It has always puzzled me how someone can be well-liked among friends yet be the person who makes colleagues feel uneasy before they even walk into the office. Or how we can have endless patience with clients and business partners, yet lose our temper at home over a simple question from the people who love us most.
For years we’ve learned how to be more successful—how to negotiate, lead, and make decisions. We invest in our knowledge and careers, yet we rarely ask ourselves how much we’ve grown as people in the meantime. A person doesn’t become someone else just by putting on a suit and sitting behind a desk where they decide on others. Roles change. Values shouldn’t.
But the hardest part begins only when we stop looking at others.
It’s easy to spot a boss who belittles, a colleague who lacks understanding, or someone who’s only kind when they need something. It’s much harder to admit to ourselves: Have I ever been the kind of person someone needed a break from?
Maybe I never hurt anyone openly, but I left someone alone through my indifference. Maybe I never raised my voice, but by staying silent I showed them their problem wasn’t worth my attention. Maybe I had patience for dozens of people throughout the day, but then brought home only tension, silence, and exhaustion.
Perhaps I gave my best to people who barely know me, while expecting those who love me to understand what’s left of me.
That’s where the encounter begins—the one we’d most like to run from. An encounter with ourselves, with no way to find an excuse.
Because we are not only what we think of ourselves. We are also what others feel in our presence. To some, we are a source of security; to others, a source of unease. To some, a reason for joy; to others, a reason to breathe a sigh of relief when we’re gone. Our intentions remain within us, but the consequences of our behavior often live on in other people for years.
Perhaps someone has been searching for fault within themselves for years, not realizing that they were simply trying to earn our attention.
Change may begin when we stop trying to prove that we are good people and start acknowledging the moments when we were not. When, instead of making excuses, we offer an apology. When we realize that being right does not mean being just.
We won’t always succeed. We’ll be tired, impatient, unfair. But the difference between a person who constantly justifies their actions and one who tries to change them can mean the world to someone.
One day the people we worked with and the people we lived with will talk about us. They may recall different moments, but it would be terrible if the same person couldn’t be recognized in their stories.
Worse still, those who loved us most might have to explain why others received the best of us, while they spent years learning to love the leftovers.
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