I came across this passage the other day:
“If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.”
When I read this, I thought of all the people I know who are too hard on themselves. People, who for whatever reason, always feel like they’re letting others down, or not doing enough, and at the end of each day they judge themselves, always finding their effort wanting.
Obviously, it’s not unusual to feel this way. Honestly, my head simply spins when I consider the lives of parents—mother’s in particular—who have to look after children, perhaps tend to a job, manage a complicated relationship with their partner, run errands, and still try, in some capacity, to exert a creative and positive influence on the world at large. It must sometimes feel like living in the middle of a tornado, a place where oxygen, time and space, is just sucked away.
When any of us begin to struggle beneath that weight, I think we’d do well to recall the words above, which were written by American author David Foster Wallace. Sadly, Wallace, a brilliant and deeply sincere writer, committed suicide in 2008. The weight of his depression crushed him, and the world lost his singular light, but still, we have his words, which may yet help the rest of us to apply the same forgiveness, generosity of spirit, patience, and love to ourselves, that we often do to others.