smart ideas from books (mostly)
On helping a grieving friend: “It’s pretty rare you can talk someone out of their pain.”
I mentioned this issue before in the context of a child trying to express their feelings. You exist with them in their pain. You don’t invalidate their emotions.
Now I do take issue with saying that “the human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved.”
Was a friendship that ends ever one to begin with?
Maybe people grow apart, or lose touch, or move, or simply hang out less and less until a final phone call or text is not returned.
Or does the definition of friendship itself forbid this? For an actual friend would never – completely – lose touch.
Certainly, children who grew up in X and moved to Y can not be expected to act as a friend in the same way as an adult.
I am not sure I have an answer here.
When a friendship does end though, there is a scar from what is now gone.
Friendship that ends was never one; there was at least one sucker in it.
-Nassim Taleb, The Bed Of Procrustes
