“What have you learned from suffering?” (Requested by Charles E Leggat)

There was a time in my life when I was naïve and silly. It could have been worse — I could have been one of those silly teens proclaiming, “This is the worst day of my life” after I failing a test or getting in a fight with a friend — but, regardless, I didn’t know what suffering really meant.

Then, my cousin Ezra, who was eighteen, was killed in a terrorist attack. All of the cousins had been very close, and it was a huge blow to everyone. I was fourteen at the time, and it shattered any remnants of childhood inside of me.

Losing Ezra was very hard, but furthermore, I lost a lot of things with him: my innocence, my childhood, my sense of invincibility.

I learned perspective from suffering. Failing a test or fighting with a friend doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. What really matters is that I and the people I care about are all healthy, happy, and safe.

This both strengthened and ruined my sense of empathy. On one hand, I was suddenly very in tune with the emotions of people going through grief. I had experienced it, and I recognized the signs and empathized with the person. On the other, I could no longer find it in me to empathize with anyone going through a silly, normal, mild ordeal, the stuff teens typically spend all their time…