The practice of "being with", neither evading nor invading the integrity of others, is transformative. It is transformative in those situations that cannot be fixed -- when someone is dying, or living with dementia, or suffering depression or profound grief. This is because it keeps the person suffering in fellowship with the rest of us. They are not left to suffer alone as if we can no longer bear to be present to them, and this means that they can continue to be present, less fearfully, to their own experience. And it is likewise transformative for those situations in which taking some kind of action is a possibility. Action that arises from having attended deeply and non-compulsively to the reality of a situation is very different from the re-action driven by my anxiety to assert control and so deal with my helplessness and other unmet needs.
Contemplative practice forms us for "being with" reality, letting it and ourselves be. It enables us to discern more clearly when there is something to be done and when there is not. And it enables us to distinguish more clearly between our own needs and the needs of the world. As I am able to be increasingly with my own feelings, of frustration, grief and powerlessness, so I can be in situations that cannot just be fixed at will with a greater measure of peace and freedom... Living contemplatively in the tragic gap opens the possibility of joy in the midst of sorrow and suffering, and of remaining there even when the prospects of "success" seem distant and uncertain.
Sarah Bachelard, "Experiencing God in a time of crisis", Continuum press, 2012, pp. 103-104.
There will always be cheerful people who would want to "sort you out", fix and mend it, find a solution; they will patiently and at length explain you what your problem is, and what, in their opinion, you ought to do, and how best to go about it. There will be others who would just disappear -- gone with the wind, faded away; because they "cannot deal with it". Both will send you on a guilt trip: sorry guys, I see you are trying very hard to fix me, but I must be hopeless; sorry again, what's wrong with me, bubonic plague or what else makes you avoid me? Both will be acting out their own fear to find themselves where you are now: helpless and in pain, gasping for meaning, unable to make the ends meet.
Now maybe one, just one will simply sit with you through the darkest hours of the night, dealing with nothing, offering no advice or remedy; in silence linking you to the rest of humanity.
