Brené Brown comes to mind often these days. Namely, her bit about how to react when another's actions offend.
She says, ask yourself: "What if you knew they were doing the very best they could at that moment?"
"Well they should do better!"
But no: imagine they *can't*.
Does this change what we do to protect ourselves from them? No.
But it frees us up from anger.
If *this* is the best they can do? Wow. How small a life they're stuck within.
And how free *we* are, to be able to do better. 🫂
And, at least sometimes, when we are offended, it is because an innocuous action or phrase from this stranger has triggered US because of something from our own prior lives. If one can separate from the offense reaction enough to interrogate the source of the response, we may find we're bringing a different hurt to the table that is unrelated to the interaction at hand.
Absolutely true - and at that point, we also have to forgive ourselves for doing the best we could in the moment, and for needing later processing-time to view the situation any differently.
These days especially, we're all a bunch of tightly wound critters - many for very, very good reasons - and it's not a good time to trust that any of our actions are "perfectly rational" (if such a thing can ever be said to exist). Our wounds matter, too.
Thanks for this added wisdom, CLM! 🫂
@MLClark
Brown is one of my sheroes.