Inside

"What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him, should be a matter of no importance." Oscar Wilde



I constantly remind my 5 year old daughter that it is what is on the inside that matters. She is reaching the age where peer pressure begins, and things other people say to her, about her, make an impact on her. She has started to worry about how she looks and what she wears. More often than not, once that takes root, it takes years to find a way to untangle yourself from it. I have to remind myself that what is on the outside, what I see that becomes my first impression of a person, is not WHO they are. If my instincts are halfway on target, my first impression may be correct for the moment of their life that I'm interacting with them, but my "judgement" of them is so minuscule, compared to what they've been through in their life up until that moment. Perhaps I'm seeing a rare bad moment, or a moment after a sleepless night fraught with worry, or sorrow, or suffering. We all put on masks to go on about our lives with some sense of projected normality, but inside we may be struggling to keep our outside together.

If we would all cut each other a little slack, give others the benefit of the doubt more often, or even choose not to take some one's actions or words personally, to see past it and realize that inside we don't know what they are facing, it would give us all the chance to live out the "Golden Rule". Perhaps one day you will need someone you don't know to extend you that small mercy of the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure we can all look back and remember a time, perhaps one of our lowest, darkest times, when we were not our best selves, and we behaved in a fashion not ordinary for us, to someone who didn't know us, or maybe someone who knew us very well. I, for one, would hate to be judged by just that one moment in time, instead of being given the benefit of the doubt.

I am going to strive to put a smile on people's face, and impact them, rather than being so self-centered that their "moment" of time crossing paths with my life, colors my day, and I allow that to become my only judgement of them.