Good news is always so welcome to hear. A compliment at work or a random act of reciprocity. Bad news is never welcome, but it carries much more weight than good.
Bad news can feel like a burden, an enormous load to bear. It can sink into you slowly day by day and wear down your strength. It feels as though your feet are dragging and your day gets just a little longer, each minute adding up to more than the last.
That burden can be a challenge to people. To know the bad and still be able to focus, associate, respond and react to others appropriately in the situation can be extremely difficult.
Somewhere in the back of your mind it is eating into your synapses and growing there, possibilities and scenarios expanding outwards while you try to use the remainder to survive the day. It's a horrid feeling to go this alone. To have no shoulder to lean on, or ear to vent at. People have started using social media to do this instead, and the human compassion is suffering as a result.
I use Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, but I do not profess my deepest emotions out there for people to gawk at. I occasionally offer a blurb of instant outbursts, but these are usually positive emotions.
Emotion is our human advantage. It sets us above the pack, creates links and groups and circles that we categorize into partnerships and family and relations. Without the emotion in a relationship we are no better off than strangers, as our empathy keeps us close to each other. The bad news, of any kind, can be shared and the weight distributed when you have someone beside you.
They lift you up, brace themselves and keep your back from breaking under the weight. There are times when you will need this help, so never complain when you are listening to others, never turn your back on a distressed colleague, never close your eyes to those with tears in theirs.
They may not be one of the lucky ones, that can split that weight or share that load. Be there for each other, whoever they may be, because you will never see the bad news coming and you may need them to return the favour one day.
