Complaining vs. Consideration

I was going to write a blog post about this, but I see Danielle Laporte has beaten me to it! Her article here basically says what I wanted to say: that before you get annoyed, irritated, angry or upset with a person and their actions, consider why they are doing what they are doing or acting that way, and if you don't know, then, well you just don't know. I recall a while ago someone was complaining about another person's actions, and then upon hearing that person's story, saying "oh, I didn't know..." Well exactly, you didn't know - all the more reason to think twice before making judgements.

I was thinking about this topic today because I was driving to my parents' house from my boyfriend's (I currently seem to be occupying two homes!) and I was behind a particularly slow driver going at quite a few miles below the speed limit. But I am trying to make a habit of being more chilled out about things like that, especially because I wasn't in a rush, so instead of getting frustrated by the slow speed I had to drive at, I instead thought about why the driver was going so slowly - maybe they were nervous, had only just learnt to drive and had just passed their test, were elderly, or made nervous by the windy weather, or a myriad of other factors - I just didn't know.

So I didn't get annoyed, I just wondered, and that made me think about how other people aren't just strangers, but similarly to me, humans with a rich, colourful tapestry of story behind them... which sounds like a very obvious thing to say, but sometimes we don't think about that - I'm not the only one, right? Sometimes other people seem 2D in our minds, and we don't consider anything deeper than what we can see.

I think taking a detour to the question "Why?" instead of navigating straight to annoyedsville is a great strategy to practice for better consideration and peace of mind. Besides, in this case, driving a bit slower than you'd prefer is nothing to get stressed about. Namaste!