Seamus V.
Photography by Emma Kraus
If you’re reading this, let me tell you about my friend.
In doing so, I will try not to bore you with some story about the importance of perspective.
I met my friend, we will call her Lucy, at work a few years back. She was a patient I saw almost every day doing street outreach. She was bombastic and hilarious and had a thick Boston accent. She would greet me from a block and a half away screaming “What’s up kehd (the Boston ‘kid’). Did you miss me?” No matter the day, I would always find myself leaving a conversation with Lucy with my ribs hurting from laughing at some new story she told.
Lucy had an objectively difficult life. She was living on the street and had endured the type of hardships that you see when you watch Law and Order–the kinds of things you just hope would never happen to someone in real life. But I did say I wasn’t going to bore you with a lesson on perspective.
One day while doing my usual outreach loop around the neighborhood, I was greeted by Lucy’s familiar holler. She could immediately tell I was not in my best mood. When she pried and asked “Come on dude what’s goin’ on?”, I couldn’t put my finger on it but I just wasn’t having a good day. For no obvious reason, I was in a rut that week, and a few stressors at work brought those emotions to a head.
Hearing my worries, she reached out her arm and gave me a hug. “That really sucks kehd, I am sorry.” Her voice dripped with genuinity, and her recognition of me not being my best that day was something no one else saw. It came from someone who dealt with challenges unimaginably greater than mine. But her taking a moment to see my own struggle validated how I felt.
Lucy showed the most perplexing expression of empathy that I did not deserve but really needed in that moment. People use common cliches of “it could be much worse…” and “well kids in ‘x’ country are experiencing ‘y’” to contextualize problems and to try and give perspective. But these tropisms diminish others’ lived experiences. If you are reading this and feeling stressed, anxious, depressed, or you are just not having a good day, those are real feelings that you should experience without the pressure to compare them to other people’s.
Seamus V., Boston University
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