Everyone is Fighting a Great Battle

An obvious realization I had a few years ago, that helped me be less judgmental and more compassionate: you never know what kind of challenges a person is dealing with in their life, and their challenges could be much harder than you would ever imagine based on what you know of the person casually.

It could be: a medical condition that significantly impacts their quality of life (but that they are really good at hiding), mental health challenges like depression, anxiety or OCD that they face daily, a recent job loss or other financial hardship, a disabled family member they help take care of, an abusive relationship, a tragedy involving someone they love, chronic back pain, a bed bug infestation, a difficult argument or break up with a partner, etc.

“Be kind. Everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden.”

Ian MacLaren

Here are some examples of opportunities to apply that when you’re interacting with a person that you don’t really know that well:

• If they seemed to react excessively to a “small” thing that happened, it might be that they have other reasons to be upset right now that you aren’t aware of or reasons why that “small” thing has extra significance for them.
• If they temporarily don’t seem to be making much of a contribution at work, on your project or to the world, you may not have the full context to understand why they aren’t so productive at the moment.
• If they suddenly engage in seemingly odd behaviors (wouldn’t go to a certain place for reasons you can’t understand, seemed really out of it when you had coffee with them, were flaky about responding to something you sent, etc.), there may be perfectly understandable reasons that you just don’t happen to know about.

What I’m suggesting is: don’t just have compassion for the difficulties you know about, give people a bit of leeway in general, knowing that you don’t know all about what life is like for them right now, and be slower to jump to judgment, because to a reasonable degree of approximation, “everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden.”