Life isn’t a comic book tale: there are no villains and no superheroes. In real life, humans are too complex for such categories. I’m convinced that if everything were known about even the most villainous-seeming humans on the planet, there would be enough tragedy and heart-break in their back story to warrant deep compassion for their subsequent fall into darkness. And the superheroes? The closer you get to them, the more you see their shadow sides. In our stories, everyone we meet is a multi-faceted human, and many of them are doing their best most of the time. They all deserve to be treated with dignity and grace, to be seen with kindness. There are those whose actions bring great wounding into our lives (and they need accountability and boundaries!) and those whose presence is full of healing light. But mostly, our interactions with other people fall somewhere within a spectrum we call "normal life." They are simply lives interwoven with ours in a tapestry comprised of all the usual human threads of vulnerability and beauty, love and risk, trial and error, immaturity and learning, mistakes and mending, scarcity and generosity, heartache and happiness, betrayal and loyalty.
Anthropologists and trauma therapists and neuro-biologists tell us that humans have far less conscious control over their moment-to-moment choices than we often think we do. Our social conditioning and past experiences shape up to 90% of how we show up in any given moment. This means that although we may think we (and others) are acting freely and of our own volition, we are not. Our stories and actions have a context. So, be gentle with yourself and with the people in your story. We all deserve some tenderness and curiosity and compassion, because we didn't get here alone, and we can't move forward alone either. And maybe, just maybe, with the light of kindness, even our horror stories and tragedies can undergo a plot twist.
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