The magnanimity of the small act of listening

By Aastha Dixit

(Image source: creationcenter.org)

"It is one thing to want help but another to have the language to ask for it"

~Blythe Baird

Mental health problems have seen a dramatic increase. Stress has been seeping into us like

the air, sadness gasps between the pages of an old diary, trauma lingers alone and quietly

behind closed doors, depression sails around noiselessly in all the crowded places. Mental

health problems loom around inconspicuously for they are terrified of the society's stigmas, of parents who would dismiss them as excuses, of people who would mock and of the mental health treatment infrastructure that is in tatters.

Maybe everyday each one of us fights with something. These battles either big or small, are

mostly won or lost in silence. But what if we make these fights easier? Not for everyone but at least for people we care about, for a family member, for a friend. Maybe even for a stranger. Most often a person who is suffering isolates himself or herself and resigns into a shell of silence. It takes a huge amount of courage to open up and seek help. It takes everything to unpack the grief and speak of the pain. And when someone breaks past that glass wall of silence and allows their voice to reach you then it almost becomes a responsibility to help them.

Listen. For it is an extraordinary act that requires ordinary kindness. In most probability, you

cannot solve anybody else’s problem. But still listen, not with the aim of solving someone's

problems but just for the sake of listening. That's what people need the most. If you break each person to the core, at the bottom of it you will find the same simple desire that outdo all the others. All of us, we just want to be heard. So listen. Lend an unbiased, non judgemental ear to someone. Listen with kindness, hear the pain and the quiet sadness. Be the shoulder someone can cry on. Be the hand that wipes someone's tears. Console, say the kindest words you know. Instead of telling people to stop being sad, tell them that it's okay to feel the negative emotions. Tell them things may not be normal, but they soon will be. Don’t compare their experience with someone else’s. Depression is a personal thing. It’s different for different people. Don’t judge someone for making any wrong decisions. Imperfection is the very base of our existence. If you cannot understand, have as much compassion as you can. Urge them to get professional help if it is required. But offer them sympathy. It makes people weak, it makes them disgust themselves. They don't need your sympathy. They deserve your empathy, your kindness. The highest aim of listening to someone is to make them feel that they are not alone in their grief. Once they know that then things become a little easier. Such conversations bring relief, provides clarity, new perspective and a hope for finding better solutions. It’s like putting down a heavy baggage you have been carrying since forever.

There are some pains that kill a person everyday and yet leave him alive. When some pain

like this is bottled up for too long, one eventually forgets the words which can describe it, one

eventually fails to comprehend it, to process it, to find solutions for it. The pain becomes more distant with each passing day yet it hurts all the same. It turns into a heavy mass of silence and is pushed away somewhere inside. There's no way that this silence can be heard then. It just rots inside, slowly and quietly, until one day that person forgets to breathe and himself becomes that mass of rotting silence. But only if the problem was heard before it turned into silence. Maybe your small act of listening to someone’s story can create a huge impact. The people who stand at the edge of abyss, they can be pulled away from it, if you try and help. Sometimes listening to people is the only way to save them.

It's time we normalise conversations about mental health problems. It's time we accept

that it’s not the pain that kills people. Maybe depression never killed anyone. Loneliness killed people, helpless silence killed people, lack of timely help killed people. We all carry our

burdens. It's a good thing to sometimes help someone to put it down and let it go. Nobody

deserves to suffer in silence.