A Life Lesson from a Broken Fingernail

When I was in the university and around 22 years of age, I spotted a colleague of mine crying. I asked her about the reason for her anguish and she told me it was because she has broken one of her fingernails. I questioned if she was in physical pain, but she was not, only the far end of her fingernail was broken and she was crying because her fingernail polish is ruined and it doesn’t look pretty anymore.

I recall at that moment that I felt pity and antipathy toward her, because of the foolishness of her problem!

Years passed and as I grow I became more aware and annoyed about my feeling at that day, questioning them and thinking about my emotional reaction to that encounter. During this maturation journey, a realisation came to me: from my perspective, her sorrow on that day was not justified. I gave myself the audacity to judge whether or not she should feel sad!

I have been through many situations in the last few years where I complained to my friends about the things that trouble and saddens me, and I have noticed a few important things; the first one is noticeable that people will rush to give you a solution to your problem. Sometimes these solutions are obvious that you couldn’t have missed them yourself. For example, I complained recently to a friend that I am not comfortable in my current apartment and he advised me to change it. The first thought that came to my mind was "a brilliant idea, how I didn’t think of that!" That solution wasn’t available.

The other thing that I noticed and shock me is that people judge “according to their Misery Compass” if I am entitled to feel sad or not. When they think that my complaint is unjustified, they wouldn’t even show empathy. They might even be resentful, like I was years ago. However, when they considered that the complaint is warranted, like complaining that I have neck pain because of a problem with my spine, they would show empathy besides offering obvious advises.

This observation truly surprised me. I am feeling angry about the same behavior that I have done years ago; I judged the young lady's problem as trivial and trifle, but for her, that would have meant that she will not have pretty fingernails for a few more weeks.

What I have learned from this encounter is really important, I learned that when people encounter a problem, they don’t want my obvious solutions or comments “like it will grow again in 2 weeks” they also don’t want me to judge their sadness “why are you sad, it is just a fingernail”. She just wanted to express her grief and a better course of action would have been to display empathy and tap on her shoulder.

People don’t owe me or you to justify their sadness. Everyone has the right to feel sad about what she/he consider worth the tears. Let me call it emotional freedom. Being a good friend means first to be there for them to listen when they want to complain about something, no matter how trivial or absurd that seems to you. Second, if you truly want to help, then just ask “How can I help you?”. Frequently, the person in a trouble knows a solution or two to his problem, maybe she/he is better off solving the problem her-/himself. Throwing a random advice only makes it worse.

As the Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, Jose Saramago said:

“Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all”