i can’t imagine my brain matter outside my head

I can't imagine my brain matter outside my head.

I can't imagine losing my parents or my siblings.

I can't imagine seeing someone I dearly love in pieces.

I can't imagine beinga father carrying his baby, dead from the cold.

I can't imagine begging for mercy.

i can't imagine being gravely ill and unable to find the medication I need.

I can't imagine waiting months upon months for permission to travel abroad for life-saving treatment, only to die before it ever comes.

I can't imagine living in a tent in the cold for two years. I can't imagine having to beg for food in the street. I can't imagine losing family members at aid centers, starved, stripped of their dignity and humanity.

I can't imagine enduring even a fraction of what others are living through.

I can't imagine any further escalation of this suffering and oppression.

But I can feel for those whose suffering leaves so much of itself inside me when ! witness it. Each day, I take a small part of everyone's pain into my heart and mind, to let them know that their lives matter, that their misery is seen, and that it might one day end. I do this to keep my heart human. And I feel that, day by day, my heart is growing deeper, and more capable of truly feeling for others, and more focused on genuinely trying to ease their pain.

Today, I cared for an elderly mother with left forearm pain from a heart attack. Now I am home, feeling a similar pain myself. I saw so many patients in unbearable physical, mental, and psychological distress, and now I am lying in my bed carrying something from each of them.

I know I am lucky that my mind is still intact, metaphorically and literally. Lucky that I can rest, eat, feel warm, and have someone to care for me in my exhaustion.

I'm a lucky survivor, who will feel for others as long as he lives. I will live as long as I feel for others.