Do You Look Beneath the Surface?

Do you think that after seeing people for a short time, you have a pretty good sense of who they are and what they’re like? If they do something “wrong”, do you feel like you know what the motivation was, maybe that they were just being mean or didn’t care enough about you? If someone reacts to you in anger or frustration, do you say to yourself, “How dare he! How could she!”

It can be so easy to feel like we know other people so well that we can read their minds and understand their motivations. It can be easy to think that we know who they are, but when we see people in that two-dimensional way, we can easily judge, dismiss and look down on them or at least some of their actions.

But do you really know the person beneath the surface?

Maybe the person is facing deep, personal challenges. Maybe she’s shared some of them with you or maybe you’ve heard bits and pieces here and there, not nearly enough to really know what it’s like but enough to feel like you do.

Maybe the person is facing some emotional challenges from way back, challenges he’s been working on for years but still might not be able to get a full handle on.

Maybe she believes lies others have told her over the years that have led her to have really low self-esteem and not believe in herself and her abilities. Maybe she even knows she’s strong in some areas but just feels useless in others.

Maybe he is facing a particularly difficult challenge at this moment but doesn’t want to burden you or doesn’t feel comfortable sharing all that personal information with people he isn’t especially close with.

Maybe she’s been shut down or pushed out one time to many and subconsciously puts up walls to protect herself from getting hurt again.

Now none of these reasons are meant to justify hurtful, immoral or unethical behaviour.

They are meant to help you be more compassionate, understanding and willing to accept that as much as you may think you know and really understand another person, there is much happening beneath the surface that you will likely not see and hopefully never fully understand.

What if you could let go of some of the judgment that often naturally comes to mind?

What if you could see other people as doing their best, call them on it when they’re doing something wrong while living a life of love that surrounds them with the warmth they may need to keep going and face their challenges in as healthy and productive a way as possible?