Mama said there'd be days like this...

There'd be days like this my mama said.
Well, no she didn't. And today is not one of those days I believe the singer was writing about. The song just popped into my head while I was trying to think of the oldies song that is about relationships...you know...that one?
But this song gets me thinking. Parents don’t normally inform their children about how challenging life can be on the self…at least mine didn’t, or at least they didn’t enough that I carried the memory with me. It’s rather a strange thing that our society is very hush, hush about personal hardships, more specifically the mental and spiritual challenges that seem a large part of the human condition. But I don’t think we can blame this phenomena solely on parental approaches.

A friend told me during a recent conversation, that she thinks her brother is going to have a hard time as he goes away to college this year: that he can tend to be a bit anxious, and not very self-trusting. After making her feel comfortable with conversing on this topic, she opened up and confided that she thinks she faces similar challenges, but she is able to just deal with them better. My natural response? “Yeah, the world is a really difficult place to exist within! Some people just have better coping capabilities...." the conversation continued. Slightly.

I think individuals fear that only they feel their happiness challenged by the world and are afraid to show vulnerability if they discuss these specific worries. How relieved might people feel if these thoughts were more readily shared and people could ACCEPT that being human is often a struggle, but that this is part of being human in the world we have created, we all deal with it, we all have different strategies, and can all share in this, are connected by this, and can help each other out...