Grace

Today, dear reader, I invite you to walk with me through an exercise in empathy.  It will feel uncomfortable, even painful.  Don't be afraid - it's a good thing (really).

I want you to think about a person that makes you mental.  That crazy-making person who pushes your buttons with the way they live, the way they speak, the way they "are".  We all have one or two of them.  Go ahead, bring that person to mind.


Now, I'd like you to take off the hats you wear daily - the successful business-person hat, the loving parent hat, the cherished friend hat....try, if you can, to pile as many of your hats as you can on the ground next to your chair (I'll bet there are a lot of them). 

Now that your head is a little clearer, I'd like you to reach out and try to guess at what kind of hats "your" person might wear.  Pick one of them up and take a look at it - turn it around in your hands.  


Put down the asshat - that's too obvious.  Play along here, people.


Does your person wear a defensive, abrasive hat (it kind of looks like a cactus, with a lovely crown of pink flowers above the spikes)?  Do they wear a teflon hat, so as to have nothing stick to them (but instead deflects every.single.thing and ends up sticking to the people nearest to them)?  Underneath the obvious ones, are they wearing a crown of brambles that constantly digs into their head and reminds them of the circumstances that gifted them with it?  Perhaps a hat woven of the darkest, heaviest, most uncomfortable material you can imagine?

Now take a minute and think about why on Earth any person would voluntarily decide to wear one of those awful hats.  Hell, why would you own one, let alone wear it out?

There is a reason for every hat we wear, and every role we play.  We can only imagine, really, why another person is the way they are.  Even once we think we know the other guy, we never truly "know" - we have the clues we pick up from our interactions with them, and the information they choose to share, but this is only a pencil sketch of a person who is actually a full-colour portrait, created through layers and layers of experience.

So use your imagination - flesh out the character you know.  Embellish them with what if's, and then start putting THEIR hats on YOUR head.  Wear them for a little while, try to imagine balancing their unique stack of hats on your own head.  How might that feel?

Congratulations - you just felt empathy for the person who usually drives you around the bend.  

If you can exercise your mind to accept a sense of that person, you can apply the same technique to any one.  I suggest you make it into a routine - with a little work it becomes second-nature.  

Next time another person starts to make you angsty, or angry, or frustrated, remember how it felt to wear their hats for a little while, and I will guarantee it will take some of the sting out of your interaction with them.

I'm not suggesting that you will suddenly love them, or even necessarily like them any more than you do now.  You might, however, feel a little softer toward them, a little more understanding of their experience.

As a result, you will be giving both of you the gift of grace, and that is the best gift of all.