Sometimes Being Present is the Greatest Gift You Can Give

I really loved this very wise essay by Parker J. Palmer about what to say to support someone who is dealing with health problems or confronting mortality. It's important to suppress the natural human impulse to give advice. We want to be helpful and we want to reassure ourselves more than the person we are trying to comfort that we have some sense of control. Don't. Just listen.

I asked how he’d been feeling recently — he said he’d been feeling afraid. “Do you want to talk about your fear?”, I asked. He talked while I listened and asked a few more questions. When we were done, he told me that some measure of peace had returned. It was a peace that had come from within him, not from anything I’d said. I’d simply helped clear some rubble that blocked his access to his own soul.