The Light and the Dark

We had to go through the dark to appreciate the light.

Many times, people are trying their best to survive yet there’s no reason or excuse for the pains caused. Sometimes, looking at the past hurts and trying to unravel what happened is more of a pain than a gain.

There goes the shoe story on the difference between empathy and sympathy. If you borrowed a shoe, you realize that it is not yours, especially if it doesn’t fit you. This is called being empathically empathetic or for short – empathy.

Meanwhile, borrowing a shoe and using it without the intention of returning it is called – the crime of theft! Kidding aside, the shoe story of owning a borrowed shoe without returning it is likened to sympathy. The ones you feel but you don’t do anything about.

Empathy is creating your own boundaries and realizing that we as people whose shoes are different are also not one and the same. Sympathy on the other hand, is absorbing others’ negative emotions and tucking it away until our personal bubble bursts.

This is perhaps one of the explanations for burn-outs for our psychologists and psychiatrists friends especially after the pandemic. Being able to empathize is harder to do than just sympathize.

Sometimes, creating spaces between us and another person often passes through walls like ghosts to get to you. It’s such a horrific horror story – the scariest we know!

Finding yourself in this realm with unexplainable whirlwinds of emotions, we try to find humor to a point that we forget the turmoil we are in. That is perhaps why social media content on humor is such a fad now. Even video parodies, make it to viral posts or else dies a copyright death.

A lot of mental health warriors feel through the dark, but when we find the lighter hues we just can’t stop laughing at simple things. Why? It is because we would never have laughed and recognized happiness were it not for knowing how to be all-night teary-eyed.

Strength is not the absence of pain but surviving pain. How will we realize our strengths without knowing pain? How will we elevate love without knowing heartbreaks?

As it is said, light lies at the end of the tunnel. But when light peeps, it’s not just a tunnel. It may even be a hailstorm in a humid desert or rain in a climate changing tropical weather at more than 40 degrees Celsius hotness. Therefore, seeing the silver linings.

Sometimes, it’s all in your head or maybe what you watch. Check out commercials from the likes of FITA academy. I think they did an A-game in finding X and Y in the end game. Maybe Vice Ganda or Micheal V’s jokes too are really good after a funny word rhyme pun? After all, there’s no pun intended!

To the funny pun and pan fan making rounds for the laughs in my life, we learn that humor is a gift and that the world is too unhappy not to find a reason to make each other smile even on false teeth – until we are old. Cheers to more fun and laughter!