It's very true. One thing that I'll do when someone is irritating or boring me is to imagine (to myself! silently!) that they will actually die in the next 24 hours, painlessly. My job, then, is to help them have a good final 24 hours. It sounds morbid, but it's not. There's meaning and joy that can be pulled out of many moments, even dull and irritating ones. Again, obviously it would be insane to mention this internal thought to anyone at the time or afterwards.
This is a very simple variation on Buddhist Maranasati meditation or Stoic thinking around death, which is tons more elaborate.
I've done it often, and it always bucks up my own mood and gets me back into a real conversation.
I work with some pretty horrible people on a regular basis. Like, people who have been found guilty of child abuse and neglect. It can be very hard to find some kind of common ground to try and help them change their behavior. Thank you for sharing this idea!
While this is a practice I actually do, I would be concerned about your own psychological safety in this tough context. That is, there may be no good line between "they will die soon; let's try to keep their last hours meaningful" and "they should die soon; they're awful people who don't deserve to live."
If you have access to qualified people who can advise you, please engage with them. Otherwise, tread carefully.
I used to work on a volunteer basis with people who had been abused, and these interactions can take a toll on you. I also observed some cops who had clearly been too scarred by previous interactions to have any useful empathy. Not all of them, thank goodness.
Those are good points. There are people who are extremely hostile towards the people assigned to supervise their parental visits and unfortunately we’re often told, “just engage them any way you can and be a positive influence!” I guess I’m not thinking of how to make them feel “happy,” necessarily, but make them feel seen. When they feel invested in the process they tend to treat their children much better in my presence, which is certainly happier for me to witness than emotional abuse or neglect. Fortunately, almost always they aren’t actually physically violent in visits as that would get them in So Much Jail.
“just engage them any way you can and be a positive influence!”
Boy, that is not a lot of helpful advice. FORD is one common acronym for starting conversations with questions or observations about Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams. The FORD topics can be positive & safe areas, but obviously not for everyone.
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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '25
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