longer and maybe, get a tad smarter over this, that or the other – for myself, for others, etc., etc. <D
That’s a beautiful way of putting it, Tamrah Jo
❤
David
[…] THE SKEPTIC’S KADDISH – THE CHILL WE AVOID […]
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Empathy and compassion, I feel, are the only antidotes!
💙🙏🏻 Lov, thanks 🙏🏻💙
~David
What a great thought-provoking post. Great quote too. Thank you for sharing it with us. KL ❤
💗🙏🏻 K. L. 🙏🏻💗 ~ thanks so much! This was fun.
~David
thanks for inspiring my poem ‘down and out’
🙂 Barbara 🙂
Very true.
💗🙏🏻 Dolly 🙏🏻💗 ~ sadly so
I agree.
[…] THE SKEPTIC’S KADDISH – THE CHILL WE AVOID […]
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Great post! I’ll never forget the shock of seeing a man in a sleeping bag on the streets of NYC on New Year’s Eve. We could smell him a block away. When we reached him, I looked down to say hi, and his eyes were empty icy blue orbs. I don’t know if he was dead or alive, but he did not respond to my voice. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life to this day.
😨 Marsha 😨 ~ that’s utterly awful…
~David
It was!!!