on selfishness & fragility

To dwell solely on our own personal pain is to ignore the small, pleading voices who need us- and to look past the lattice of people in our lives who are trying to hold us up in spite of themselves. To criticize those people leaves us stripped of our crutches and unable to notice the ones who are, themselves falling down underneath us as they struggle to carry our weight for us and we cleave blindly to them. It leads us into a cycle of knocking others down and eventually falling down ourselves for lack of support- with too much distance between us and the people left wounded in our wake; we are ourselves weakened & ineffective. We have to pull ourselves up and teach ourselves to see the people who are weary beyond the scope of our own feelings, tread lightly, be leaned upon and hold our place, lest the fragile house of cards fall in upon itself.