Treat the Symptoms While Pursuing the Cure

Warning: This post has nothing to do with cake. So here’s a picture of one to give you the allusion that this all ties into my business.

Thanks, photo. What a relevant segue. Moving onto the next topic…

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk of mental health. How great that it’s being discussed and that there’s more openness on the once-taboo topic, and professed resolutions to be compassionate. Being a mother of 3 kids under 4, I appreciate feeling welcomed to discuss these struggles.

Something has been really bothering me, though. While bringing the topic to light is opening all sorts of productive conversations, there’s also a presence of anger with others who are offering “useless” remedies like compassion to help those suffering from mental illness. They retort that, “Compassion is not the cure.” No, it’s not. A smile from a stranger isn’t a cure-all to prevent someone from committing suicide (though I have heard of that happening). Can we miraculously make someone’s recently passed relative come back to life or their foreclosure disappear with a seemingly useless warm gesture? Nope. But it can help the symptoms. The human touch, whether figurative or literal, is statistically a tool far powerful beyond outward looks.

I, personally, can attest to its power. I remember one day at Cal, I was seething mad about some injustice that had happened on campus. I was hangry. I despised happy voices. I sat with my sweater hood pulled tightly over my head to warn my amazing, warm housemates that I was not in the mood. One such housemate, unintimidated, rested her hands on my shoulders as I ate that sandwich like it was my last meal before hibernation.

Something happened to the blood flow throughout my whole body. I could feel my blood pressure drop, my shoulders and my surly grimace relax.

I eventually loosened my hood and felt words of socialization come of my mouth in response to whatever she was talking about. I wasn’t expecting that. I definitely didn’t plan on it and didn’t want it. But there I was, a once-wild animal now domesticated (slightly).

I witnessed a similar experience when a woman at the Mexican restaurant on the west side of the UC Berkeley campus was crying into her soup. She was alone. My sister, friend, and I looked at each other, saying with our eyes, “What do we do?” As we were leaving, I put my hand on her shoulder, and said,

Are you alright?

She looked up with tears in her eyes, and said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” looked down into her soup, into which more determined tears splashed. I sat down with her and learned that doctors couldn’t figure out what was causing her great suffering. Could it be lupus? Lyme disease? She was a mystery to them. Familiar with the medical-mystery conundrum, I chatted with her for a long time. I was composed until I looked over at my sister and friend, who had tears in their eyes as they peered into the restaurant. I stayed in touch with her for a little while, giving her info to get in touch with specialists with good reputations, and helping her with health insurance issues. I don’t know if any of that was ever used and/or useful, but I know my smile and company helped. The woman thanked me after we chatted that day in the restaurant, squeezing my hand, tears in her eyes, but smiling.

Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me.

Nobody? This compassion thing might have a bigger ripple effect than we know.

These are tiny examples. I’ve had many more serious experiences of the effect of compassion on myself, including remembering every face that hugged me at my mom’s wake 14 years ago tomorrow. Perhaps you’ve had deep experiences of the effect of compassion on your day, maybe even on your life. But I’m a private, introverted German, so if we’re friends for over a decade, you might hear those stories. 😉

Among other things, my last blog post I talked about the effect a stranger’s smile had on my crazy day. It wasn’t a cure. I had an incredibly challenging day the next day, and will continue to every day until my oldest is school-aged. But it helped me get through the rest of that one evening. I’d love to get everything I want, or even just everything I think I need. Who wouldn’t? But sometimes we get only what we need at the moment. No more, no less.

These acts of kindness aren’t going to get at the root problem of someone’s  suffering. But can they help? Absolutely. Is it worthwhile? There’s nothing to lose, other than the mildly injured pride resulting from an unrequited gesture. If there’s a chance it might have even an iota of positivity on someone’s day, I’m going to try to remember to exercise my cheek muscles a little for someone else more often.  And I’m going to keep encouraging it.

Just because we don’t have a cure yet for certain ailments doesn’t mean we should skip treating the symptoms to alleviate suffering, even if only for the short-term.

Yes, let’s keep focusing energy on getting at the root cause of suffering. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. We can also multi-task a little and smile along the way for someone else.

I didn’t mean to write on this! I was intending to write on practical recommendations to make a stay-at-home parent’s day go by with some sanity. So I guess that’ll have to wait for my next post!

Signing out.

~Miss Whisk

p.s. I will be sharing the recipe for Man Bars in the next post!

p.p.s. This blog post was made possible by a mental health day, i.e. compassion shown me by my sister, Susie, who took over all my momming today so I could sleep in and have the entire day off to shop and blog at a cafe.