“Look at people like they’re going through something, like they’re in the middle of something…because they are,” Corey Talbott.  We all need this reminder every now and then.  We hear so many quips about being kind because of battles people face, but we need to keep it simpler than that: everyone is doing their best to navigate this world, a world that operates under a pretense of what we are “supposed” to do that makes it difficult to reconcile with what we want to do.  We are born into conflict between complete knowledge of who we are and who we are told to be, between having innate independence and curiosity and being told to curb it and not trust our own power.  We all face trials where that knowing and instinct would prove invaluable… and we are all taught to ignore those instincts for the sake of obligation.  For example, we have jobs that don’t allow us to be in the home to take care of a family that we are supposed to nurture and grow—we are meant to form a foundation but we can never be present for it.  We are born into man-made conflict. 

I’ve spoken of this before.  I want to remind us all that this is good news.  If we make the conflict, if we create our own issues and fears and we choose to get lost in the waves of emotion, then we can choose differently.  We can choose to not respond to conflict and trust the gifts we are given.  We can acknowledge the most important thing: we are all human.  We have no right to judge others and we have no real need to prove anything to anyone. That scale was put in place to create a sense of order and false power.  Power is ultimately an illusion anyway because we all go to the same place in the end and we can’t take any of this with us.  We are gifted with our own power, and I don’t care how many times I have to repeat that: we are truly gifted with power.  We just forget that the vision of the world is skewed and sometimes we need a reminder that we all lose footing every now and then.  We are all human.  We don’t know someone’s story.  The best we can do is be kind and have grace—grant the grace we want through our own trials.  Seeing through the lens of humanity changes that perspective—and at the basest level, we are all flesh and bone, walking meat sacks that have a mushy computer running the show.

I want to caveat this with one thing: just because everyone is going through something doesn’t excuse crappy behavior.  We are still responsible for managing our emotions as I spoke about yesterday, and just because we feel bad, we don’t get to treat others like shit.  But acknowledging we all go through stuff helps us remember that people are at different stages of the game and different experience teaches different things.  This isn’t about right and wrong per se, we just can’t go further than where we’ve been if we don’t see the other options.  This is more about leveling the playing field and recognizing our responsibility. The truth is this: for as resilient as we are, we are weak.  For as precious life is, there are moments of pure agony.  For all of us—whether it is relative or not this isn’t about comparing one person’s pain to another (pain is pain)—we all experience it.  If we can put aside the emotional reactivity and understand the actual FEELING, the physical feeling in our bodies that we are trying to process, that is how we manage our energy.  The emotion is the energy of what we feel and we must harness that—and give space and grace for people to learn what they are feeling as well.  So…it’s about taking control of the emotion through allowing what we feel and honoring it.  We all have SOMETHING, so let’s be patient with each other.