Right There with Him in His Pain

“In all their troubles, He was troubled.” A Moment We All Know There is a moment every one of us knows. A friend opens his heart. He tells you about something heavy. Maybe it is a hard diagnosis, or a breakup, or a disappointment you never knew was even possible. And you really want to help. So right away you hear yourself saying, “I understand you. I went through something like that too...” And then you start talking. About yourself. Without noticing it, his pain has become the doorway to your story. So let us ask a simple question. Is this help? Is this sharing his burden? Or is it, with no bad intention at all, hijacking someone else’s pain? Two Ways to Be There There are two ways to be present when a friend is suffering. We know the first way very well. You might call it “instrumental” empathy: empathy that works through our own experience. It says, “I’m here with you, because I’ve been there too.” The intention is good. The love is real. But the face is turned inward. When we say, “I feel what you feel because I went through it,” we do not enter his pain. We invite him to step out of it and into our story. To put it simply, we show him our scar. The second way is harder. It asks for something we do not always have: truly setting the self aside. It says, “I don’t know what you’re feeling. I haven’t been through this. And I’m here with you.” This is not feeling close because we share an experience. It is being present because, quite simply, we are one. This is what our Sages call sharing the burden of a friend. The Depth of It: “I Am with Him in Trouble” One verse in the Book of Psalms says this in a sharp and deep way. Hashem says: “I am with him in trouble.” Look closely at the words. It does not say, “I understand his trouble.” It does not say, “I had trouble too.” It says, “with him,” inside his trouble. The trouble is his own. It belongs only to him, and it cannot be handed over to anyone else. Hashem does not come and tell us, “I know what you’re going through, because I also...” Hashem comes down into that private trouble and is there, with us. This is the model of sharing a burden. Not understanding, but presence. Not “I can explain your pain to you,” but “I’m here inside it with you.” The great difficulty is that this kind of presence asks us to set aside our own “I.” As long as my “I” stands in the center, even if it stands there in the name of empathy, I am taking up a space that should be left open for my friend’s pain. A Thought from Hasidic Teaching In chapter 32 of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, its author, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, explains the verse “Love your neighbor as yourself” through the oneness of all souls. All souls have their root in the One. So your friend’s pain is not something foreign to you. At the deepest level, it is your own pain. This is not because you went through something similar. It is because you and your brother are, at the root, one soul. Now we can see the difference between pity and sharing a burden. Pity comes from a distance. I look at you from above. I feel sorry for you. Maybe I even compare my situation to yours. Sharing a burden asks you to come down. You come down from the height of “my experience” and sit on the floor with him. The Example of Job’s Friends The Book of Job, about a righteous man’s suffering, gives us a picture we cannot forget. Job’s three friends heard about his troubles and came from far-off places. They sat with him “seven days and seven nights” and did not say a word, “for they saw that his pain was very great.” Seven days. Silence. This was not laziness, and it was not that they had nothing to say. It was a silence full of presence. All of them were there. They did not try to fix anything, explain anything, or tell their own stories. As many people know, the trouble only began when they opened their mouths. Once they started to explain, to justify and to give advice, they lost what they had. They lost that simple presence, which had thundered in its silence.