That's a stupid excuse

I believe we are all inherently self-centered. This isn't a bad thing; I think it is natural. We all have our own entire worlds to occupy our own minds, so there is hardly any room left to give thought and energy to everyone else's worlds sometimes. It's really easy to accept that we only have time to care for ourselves and the few who are close to us, and that everyone else is not our problem.

However, I think we can all do better at counteracting our self-centeredness. It's not any one of our jobs to think and care about every single person around us. But wouldn't the world be a better place if we all took a second to try with the person in front of us?

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Too often, we give priority to our own daily chores, stressors, and jobs at the cost of everyone else's. It is easy to get caught up in our own world of to-do lists, but it does not mean that everyone else has any less stress on their minds. We all have different lists, different jobs and chores, different challenges, different ways we handle emotions and downfalls, but just because those are different, it does not mean that they are irrelevant.

The fact is that we will never fully understand everyone else. And rather than move through life with anger or resentment or annoyance towards those people we don't understand, we can accept each other. We are all different, and that's just not going to change. If we accept that, though, life can be a lot more beautiful.

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I don't think we have to understand each other in order to help. We're all dealing with these different problems, but we're all human. We can help each other. What if we approached every interaction with the knowledge that we can make a difference in the person's day or in their life, or that they might make a difference in ours? Sometimes, I catch myself approaching interactions with the end in sight- more often than I'd like to admit. Usually, I think this is a result of the "more important" jobs that I have to do or the lack of wanting to meet new people, but I don't think any of our time is important enough, or any of our lives are full enough, not to spend a second to treat the interaction as an opportunity to do good.

We may not have control over the way everyone else around us treats people, but we have the power to decide the type of person that we are. And I think it's a stupid excuse to say that we get to be self-centered just because everyone else around us seems to be as well. One more good person in the world is still a win.