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   Jens Finkhäuser (jens@social.finkhaeuser.de)'s status on Friday, 15-Nov-2024 17:20:39 JST Jens Finkhäuser

   Trust your instincts with people!

   This is triggered by a post from a friend, but is also something that happened to me not so long ago.

   There's a guy I know IRL who is terminally ill. His little daughter is our son's best friend, so we try to support all of them as best as we can, which is very little.

   He's got good and bad phases in dealing with this, which is a very euphemistic way of phrasing his struggles. I think any attempt at trying to understand how he feels is going to miss the mark.

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     Jens Finkhäuser (jens@social.finkhaeuser.de)'s status on Friday, 15-Nov-2024 17:20:31 JST Jens Finkhäuser

     in reply to

     Fine, OK, I get that.

     I apologized for the panic, we talked it out a bit.

     But the key thing is: she immediately understood why I had an odd feeling. It didn't come out of nowhere, it had good reasons.

     Nothing happened. He's in a positive phase. He went for a walk, overdid it, and rested where he could sit for a bit. It just happened to be that bridge.

     But the feeling was valid nonetheless.

     If you have a bad feeling like that, it likely has a reason, and reaching out can make the difference.

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     Jens Finkhäuser (jens@social.finkhaeuser.de)'s status on Friday, 15-Nov-2024 17:20:33 JST Jens Finkhäuser

     in reply to

     Nothing strange about sitting on a guard rail, except this was the guardrail of the road that crosses the motorway here. He'd been sitting on a bridge, staring into space.

     So I jumped back into the car to have a chat with him. Barely underway, his wife called and apologized for not responding. No worries, I interrupted here, are you missing your husband?

     "Yes, no, kind of, what's going on?" - "He's sitting on the bridge!" - "Aah, don't worry, he was taking a walk and probably overdid it again"

     Tyrone Slothrop repeated this.
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     Jens Finkhäuser (jens@social.finkhaeuser.de)'s status on Friday, 15-Nov-2024 17:20:37 JST Jens Finkhäuser

     in reply to

     So the other day I was driving home from an errand, saw him by the side of the road, and nodded to him in greeting - there wasn't really time to stop and chat.

     I arrived home, and couldn't shake a weird feeling I had. I couldn't quite explain why I had it. But I pulled out my phone to message his wife. Didn't get a response.

     By that time I understood why I had a weird feeling. He'd been sitting by the road in a fairly relaxed kind of way. But it was the location he'd chosen: on the guard rail.