There’s something oddly comforting about talking to someone whose life is also a hot mess. Not the curated kind of mess, either—the kind people post about with a sepia filter and a caption something like “healing era.” I mean the real thing. The kind where you forgot to pay a bill, cried in your car for reasons that were both specific and deeply confusing, and then ate something questionable out of the fridge because it felt like a decision.

It’s like being at the DMV—fluorescent lights buzzing, numbers being called in no particular order, and a room full of people who all seem to have made the exact same mistake you did. You brought the wrong form. Or no form at all. Or you brought a form, but apparently it was printed pre-Covid and is now considered an artifact. You sit there, quietly panicking, until you lock eyes with someone else clutching the same useless document. And in that moment, something shifts. You don’t want them to be in the same predicament—but since they are, you start feeling less alone. There’s an unspoken agreement: We both suck in the same oddly specific way.

That’s what suffering does. It levels the room and provides opportunity for connection.

We don’t connect through perfection or filters. No one has ever said, “I really bonded with her because she had everything together and spoke in bullet points.” No. We connect through the cracks, through the moments when someone pauses mid-sentence and says, “I really don’t actually know what I’m doing.” Through the late-night overthinking that turns a simple conversation into a full-blown psychological autopsy.

We connect through stories that don’t land cleanly. Stories that end with, “…and then… I just sat in the grocery store parking lot and cried. Which was awkward because I had just made eye contact with a man in a wheelchair missing a leg, and a dude loading a rotisserie chicken into his Honda Civic.”

There is something deeply human about that.

People who are suffering don’t offer polished advice. They don’t lean back and say things like, “Well, have you tried optimizing your mindset?” They don’t have a morning routine that involves cold plunges and journaling about abundance. What they have is presence. They sit next to you and nod in a way that says, I know that feeling, and I survived it, barely.

They hand you a tissue that may or may not have been in their pocket for several days. They offer you a mint or a Werther’s Original that has fused with the wrapper and possibly lint. They don’t fix you. They don’t try to elevate themselves above you. They simply sit and listen.

And listening, as it turns out, is the rarest form of kindness.

Suffering people, for the most part, have lost interest in pretending. Not because they’re enlightened, but because they’re tired. There’s only so long you can keep up the illusion that everything is fine before your nervous system files a formal complaint. At some point, the mask slips—not dramatically, not with a grand reveal—but quietly. You forget to laugh at the right moment. You say “I’m tired” and actually mean it.

They’re not talking to you from a mountaintop while sipping green juice and recommending podcasts. They’re sitting next to you, trying not to fall apart in public themselves. Which, if we’re being honest, is a full-time job with no benefits and a surprising amount of overtime.

There’s a certain skill involved in holding it together just enough to get through the day. Smiling when appropriate. Nodding at the right intervals. Pretending you didn’t just forget what someone said because your brain took a brief vacation. It’s like emotional tap dancing—light on your feet, don’t make a sound, and for the love of God, what ever you do, don’t trip in front of witnesses.

But when you find someone else doing the same dance, something softens. You don’t have to perform as much. You can let your shoulders drop. You can say, “Yeah, it’s been a weird week,” and they won’t ask you to elaborate unless you want to. They’ll just say, “ditto” in a tone that carries an entire backstory.

And that’s where the connection happens—not in the explanation, but in the recognition. It feels like sand paper for the soul.

There’s a strange, almost holy twist to all of this: suffering makes us kinder. Not immediately, of course. At first, it makes us irritable, hungry, and deeply suspicious of anyone who uses the phrase “everything happens for a reason.” But over time—quietly, almost imperceptibly—it reshapes us.

It sands down our arrogance.

It takes those sharp edges—the ones that judged, dismissed, or rushed past other people’s pain—and softens them. It reminds us, sometimes brutally, that we are not in control of nearly as much as we thought we were. That life can shift under our feet without warning. That the person we silently judged last year might be the person we understand this year.

You start to notice things. The hesitation in someone’s voice. The way someone lingers a little longer than necessary after a conversation, like they’re not ready to go back to whatever they came from. You become gentler, not because you’ve mastered anything, but because you’ve been undone in enough places to recognize the same in others.

Suffering teaches you to pause.

To not honk immediately 13ms after the light turns green. To not snap at the barista who got your order wrong, because maybe they’re just trying to make it through their own version of a hard day. To not text that person you shouldn’t text—not because you’ve suddenly become disciplined, but because you understand what comes after.

There’s a humility that comes from being a mess. A quiet acknowledgment that you are not the exception to human struggle—you are part of it. Fully, awkwardly, undeniably.

That humility is where real connection lives.

Because once you’ve been there—once you’ve sat in your car, staring at nothing, wondering how you got here—you stop expecting other people to be flawless. You stop needing them to be composed, impressive, or inspiring. You just need them to be them.

And in return, you start allowing yourself to be real, as well.

Not all at once. Not dramatically. But in small, brave steps.

You say, “life is in full session,” instead of “I’m fine.”
You admit you feel overwhelmed instead of pretending you’re busy in a productive way.
You let someone see the version of you that isn’t performing, not some vein pseudo, that if we really think about it, they probably can see through it.

In those moments something remarkable happens.

They don’t leave. They sit. They lean in slightly with more intent on listening.

Or if they do leave, someone else stays. Someone who recognizes the language of struggle, who hears what you’re actually saying beneath the words. Someone who doesn’t need you to be anything other than what you are in that moment.

Which is often… just trying.

Trying not to fall apart.
Trying to show up.
Trying to make one decent decision in a day full of questionable ones.

And that, it turns out, is enough.

So if you’re suffering today—if things feel off, heavy, or quietly unmanageable—don’t hide it. Not all of it, not in a way that exposes you to the wrong people, but in a way that allows you to be human in the presence of others.

You are not broken. You are not uniquely disqualified from life.

You are, in the most honest sense of the word, relatable.

And there is someone, somewhere—maybe sitting right next to you, maybe standing in line behind you, maybe scrolling through their phone pretending to be fine—who is quietly hoping they are not the only one.

The only one who feels this way.
The only one who doesn’t have it together.
The only one who is one small inconvenience away from crying in a parking lot.

The reality is.. You are not alone.

And maybe, just maybe, your willingness to be a little less hidden is the exact thing that lets someone else breathe a little easier.

Not because you fixed anything.

But because you showed them they are not alone.

And sometimes, that’s the most powerful thing a person can offer.

A nod.
A pause.
A quiet, unspoken agreement:

Yeah. Me too.