Business would be great if it weren’t for the customers.
Not to mention the vendors, suppliers, employees, managers, contractors, interns, coworkers and every other maddening human being we come into contact with on a typical day.
These people are so damned needy. Just go away and let me do my job.
Unfortunately, we’re all in the people business. There’s no escaping it, only embracing it.
And so, our job is learning to forgive people for being what they are. Because it’s not their fault.
When somebody makes a snide remark during a staff meeting or sends us an email ripping apart our latest assignment, they’re not trying to get us fired, they’re simply acting out patterns set in motion by their childhoods.
Our words must have triggered some ancient script inside their heads.
Debotton’s essay on forgiveness reminds us that every irritating fault in another person has a long history behind it. Each person is shaped by troubles which we cannot see, but which we can know exist. And behind everything that’s wrong and infuriating about those we meet is a decisive trauma encountered before someone could cope with it properly.
That’s why people are so goddamn maddening. They got to be this way without meaning to.
And so, to forgive is to understand the origins of evil and and cruelty. To accept that every emotional response is reasonable and logical based on that person’s personal history.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How would you treat people differently if you discovered they were fighting a battle that you knew nothing about?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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