🔗 A Tale of Judgment and Grace:
I thanked something I don’t quite believe in for saving me from myself and sparing that child from a scene of me haranguing her dad about civility. I made a promise to do my best to treat everyone as if they’re dealing with something heavy. Because they are.
But it’s hard. Hating that man was easy. I enjoyed it. I could have turned up the volume on my music and focused on my work. Instead, I removed my headphones to be more fully annoyed. Why?
I feel like I am getting better about this, but I still struggle with it all the time.
It is easy to react to someone doing something I don’t like as though that is how they always are. Somebody cuts me off in traffic? They must be a jerk who pays no attention to anyone else on the road. Have a bad interaction with someone in a meeting at work? They’re an asshole who is always taking up all the oxygen in the room.
And yeah, sure—some people really are jerks and assholes. But I think most are not.
What I try to remember is that I have no idea what a person is facing in their life outside of the small fraction of it in which I am interacting with them. Maybe they didn’t stop for the crosswalk where I’m crossing because they didn’t realize it was there. Maybe they got short with the cashier because they just found out they were getting laid off.
And even if they are just a terrible person, I try to keep in mind want a coworker many years ago told me after I had to deal with a particularly obnoxious customer at the bookshop where we worked: “You only had to deal with them for those five minutes. They have to live with themselves all the time.”