How Do You Serve a Friend in Despair?

We try to cheer up a depressed person by making her realize that her life is not that bad and that the sun is shining, only to find out we have made her even more depressed. She now feels guilty about her feelings, worthless, and more alone in her unhappiness.

Those who had a caring network of friends were SIGNIFICANTLY (like, 50 billion times) more cheerful, accepting, thankful, and at peace than those who didn’t have connections outside of family.

The line from  It’s a Wonderful Life  rang in my ears whenever I’d find more evidence for this theory: “Remember no man is a failure who has fr

There were times when, in crisis, I would await the reassuring word from a friend, until I suddenly saw that I should be the one giving reassurance. The discovery changed my life. That was when I knew that we experience pain to sensitize us to the pain of others. Turning our emotions outward, we can use them as the key to free someone else from the

Even if you are in pain, you can almost always make someone else feel a little bit better. Or I would try to channel it into more overt political actions, to make the society better.