QUESTION THE STORY
It happened so fast.
Her face on the bottom of my computer screen - shoulders back and proud, makeup perfect, tone arms crossed just right over her tailored black shirt. Not a hair out of place, a beautiful face graced by a professional and welcoming smile.
I wanted to hate her.
And so I instantly disqualified her, placed her in a category that was most certainly not my own. She can’t possibly relate to ‘real life,’ my mind declared, things are easy for people like that. Not to be trusted, definitely an ‘other.’
All of that from an email signature line.
I have never met this woman, never heard her voice come through my phone. In the industry that I work she is well-respected, a hard-working agent laboring for the benefit of her clients, just as I aim to do.
How did the mind go so fast? And why did it run in such a dismissive direction?
I wish it was the only time I’ve done this.
The gaps that exist in our understanding of another’s story are uncomfortable for the mind and it is quick to attempt to fill the voids. Becoming editors of another’s story, we happily cut and paste in a valiant effort to preserve the integrity of the tale, only to create a Frankenstein production of a life we know little about.
Read an account of the actions of another - why does the mind decide it has deciphered their motivations? Half of the time we can barely figure out our own.
Hear a story about someone we have never met - why do we instantly believe we’ve figured out ‘their type?’ This person is literally a stranger.
Observe the way someone looks, the house they live in, the car they drive - why do we suddenly think we know what their life looks like? Everyone is facing challenges we know nothing about.
In our unchecked thoughts, no one wins.
The truth is that something about that woman’s signature line challenged my own sense of worth, exposed a weak point in my understanding of my own identity. I caught it that time, forcefully reeling back my instant judgement to take a look inside my own heart. Why did I feel threatened? How had I forgotten what I bring to the world?
On this journey to embrace life with all of who we are, we are called to give others the opportunity to do the same, even if only in our own minds. We must pull back the assumptions we are so quick to make, question our writing of another’s story, and allow life to be as beautifully imperfect and mysterious as it will always be.
These days I’m trying to train myself to stay curious. Instead of allowing the mind to automatically fill in all those uncomfortable gaps I have begun to deliberately question what could go in them, and in doing so am reminding myself I don’t actually have a clue. Looking out at a crowd of new people I’m trying to stop figuring out a social pecking order and instead wonder at the similarities of our humanity.
What was hard for her today?
When was the last time she felt like she was more than enough?
What hopes has she set down and then picked up, only to set down again? Life comes at us each one of us hard, after all.
There is a beautiful thing I’ve discovered in approaching others this way - my soul gets to breathe. The puzzles I have yet to solve in my own heart are removed from being places of shame and instead become opportunities for discovery. As I set down the measure with which I judge others, I discover my hands are free to be kind to myself.
As I look for humanity in another, I accept humanity in me.
This is a brave thing, to stand in the unknowns of life and hold to our identity while we give others permission to do the same. But in embracing the mystery we find ourselves beautifully free - just as superwoman was meant to be.