Not happy, guilty

Remember I wrote how I felt happy when a friend of mine had a big problem? That was a pretty weird feeling. Yesterday I came to the conclusion, that one friend with a problem is really enough. When the number of friends with problems grows I stop feeling happy. The good thing about this is that it confirms that I actually do care about them.

There is one more side to the coin, though. If the number of problem friend is more than three and the time the problems last is more than a week, I seem to lose the ability to support them. In the past seven days six friends were ill, three feeling depressed, a very nice colleague had a miscarriage and another one appears to have cancer in a very advanced condition. I was checking up on the ill ones and giving encouraging talks and listening to the depressed ones. I felt my energy flow away and didn´t seem to be able to restore it anyhow. And all of a sudden I just stopped giving support. It feels like a spring that dried out. Realising that I actually do not have problems didn´t help to revive the energy and support spring.

Now I feel a little uncomfortable because I´m letting my friends down. I also all of a sudden felt admiration for Mother Theresa because of her ability to accumulate energy and divide it efficiently. That´s something I certainly need to learn.

I´m going into a long and hopefully very inspiring weekend. After that I´d have my energy back. In the meanwhile I hope some of the friends will get well.