Your Pain Is Real. So Is Theirs!

We were in the middle of the COVID pandemic. Life was utterly chaotic. Overwhelming numbers of patients, limited resources, shortage of essential drugs and oxygen, uncertain treatment outcomes despite every effort, it was maddening. An unbearable nightmare.

I was completely broken. Long hours, no sleep, constant stress, and deaths and tears every single day. I called a friend, hoping for some respite.

Instead, I felt worse after the call.

My friend said, “You are at least earning something. My shop has been closed for months and I can’t even pay my rent!” It annoyed me. I was watching people die every day and my friend was worried about rent instead of being grateful to be alive.

Everyone needs support when times are bad. But so often, we compare our sadness. And almost always, we feel our sadness is bigger than someone else’s.

While listening to a podcast, I came across Clay Cockrell. Clay is a therapist to the ultra-wealthy, the “one percent of the one percent.” The idea that such people need therapy feels strange to most of us. How can they be sad with all that money and luxury? Clay tells us that a super-wealthy person can feel deep sadness over something like not finding a parking spot for their yacht. And we find that laughable.

But everyone’s sadness is real.

Viktor Frankl explains this beautifully in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl compares human suffering to the behaviour of gas. If you pump a certain quantity of gas into an empty chamber, it fills the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Suffering works the same way. It fills the human soul and conscious mind completely, whether the suffering is great or small.

But here it gets complicated.

If we accept that everyone’s suffering is real, big or small, does that become an excuse to not extend a hand?

Do we say, “How can I help you when I myself am suffering so much?”

In 1990, Infosys was on the verge of shutting down. Narayana Murthy was exhausted, demoralized, and seriously considering selling the company. The founding team was fracturing. He called a meeting and put it to a vote, “should we sell Infosys to a company for $1 million and walk away?”

Nandan Nilekani was facing his own private crisis. He had young children, a mortgage, and had already sacrificed years of better-paying opportunities to stay loyal to this struggling startup. He had every personal reason to vote yes and take the money.

Instead, Nilekani stood up and said: “Let’s continue.”

Not because he wasn’t afraid. But because he saw that Murthy’s crisis and his own crisis were the same crisis, and the only way out was through it, together. He didn’t minimize Murthy’s despair. He didn’t say “it could be worse.” He simply refused to let his friend face the abyss alone.

Murthy later said that moment, that single vote of confidence from Nilekani, was what kept Infosys alive.

They went on to build a $100 billion company. But more than that, they built a 50-year friendship forged in shared fear, not shared triumph.

I should tell you something about the Infosys story. We remember it because it worked. Because Nilekani said “let’s continue” and they built a hundred billion dollars and fifty years of friendship. But there are a thousand other stories where someone said “let’s continue” and it still fell apart. The company closed. The storm won. And yet — those people were not wrong to show up. The bond you build in shared fear is real whether or not the company survives. Nilekani’s gift to Murthy was not Infosys. It was the refusal to let him face the abyss alone. That gift does not require a happy ending to be worth giving.

The next time a friend calls you with their problem, and your first instinct is “but what about mine?” — pause there.

Don’t compare. Don’t rank. Just ask yourself one question: are we in the same storm?

Because sometimes the person who needs your hand is also the person whose hand you need. You don’t have to be okay to show up. Nilekani wasn’t okay. He showed up anyway.

Your sadness doesn’t disqualify you from helping. It might be exactly what makes you the right person to help.

So reach across. Surviving individual storms together might be the beginning of a lifelong bond.

~ Amit Hartalkar.