It’s Not About You

By considering everyone we meet with compassion, Humanists are able to detach from our own pain long enough to see other people for who they really are.

Interpersonal relationships can be very difficult.

The hardest thing for people to understand is that, often, difficult interactions are not about you.

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Yes, you are involved in the interaction but that doesn’t mean the other person’s behavior has anything to do with you.

Everyone you meet has their own problems and their own issues that they are dealing with.

Most of the time, people are able to put those aside to deal with the people they meet politely and nicely.

But every once in a while you meet someone who isn’t capable of being nice.

It comes as such a shock that we don’t know what to do and we have been taught, and rightly so, to examine our own behavior first to see if we have caused offense.

But if, after looking inward, you can’t figure out what you did to make this person not like you, it is time to consider it might not be about you at all.

It might be about them and their inability to deal with the other problems they have that has made it impossible to behave politely.

So, instead of taking offense, feel compassion for them instead.

Have you ever done this? How did it feel?