care-power-desire

When someone I care for experiences pain, or sadness, or grief, or fear, or loneliness, I wish that I could provide an antidote, or better yet, some sort of inoculation, to prevent them from having to experience these feelings. When Yoshi was in Japan, watching his mother get sicker and sicker, I found it almost unbearable (having been through an almost identical experience) to think of how he was feeling and I wanted more than anything to take away his pain, to take away his family's pain. When my brother recently had a health scare, and I knew he was worried, I wished so badly that I could fix it all, make his worries dissolve so completely that he would forget they ever existed. When a friend writes of his loneliness, I wish that I could find a way so that he would never feel that kind of emptiness. Yet I know that this is all impossible, and even more, that I am powerless in this way. But maybe I get some kind of power, good power, from my desire, much as we all grow stronger from the bad experiences in our lives, if we can withstand them.