Lately I've been thinking about how quickly we judge people without really knowing their "why." How easy it is to take one moment, one decision, or one label and let that become the whole story.
It probably doesn't help that we often hear only one side of things. A headline. A clip. A story from a source we've always trusted.
There's an old phrase about putting yourself in someone else's shoes. I think we've gotten pretty far away from that.
Those comments usually say more about how little we know than how much we understand.
Understanding someone's "why" doesn't excuse everything. But refusing to even ask it makes it far too easy to stop seeing people as human.
I don't need to understand someone's life or choices to love and respect them as a person. But if I'm going to form opinions about why they did what they did, the least I can do is take the time to understand their story.