You never know where someone has been

I want to comment on a portion of a comment I received from Annie B.

>>I'm glad you are able to view a horrible memory as an interesting reflection into human behavior and not internalize it too much<<

It is important to understand that everyone has a story and you just never know where anyone has been. Does that mean that my second grade teacher had any right to be abusive? No! I don't suggest that you let others roll over you, just that you cannot take too much to heart. Like my posting on "the golden rule" you do unto others as you would have done unto you. When someone does something to you that you are fairly sure they would not want done to them you have to get the notion out of your head that it has anything to do with you. It is 100% about them. My teacher had some inner torment and rather than face her own demons she projected her anger outward. I had no way of knowing this as a kid and I dealt with it as best I could at the time. I did not internalize it as a kid because I was very invested in being a good girl and so I knew bad behavior was out of the question.

I have a couple of great examples of "You never know where someone has been."

1. I completed a weeklong vision quest in Death Valley along with a few other people, including a man in his forties. He was nice enough, but almost every day he would do something really selfish. I kind of chuckled to myself each time he did something like walk straight to the front of the chow line. By the end of the week I saw him as a bit arrogant and selfish. When we were telling our stories of our time alone in the desert he revealed that his reason for coming to Death Valley was to get over the death of his child. Twenty years earlier his exasperated wife asked him to please, for once, watch the kids so she could enjoy herself at a friend's barbecue. He did not watch the kids and figured his wife would, as usual, pick up the slack. He was shaken to his core by the screams of his wife who found their two year old in their friend's pool. I never would have guessed that this nice, good looking, successful man had such a story in his past. That day I let go of a lot of perceived victimization by others. You just never know where someone is coming from.

2. A woman I know tends to be unreliable and flaky. Yet she is also spiritual and loving. I have heard several people say things about her like, "That is so typical of her. You can't rely on her for anything." Would it soften peoples hearts to know that her mother, a very religious woman, committed suicide when my friend was a teenager and she found the body? Then her son also died under mysterious circumstances just after returning from his mission, probably also a suicide. How do you reconcile suicide and the early death of loved ones? I would probably be really flaky too.

3. My first office job in New York City was in the garment district. My boss was a jolly fat man and he was very nice. He bought lunch for the office staff every day. He was never unpleasant or stern. One day I noticed the numbers tattooed on his forearm. I knew what the numbers meant, but I asked him to tell me how he came to have them. His entire family were sent to Auschwitz. He and his brother were the only survivors of a large extended family. I was crying as he told me the story. He stopped me and said:

"Don't be sad. I am a better person for the experience and that would make my mother happier than anything. All she wanted was for us to live good lives and be kind. Every day when I buy you lunch I imagine my mother gets a big smile on her face."

Don't take anything negative to heart. You just never know what is going on in another person's psyche. Some people take lemons and make lemonade, others do not.